Reviewed by Maggie Hill
10.8.07

In this pulsing, 300-page episodic novel about people in the music industry, Liz Moore composes inter-connecting chapters that seem like verses in a brilliant hip-hop song. But the words here are not lyrics. They are tales writ on the wise, third-person narrative scale of a novelist, riffed in the clipped, edgy, stinging staccato of 21st century prose. Listen:

An hour later, and the three of them are still awake. The girls are alert and smiley in their cribs, gurgling and cheering. Ready to play at three o’ clock in the morning. Tom’s eyes are closing, but each time he makes for the door Alice whimpers threateningly. A police car goes by and casts its blue and red stain across the wall. Tom wants to cry. Most of all, he wants to sleep. He has to leave tomorrow and he’s going to be wasted.

To simply list the characters would suggest that they are all ‘types’ taken from the stockroom of characters we suspect would inhabit a novel about the music industry. Yes, there is a business executive, an up-and-coming female singer, a cocksure talent scout, a music reporter, but, in Moore’s hands, they are so much more than their roles. Tom, the lead singer for a major rock band, is one of the central characters. Some of the narrative spins around the people who may be close to him, or who want to be close to him. He is a Rock Star, and his fans’ fantasies of him know no bounds. Unfortunately, Tom is going through a mild crisis of confidence, and his increased sensitivity is the consistent back-cue of his own private recording. In the section devoted to him, titled “Tom, Who Cannot Save the World,” he is a man who is deep into the Impostor Syndrome, whose self-talk is like a Greek chorus of warbling adolescents and worried dads: “The windows of the bus are tinted, Tom knows, but he still feels strange staring through them at this horde of young people...Tom has the conviction that… they probably would have made fun of him in high school…He watches as three girls run toward the bus and Tom is afraid…that they will be caught beneath its wheels, crushed like animals.”

From here, the author moves us into the narrative perspective of these three girls. One of whom idolizes Tom, but will feel hypnotized into giving up her virginity for a one-night stand with someone else from the band—just because they’re connected. These characters are not drafted from central casting. They are singular, specific, wholly believable.

All of the characters who spin in and out of this narrative seem vitally important and interesting. The problem is that these characters are always threatening to spin out of control. Take Theo, for example. At 26, he is the contract guy for Titan, a big-time music publisher. We meet him on the way to listen to a band’s audition. If he likes the band, he’ll make an offer to them, then go back to his boss and advocate for them. Or, not. He is (and who wouldn’t be?) impressed and amazed by his own power, by his destined success in a business he got into accidentally. He enjoys the hush that falls over the room when he enters it, because he is “the one with the contracts sticking out of his messenger bag.” He is the lynchpin upon which hope and fear, disappointment and delirium hang. At least for the young boys and girls whose bands he can make or break during an audition:

Theo knows the kid, whose name is Kyle, is standing in front of him, but he takes a few beats before he looks up. Kyle says, ‘I just wanted to thank you because we’re, you know, we’re really grateful that Titan brought us out here to New York, and we want to say that we’re hard workers’... Immediately Kyle knows this wasn’t a good idea and he should have just played the fucking song. God, thinks Kyle, why am I so uncool?

‘Yeah,’ Theo says.

Moore is so invested in every one of her characters that, even when they won’t be showing up again in the narrative, she writes their futures. It’s disconcerting at first, but then it’s fascinating. It’s like listening to a virtuoso DJ create scratch hooks with lines from different rap songs. Instead of two turntables and a mixer with a crossfader, this music comes from one author with two scratch hands.

Each of the 14 chapters begin with the snappy quality of a song title (Sibohan in Love, Mike Has Never Seen), followed by an excerpt of lyrics from artists
such as Leonard Cohen, Puccini, Patti Smith. Each of the lyrics seems profound, as a line from a poem or a disconnected quote can seem sometimes.

Refreshingly, the use of these lyrics is not some signal of how cool the author is for mentioning them. Rather, the excerpt serves the reader’s understanding of the human conflict unfolding ahead. Don’t be fooled by the short chapters, or by how easy it is to read this book. There is a lot of wisdom within The Words of Every Song. These words come from a Grandmaster who knows what she’s writing about.