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June 10, 2020
Sharon Harrigan's Playlist for Her Novel "Half"
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.
Sharon Harrigan's Half is a bold and innovative novel.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Harrigan’s bold stylistic choices and memorable voice lend the novel a sense of mystery and magic, well suited to its themes of childhood fears and adult disillusionment. Riveting and inventive, this is a cut above the average coming-of-age tale."
In her own words, here is Sharon Harrigan's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Half:
The main characters in Half are musicians, and I tried to channel the haunting, nervy sound of their music in my prose. The novel is narrated by Artis and Paula, twins whose father teaches them to play guitar by ear at age five. At fifteen, they start a music duo called The Slutty Twins. They use the term ironically, to drain it of its venom, after a boy at school spreads a rumor and they find that term spray-painted on their lockers. Their YouTube performances go viral. Too viral. You can imagine (but they couldn’t) how often “slutty twins” is used in YouTube searches. In response, they disappear into oversize hoodies and try to delete their Internet presence. Later, they change the name of their band to The Twins. I chose the songs on this playlist because they would make a good soundtrack for reading the book. I also chose them because when I show my characters singing and strumming, these are some examples of what I imagine they might sound like.
“Liquid Smooth” by Mitski
So much of Half is about the power and danger of being young and female, which is why I have to start my playlist with this anthem for girlhood. My teenage daughter said if a song could sum up my novel, this would be it. When I was a teen like Artis and Paula, I knew my body was desirable because it was young. I could feel men’s eyes on me. Guys cat-called and followed and stalked. Like the twins, I didn’t always understand the danger I was putting myself in. And I didn’t always appreciate my power. But Mitski knows more than I did. She sings for us all, girls whose bodies elicit desire that is sometimes too much for us to handle. “I am beautiful, I know ‘cause it’s the season,” Mitzi sings. “I’m at my highest peak/I’m ripe, about to fall, capture me.” It’s a sexy line, but full of foreboding. Dangling on a branch, about to crash to the ground doesn’t feel very safe. “But what am I to do with all this beauty/Biology?” Exactly.
“Bloom” by bLAck pARty
This song bounces along, like a letter to a young person about to be launched in life. The singer’s voice feels wise and affectionate and playful. “I hope you grow up to be/Everything that you want to/I hope your flowers bloom/I hope your flowers bloom.” The refrain becomes a mantra. It’s the perfect song for a coming-of-age novel. It’s a coming-of-age song, if such a thing exists. The tune is a mood booster, and if it were a book it would have a happy ending. Or at least, like Half, a hopeful one.
“Writer in the Dark” by Lorde
This is a mesmerizing song about the pain of separating from someone you love, which is at the core of Half, when the “we” voice separates into “I” and “I.” The break-up is between two lovers in the song, and two sisters in my novel, but the intensity of feeling is the same. “I love you till my breathing stops/I love you till you call the cops on me.” The song has an arc, as the singer moves from crazy stalking to coping. Lorde sings, “And in my darkest hours/I stumble on a secrets power/I learn a way to be without you.” And who can resist a refrain like this one: “You’ll rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark”? What a strangely beautiful and archaic word—rue. It makes me love the song even more.
“Pixie” by Ani DiFranco
Here’s another take on what’s expected of young women: “I’m a pixie,” Ani DiFranco sings, “I’m a paper doll, I'm a cartoon.” In Half, Pixie is the name of a woman who lets the girls try on leopard print stilettos when they’re eight years old. They want to be her when they grow up. They wish she was their big sister. Only years later do they realize she wasn’t as magical as she seemed. “Was her name really Pixie?” they ask each other. I love the song’s contrast between the lyrics (the singer telling us how nice she is) and the tone (not nice at all).
“Young God” by Halsey
Halsey sings, “He says ooh baby girl, we’re going to be legends. . . You know the two of us are young gods. But do you feel like a young god?” A guy is trying to convince her to have sex with him by exaggerating how great it will be, by telling her, “We’ll be flying through the streets with the people underneath.” The twins’ father knows the persuasive power of exaggeration too. He names Artis and Paula for Artemis and Apollo, children of the Greek god Zeus. He wants them to believe that their fates are connected to their names, that they have special powers, including supernatural musical ability.
“My Body Is a Cage” by Arcade Fire
I’m drawn to this song because the tone is so over the top. The organ music has the creepy, sexy feeling of a Doors song crossed with the Phantom of the Opera—not the Broadway play, but the original silent film, with live music. The voice rises as the tension builds. The phrases, which repeat in loops, are just as weirdly poetic as the melody. “My body is a cage/That keeps me from dancing with the one I love/But my mind holds the key.” What does that even mean? I’m not sure, but I thought of those lines when I tried to keep the twins tethered in mind and heart when they were physically apart. Those lines inspired me when I was writing about two people, two bodies, who acted as if, in their minds at least, they were one.
“Jolene” by Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton praises Jolene’s beauty and shows how it gives her the power to lure men in, then she sings: Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene/I'm begging of you please don't take my man/Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene/Please don't take him just because you can.” I’m embarrassed to admit that I hated Dolly Parton as a kid. I hated all country music, which was the music my mom played all the time. I wanted to be sophisticated and urbane and urban and all those non-country things. Now Dolly is so hip even my teenage daughter listens to her. I found Jolene on her Spotify playlist and asked why she was listening to such a sexist song. “Her man is cheating on her and somehow it’s the woman’s fault?” I said. My daughter explained that the song is about female power. Jolene has loads of it. And Dolly Parton, belting out Jolene’s name with a gorgeous voice so huge you can hear it for miles—that’s female super-star power.
“I’ll Be Your Mirror” by The Velvet Underground
I wasn’t in a band, as the twins are, when I was a teenager, but my boyfriend was, and one of the best things he did for me was introduce me to The Velvet Underground. The main pleasure of this song is Nico’s voice, which is precise in the way only a non-Native English speaker can be but also dreamy and otherworldly. I love this song because it reminds me of being part of that joyous band scene, and I channeled that joy when writing about my rock star characters. And, of course, the words here matter too. The twins are each other’s mirror.
“Luka” by Suzanne Vega
“My name is Luka. . . I live upstairs from you” the song begins. It tells the story of someone who is not the songwriter and thus feels close to fiction. I chose Suzanne Vega for nostalgic reasons too. I loved her in college, when I was the age of my characters, and listening to the music I listened to then helped me remember what it felt like to be young. What’s brilliant about this song is how it is so much more under the surface than it seems—which is what I hope my novel is too. The melody is so infectiously bouncy it’s a bit of a shock when you’re happily humming a song and realize it’s about domestic violence.
“If you hear something late at night,” Vega sings, in Luka’s persona, “some kind of trouble, some kind of fight, just don’t ask me what it was.”
“Pynk” by Janelle Monae
I chose this song because it is exuberantly, joyously, unabashedly about female desire and sexuality. Which is part of what Half is about too.
“Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish
I love reading Billie Eilish’s notes about her songs while I listen to them. In this her song notes for “Bad Guy,” she says, “This song is explaining that the ‘guy’ doesn’t always have to be the ‘bad guy.’ In this case it’s me.” The twins, about half-way through the novel, realize that maybe the bad guy isn’t their dad, but them. And I adore Billie Eilish’s voice—breathy and brooding and dark, even though she’s still almost a kid.
“Back in Your Head” by Tegan and Sara
How could I not choose a song by Tegan and Sara, an indie rock duo of identical twin sisters who rose to fame early and then later encountered harassment, just like the narrators of Half? And how could I resist a song about wanting to be back in someone’s head, when my novel is about two people who can read each other’s thoughts—until they can’t anymore?
“Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey
Like all Lana Del Rey songs, this one is mysterious and spooky and gorgeous. Like not all Lana del Rey songs, this one is also sweet. The singers asks, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” Then she answers her own question three times: “I know you will/I know you will/I know that you will.” This song is a kind of antidote to "Liquid Smooth" because instead of comparing a woman to ripe fruit that will fall (and presumably be ruined) once she is too ripe, we see a future of unconditional love. This is the kind of love my characters finally find in Half. I told you the ending was hopeful, didn’t I?
Sharon Harrigan is the author of Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir (Truman State University Press, 2017.) Her new book Half was the finalist for the AWP Novel Prize, and her story upon which this novel is based won the Cecilia Joyce Johnson Award from Key West Seminars and the Kinder Award from Pleaides Magazine. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and teaches writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, VA, where she lives with her family.
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