« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
January 16, 2023
Maria Dong's Playlist for Her Novel "Liar, Dreamer, Thief"
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.
Maria Dong's novel Liar, Dreamer, Thief is a stunning debut, a riveting literary thriller where the characters (and their relationships) are as compelling as the action.
The Chicago Review of Books wrote of the book:
"A snappy page-turner, with Katrina’s voice shining through . . . A fascinating hybrid between coming of age novel, workplace novel, and literary thriller."
In her own words, here is Maria Dong's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Liar, Dreamer, Thief:
Ten Songs from Liar, Dreamer, Thief
Liar, Dreamer, Thief is a psychological suspense about a 24-year old Korean American disaster lesbian (hey, if you know, you know) that has been lightly stalking her coworker as one of her mental-health coping mechanisms (in additional to shape and number rituals, slipping into a fantasy world—so, the usual.)
Then her coworker jumps off a bridge in front of her—but not before blaming her for what’s about to happen. Horrified, she launches her own amateur, poorly-funded investigation into what he meant, only to discover that the two of them were more closely intertwined than she could’ve ever imagined.
Katrina (like myself) is a lapsed musician, and music forms a central thread throughout the book—particularly the songs she hears when she’s deep in memory, or when she’s spinning out. It’s a way for the past to intrude on the present—and one of the ways her desperately repressed inner psychology vents itself out onto the world. All of the songs also, in addition to reflecting her mood and the overall tone and pacing of the narrative, also form important pieces of my own personal history.
Clarinet Concerto in A Major (K.622, Mozart)
As a once-clarinetist myself, I have a love-hate relationship with this piece of music. Love, because it’s god awfully beautiful, and hate, because I, too, had a major audition with the uber-famous solo from this piece. As [spoilers-removed], this piece represents the past that Katrina doesn’t allow herself to visit, even in her own mind.
Shim Soo-Bong, 그때 그사람
On Spotify as “The Man of the Time”
This song represents a genre called teurotteu (sometimes written trot), which I absolutely love (much to the chagrin of my mother; teurotteu can be seen as kind of old-fashioned, but the combination of minor keys, klezmer-style clarinets, synths, and absolutely swinging backbeats is so fire that there’s no way not to adore it.) Katrina remembers this song as one played during a road trip with her parents, so it forms a connection to her past.
Teurotteu music has a really interesting history (both in terms of its musical roots and the way it’s played into Korean politics), and it’s had these waves of popularity where it will sink out of fashion for a while before being revitalized again. Shim Soo-Bong was one of those revitalizers; she actually wrote this song herself and debuted it in a college festival, and it grew until it was a massive success—but then she witnessed the assassination of South Korean president Park Chung-Hee. After the assassination, she was incarcerated and put in a mental institution, and then banned from TV and radio until 1981.
Jang Yoon-Jeong, 어머나!
The other road trip song! (And such a banger!)
While Shim Soo-Bong was one of the revitalizers of the '80s, Jang Yoon-Jeong (commonly referred to as the Queen of Trot) is one of the singers that’s propelled teurotteu back into popularity with our current generation of young people (e.g., people Katrina’s age.) So between these two songs, we get a glimpse of the connection here between mother and daughter, through this musical strand a generation apart.
Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
As a young person, before I became a musician, before I grew to love classical music, I was absolutely obsessed with Swan Lake. It’s been rendered and reinvented in so many different versions—I mean, the 1981 cartoon is amazing—and the tragic themes were the exact kind of thing ten year-old me gravitated toward. To this day, I can’t listen to the build-up to those massive horns without absolutely losing my mind.
I feel like this piece works for this book on so many levels. Swan Lake is about power and obsession and fantasy, (about liars, dreamers, and thieves, if you will), and the protagonists are masters of transformation that lead double-lives (and have to make extreme sacrifices to defeat evil magic.)
Two random Swan Lake facts:
1. When Hachette did the audiobook, they shoved a pretty awesome easter egg into the introduction: a neat version of the Dance of the Little Swans, which starts out normal before breaking apart into a super cool electronic interpretation.
2. One of the live shows I was most excited about in my entire adult life was a Russian Grand Ballet performance of Swan Lake in Kalamazoo, MI. But then, someone two rows in front of me recorded the entire performance by holding an iPad into the air, just absolutely shattering the immersion. It’s been seven years and I’m still mad about it.
Rêverie and Clair de Lune- Debussy
I have such complex feelings around Debussy. He started out poor and got into music school, where he decided he was gonna compose his way, which made everyone super angry at him. At the time, his stuff was wild: musical “symphonic poems” based on poetry, impressionism (which he was real angry about, so don’t call it that), Symbolist influences. I love his music, but as a human being, he was a real mess: at one point, he threatened to kill himself if his lover—who was the best friend of his previous lover—didn’t marry him.
Koreans, like Americans, love Debussy, and his songs show up in a lot of popular movies and K-dramas. Rêverie is less famous and recognizable than Clair de Lune, and yet, it has this odd quality to it—like even if you heard it for the very first time, you’d feel like you’d heard it a thousand times before. It feels both old and weirdly timeless—I think very few people would guess it came out in 1890—and as such, forms a nice representation of Katrina’s kitchen-door fantasy world. Both pieces are nice reflections of some of the quieter, more contemplative moments in the novel.
The Firebird Suite - Stravinsky
My high school band at one point played part of the Firebird Suite. There are sections in 7/4 time, which is a bit rare (and feels off-balance, I think, to the casual listener). (And seven is a prime number, which is important for, uh, reasons.) I couldn’t find the exact clip I wanted, so you’ll have to make do with the Infernal Dance of King Kaschei. (Kaschei (or Koschei) is a common anti-hero in Slavic folktales and often hides his soul inside of protective containers, something I think Katrina would really relate to.)
One thing I love about this piece is that it represents rebirth and change, the idea that there can be new beginnings in even a pile of smoldering ashes.
Money - Pink Floyd
Another piece that experiments with 7/4 time, it’s also a micro-meditation on capitalism, class struggle, (and maybe even mental health?) There isn’t a line of this song that isn’t deeply connected to at least one of the characters in this book, and the way it just completely reinvents itself as it enters the musical jam-breaks feels pretty fitting for Liar, Dreamer, Thief’s pacing, which more than one reviewer has deemed “bananas”.
In The Hall of The Mountain King - Grieg
In addition to being one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar (yeah, I was a weird kid), this piece is structured somewhat similarly to Bolero, in that you’ve got a quiet, repeating theme that slowly grows until it’s reached an all out explosion. In the story behind the music, Peer Gynt is trying to escape from a Troll King, only narrowly making it out with his life. I can’t think of any piece that better encapsulates her slow creep over a junkyard fence, only to be later confronted with [real big spoilers].
Bolero - Ravel
Strange as it sounds, I used to hate Bolero. A big part of it is that I’m impatient and the piece is long; it requires patience to journey through the many iterations of the main theme. As I got older, though, I grew to appreciate it, how the composer managed to do so much with subtle changes. There’s a kind of insidiousness to it, an almost sleight of hand.
In a way, Bolero taught me how to listen again. When we’re teenagers, I think we listen to music wholeheartedly—lying on your bedroom floor, headphones on, nothing to pull our focus. And then we get so busy and lose that, and music just fades into the background, something to “put on” while we do other things. But Bolero requires your full attention—only that will give you the reward of that full in the face E major key change toward the end.
Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Op 3., No.3
Look, I love me some Romantics, and that means I love me some Rachmaninoff. And I feel so much compassion for him and his struggles with mental health—he had a four-year bout of depression that made it almost impossible for him to compose at all. He also struggled with his identity; he emigrated to the US due a combination of financial pressures and the political strife that followed the October Revolution and was deeply impacted by it, once saying that in losing his country, he’d also lost himself.
No matter how jubilant and lovely his music sometimes is, I always feel like I can sense a hidden sadness underneath, which relates to this book and the concepts of the Korean feeling of han, as mentioned by Katrina in [spoiler redacted].
Special Mention: 14 Dogs
This band doesn’t exist. I had 19 Wheels in mind when writing these sections, because that was my teenaged indie obsession (particularly the Sugareen album), but Katrina’s only 24 and the band broke up in 2005, so the timing didn’t line up. But if you wonder what it sounds like, now you know.
Maria Dong's short fiction, articles, and poetry have been published in over a dozen venues, including Apex, Apparition Literary Magazine, Augur, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Kaleidotrope, Khoreo, Lightspeed, and Nightmare, among others. Currently a computer programmer, she has had a diverse career as a property manager, English teacher, and occupational therapist. She lives with her partner in southwest Michigan, in a centenarian saltbox house that is almost certainly haunted, and loves watching K-Dramas and drinking Bell's beer. She can be reached via Twitter @mariadongwrites or her website, MariaDong.com.
If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider making a donation.
