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August 3, 2020
Curtis Smith's Playlist for His Novel "The Magpie's Return"
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.
Curtis Smith's The Magpie's Return is a timely and moving dystopian novel.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"An affecting futuristic tale that manages to feel both urgent and timeless."
In his own words, here is Curtis Smith's Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Magpie's Return:
Music plays a big part in my life. That said, I’m terribly untalented—and my clumsy teenage attempts to play instruments helped guide me toward writing as a creative outlet. Still, I love listening to music as I drive or do the dishes or work around the house. I can’t listen as I write—I have a hard-enough time hearing my characters—but I do often dream in music. I’ll wake with a tune in my head—an original tune—but then it slips through my fingers, lost by the time I get dressed. I like to think my sentence-by-sentence writing has a musical element. I struggle to hear the rhythms that escaped the teenage-me and capture them on paper.
For my playlist, I tried to image a fitting soundtrack to the arc of The Magpie's Return. The main character, Kayla, is a young girl, strong and independent, yet she’s also lost in the greater tides of violence and upheaval. As I was writing Magpie, the horrible events in Syria were unfolding. In the back of my mind, I saw those children, and I imagined those same kinds of horrors brought home to a small American town.
“Land”—Patti Smith
Kayla’s locker is next to Missy’s. Missy the leader of the school’s tough girls, but one day, Kayla decides she’s had enough of Missy’s mouth. Words are exchanged. A hard shove. Missy takes off her hoop earrings, and Kayla pulls back her hair. It’s about to go down. In the end, it’s not going to be pretty for either of them.
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”—Talking Heads
Kayla spends the summer puttering around the worksite where her uncles are helping her father build her new house. Kayla sweeps and fetches. She’s a witness to the everyday growth—foundation, framing, roof. Her family moves in on trick-or-treat night. A fire burns, the three of them sharing the same space, loving each other until their hearts stop, loving until they’re dead.
“The Man Who Sold the World”—David Bowie
In the background, a Presidential race. A candidate at first thought a joke, then gaining ground. His dark vision. His appeal to America for Americans, to a country that needs to embrace Jesus. Kayla and her family witnesses to his rise, and on election night, a surprise.
“Violin Concerto—Movement 2”—Phillip Glass
On New Year’s Day, an exchange of nuclear weapons plunges Asia into darkness. Brinksmanship fails, leaders panic, and the dominoes tumble. India, Pakistan, China, North Korea, Russia. Drone footage brings the nightmare home. The sunsets red with the ashes of a hundred million souls. There’s nothing to say, this sadness beyond words.
“Strange Days”—The Doors
Kayla and her family, like the rest of America, fall into shock and into each other. Strange days have tracked them down, have destroyed their casual joys. Their bodies confused, their memories misused. The days stretch into weeks. Months.
“New Speedway Boogie”—Courtney Barnett
The country in lockdown. Fear of fallout, the RAD counts defying all predictions. Reports of poisoned rivers and miscarriages and mutations. Outside, poisons impossible to see, and in Kayla’s small town, another brewing. The country’s new mood. Her father’s position in the peace movement. The distrust that lurks behind a neighbor’s eyes. One way or another, this darkness got to give.
“The Blue Mask”—Lou Reed
The violence of the outside world floods into their house. The door broken down. Her father beaten and carried to the street. A noose slung over a light pole. The sin has gone too far—it cannot be controlled. Kayla a witness to it all before she’s dragged away.
“I’m Only Sleeping”—The Beatles
Her rescue by the neighborhood outcast. A woman the children call a witch. She hides Kayla, watches over her. Kayla in shock. Unable to eat, barely able to speak. Too afraid to sleep in the dark, her days spent drifting through dreams and nightmares until she can’t tell real from not.
“It Never Entered My Mind”—Miles Davis
For days, Kayla drifts. Lost in her mind, unclaimed by those who’d loved her, abandoned by the world’s rhythms. She’s shattered, melancholy, afraid. She’s filled with ash and smoke. And again, there are no words.
“Motherless Children”—Rosanne Cash
Kayla believes her mother is still alive. Belief is the light in her darkness. Her world has fallen apart, yet Kayla harbors the thin hope in her heart, a whisper against the storm. Sometimes another steps forward, an act of kindness—but nobody on Earth can take a mother’s place. Kayla believes she’s alive. She has to believe.
“We’re Going to be Friends”—White Stripes
Kayla is taken to a home for lost girls. Here she finds both the rifts of the outside world and a sisterhood of damaged souls. Friendships form, some quickly, others in slow sharings of trust. True, Kayla has lost her family, but perhaps here, she can find a new one.
“Harder Than You Think”—Public Enemy
Kayla learns about herself—what she is capable of, the strength of her body and mind and heart. She endures humiliations and attacks. She survives them all and emerges stronger. In the mirror, a different girl than the one she once knew, one who won’t back down. Get up—just like that.
“Let Down”—Radiohead
The system has crushed Kayla. It’s oppression, its dogma. Its boot upon her neck, but she knows that one day she’ll grow wings. One day, one way or another, she and her friends will fly away.
“Street Fighting Man”—Rolling Stones
Fires burn in the streets outside the girls’ compound. At night, they hear explosions, gunfire. They snag pamphlets carried on the breeze and picked from the trash and read them in their room. The blows against the empire intoxicating, and in their minds, they envision joining the cause. The whole rotten system brought down. The time right for violent revolution.
“How I Could Just Kill a Man”—Cypress Hill
Kayla’s parents believed in peace. They believed in art and science—but the distrust of intellectuals is a cornerstone of the new regime. Now they’re gone, her father dead, her mother lost—and Kayla understands what she hadn’t before—that justice for the weak will never be offered—it must be taken—and there’s an equalizer that fits in the palm of her hand.
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond, parts 6-9”—Pink Floyd
Kayla returns home. Half frozen, her thoughts warped by a car crash’s concussion. Blood on her clothes and the police in pursuit. She walks the streets where she grew up—but she’s a ghost, unrecognizable, lost beneath the layers that have been piled upon the girl she was. She returns to the river she once explored with her parents. The bare branches clatter on the breeze. The ice groans and beneath, the buried current. She’s alone—but she knows her parents are near, that just as she can’t forget them, they will never abandon her. Even at the end, she isn’t alone.
Curtis Smith's stories and essays have appeared in over seventy literary journals. His work has been named on The Best American Short Stories Distinguished Stories List, The Best American Mystery Stories Distinguished Stories List, and the Notable Writing list of The Best American Spiritual Writing. His books include Lovepain (Braddock Avenue Books), Communion (Dock Street Press), Witness (sunnyoutside), and more. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and son
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