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April 13, 2020
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Playlist for Her Novel "Starling Days"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Starling Days is a complex and powerful novel about mental illness and connection.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"A gripping, tender, and unsettling look at mental illness... Poetic and understated, this nuanced work by Buchanan also addresses adult-child relationships, the legacy of family trauma, and the challenge of offering unconditional love...Complex and resonant"
In her own words, here is Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Starling Days:
Some of these songs I loved years before Starling Days came to be and one I didn’t hear until after it was completed. I have selected them because they resonated with how Mina and Oscar feel. I can picture Mina pausing in the grocery aisle to take in a beat. I can imagine Oscar catching a few notes as his daily run took him past a café with the radio blasting. I know these lyrics would slip under their skin.
Sorrow, The National
I had to start with this song, because there’s a scene in the book based on the version they performed at the MoMA for 6 hours non-stop without break. In the novel, a recording of the song is being played in London. Mina goes to see it with a woman she can’t get out of her head. They’re together in a dark room while watching these men strum and sing. Mina’s hand touches Phoebe’s. One of the things I love about music is that a sad song can be joyous. Mess can still deserve melody. So, this sad song is one of the happiest moments in the book.
This House, Japanese Breakfast
I have a friend who loves Japanese Breakfast so much that he wears a bobble hat with the band name on it. He introduced me to this album. There were a couple of songs on there that felt right for Starling Days. In the end I settled on This House because I find homes fascinating. I don’t really want to see the inside of anyone’s handbag. But I’d love to see the inside of their bedrooms. Perhaps this is why the spaces my characters live in is so important. Oscar and Mina move into some flats that belong to Oscar’s father. They’re covered in scary bird wallpaper. On one level, they’re very lucky to live there and on another this is only a precarious spot of rest as they try to prepare for the rest of their lives. This song isn’t exactly about that, but it captures the right balance of love and ambivalence.
Our Lady of the Underground, Anais Mitchell
Mina knows the myths aren’t exactly real and yet she still imagines Starbucks cups catching in Persephone’s skirts as she heads towards the underworld. She looks to the classics for meaning even though she knows they aren’t literally true. Even with all our scientific reasoning there is something about how the myths explain the world that still feels true to her. This song is Persephone’s from Anais Mitchell’s album about Orpheus and Eurydice—which is one of my favorite myth re-imagings. And isn’t that what we do each time we think of the myths; we make them new again?
Valerie, Amy Winehouse
Oscar is British and when he and Mina return to London it is a return home for him. And he has to balance the London of the moment with the weight of his memories. For me this song is London. Specifically, it is my little brother singing this song on our way to our local shopping center. The center is mostly demolished now. He’s too old now to sing in that beautiful, crazily public way. Still that’s my ghost London. And as I wrote Oscar’s memories it played in my head.
Candles, Daughter
This book is about a relationship. It’s about the compromises made, the communication missed, and the strange unlikely loves found. So when asked to make this playlist I thought I’d ask my own unlikely love for help. He was with me with his notes and thoughts as I wrote all of this novel. And this is his song for Starling Days.
Constantly, Emmy the Great
Have you ever felt tired and awful and unable to move and wanted to find something beautiful and meaningful in it? That’s what Mina’s trying to do. But to me this song is also about Oscar. It’s about trying to work, continue, make, and be with everything on his shoulders—his withholding family, his work fears, and this wife who, in his mind, may or may not be too crazy to deal with.
I Wish I Was the Moon, Neko Case
I remember being young and everyone thinking that astrology was nonsense. Now every time I go online someone is telling me something about Scorpios. I understand wanting to see yourself in the sky. At one point, Phoebe tells Mina she can get an app to follow the moon cycles. That it is possible to cast wishes into the moon if you wish at the right moment in the cycle. And Mina looks up at a hungry moon that might swallow all her wishes.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is an American and British novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first novel Harmless Like You was a New York Times Editors' Choice and an NPR Great Read. In the UK it won the Author's Club First Novel Award, a Betty Trask award, and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize. Her work has appeared in Granta, Guernica, the Guardian, and the Paris Review, among other places
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Harmless Like You
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