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January 17, 2020
Jessica Andrews' Playlist for Her Debut Novel "Saltwater"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jessica Andrews’ novel Saltwater is an audacious debut, an inventively told and intimate coming-of-age story.
The Independent wrote of the book:
"Jessica Andrews’ debut novel shimmers with promise: it’s one of those books where, from the first pages, you’re grabbed by a distinctive new voice."
In her own words, here is Jessica Andrews' Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Saltwater:
Growing up in Sunderland in the late '90s and early '00s, music was my gateway to art and culture. My parents weren’t big readers and people didn’t talk about literature very often, but music was everywhere. My mother was proud that I knew the lyrics to every song on Definitely Maybe by Oasis when the other kids at school were singing nursery rhymes.
When I was a teenager, music was my escape. Lots of boys (always boys) at school were in bands and we spent our weekends getting drunk at their gigs in working men’s clubs, dancing on the tables and snogging outside in the churchyard. I used to read Kerrang! and the NME, and if the bands inside name-checked artists or musicians, I would look them up.
Saltwater is a non-chronological novel and I used music as markers to locate it in a particular time and place.
Music in Saltwater:
20th Century Boy by T-Rex
Before I started writing Saltwater, I found a box of my mother’s old records in her garage. She had a lot of T-Rex, The Undertones and Depeche Mode. She told me she used to listen to Marc Bolan when she was going out. I loved imagining her getting ready, hairspraying her curly perm and dancing to "20th Century Boy," just like I did to her record, many years later. I used the image of her getting ready to T-Rex in my novel, because it felt like a shared strand of joy running through both of our lives.
The Whole of the Moon by The Waterboys
Saltwater is based on my parents’ relationship, and I asked my mother what songs came out around the time they met, so I could use them in my book. She said "The Whole of the Moon" by The Waterboys was one of their songs, which breaks my heart. My parents had an intense, heady relationship but split up due to my dad’s alcoholism. It is such a tragic love story and I feel like this song encapsulates those feelings. It is about two people with different perspectives on the world; how they move through their lives separately, wanting different things.
I was living in Ireland when I was writing my novel, and this song often came on in the pub. It seemed strange to me that I was spending my days writing about this very '80s world, listening to that song often, and there it was, in my present. My protagonist, Lucy, has a relationship with a man in Ireland, in a mirroring of her mother’s past, and I wrote a scene where it is playing in the pub when she is out with the man, to illustrate the parallels and differences in Lucy and her mother’s lives.
Old Red Eyes is Back by The Beautiful South
Lucy’s dad loves The Beautiful South – as does my own father. When I was a child, he used to drive around Sunderland with his windows down, blasting this song, and we used to scream it out of the window together. Now that I am older, I realise my dad was singing it about himself.
Half the World Away by Oasis
Like my own mother, Lucy’s mam is proud when she sings Oasis songs at nursery, ‘while the other kids sang ditties about sheep and lambs.’ The Gallagher brothers were the first poets I knew and there’s such a sense of nostalgia in their music for me; the hopes and broken dreams of the north of England in the '90s, which became mapped onto my parents’ relationship.
When I was 18, I went to see Oasis play in Aberdeen and it felt like the culmination of lots of broken, precarious things I didn’t fully understand; the de-industrialisation of the city I grew up in and the love that my parents lost. I love the line, ‘You can’t give me the dreams that are mine anyway’. In a way, it captures how I feel about Sunderland in all of its complexities; the beauty and the sadness, how badly I wanted to leave and how much it is still a part of me. It questions to what extent we owe our dreams to our hometowns and our families; everything and nothing simultaneously.
Jilted John by Jilted John
In the novel, Lucy’s mother meets an art teacher, who burns her a CD of punk bands, which Lucy steals and puts in her Walkman. Lucy’s mother is going out with a man called Gordon at the time, and the song goes, ‘Gordon is a moron’ and so the CD is a coded message to her. I took that scene directly from real life – it really happened to my mother and I loved it so much I am still thinking about it 15 years later.
Oh Bondage! Up Yours! by X-Ray Spex
The same CD had X-Ray Spex on it, which was my first experience of them. As a 13-year-old girl, hearing Poly Styrene scream, “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think, ‘Oh bondage, up yours!’” was revolutionary. My best friend used to come to my house after school when no one else was home and we would put it on and dance wildly around the kitchen– so I made my characters do the same.
Other bands that feature in Saltwater are: Orange Juice, Depeche Mode, Bullet for my Valentine, Funeral For a Friend, The Arctic Monkeys, James, Billy Bragg, CSS, Kate Nash, The Libertines, The Fratellis.
Music that inspired Saltwater:
Girl in Amber from Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave and You Want it Darker from You Want it Darker by Leonard Cohen
When I wrote Saltwater, I was living in a rural fishing town in Donegal, on the west coast of Ireland. I was alone for 8 months with no money, no car, no television and no internet, so music became very important. Both of these albums had just come out and I used to sit in the dark at night with lots of candles, or go for walks along the pier by the disused fish factories, listening to them.
Skeleton Tree is one of the most haunting and beautiful albums I have ever heard. Leonard Cohen died while I was in Ireland. Late that night, they played a French cover of So Long, Marianne on the radio and I cried my eyes out. I love his dark, gravelly voice on You Want it Darker, and the way he knows it will be his last album, and uses it to reflect on his life.
Gloria by Patti Smith
Patti Smith is one of my heroes. I love the way she flits between genres and mediums, her disregard for convention, her raw, angry, dirty voice. Gloria was a hymn to me in my early twenties when I was trying to forge my own way as a writer and I had no money and nowhere really to live. It is a song that makes things feel possible.
Rock and Roll by The Velvet Underground
This is one of my favourite songs of all time. It is the parts of myself that I put into Lucy; the feeling when everything around you is falling apart, and you are so hungry for everything and you don’t know who you are, but there is a bar somewhere you can go and dance and for a few shiny hours none of it matters.
Rebel, Rebel by David Bowie
Like Patti, I love the way Bowie refuses to be categorised. His creation of different personas, his manipulation of gender binaries and his complete otherworldliness made my world bigger. Rebel, Rebel was a teen anthem for me, and inspired the Saltwater party scenes. It is a song about dressing up in whatever you want, going out covered in glitter and dancing without caring what anybody thinks of you.
When Bowie died, I was living in London. There was a street party in Brixton and thousands of people flocked there in leather and suede to pay tribute. The Ritzy Cinema had spelled out, ‘David Bowie, Our Brixton Boy’ on the listings board. A man with a guitar climbed on top of a van and started to play Space Oddity. The whole crowd sang along, waving their lighters in the air. I’ll never forget that moment, the man silhouetted in front of an orange street lamp, the city fog and the stars. There will never be anyone like Bowie.
Jessica Andrews and Saltwater links:
the author's website
excerpt from the book
Guardian review
Independent review
Irish Times review
New York Times review
Guardian interview with the author
New Writing North interview with the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
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Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book)
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my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays
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