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nixieknox's review against another edition
4.0
I really loved this book - I loved how the stories were related, but featured different main characters (and one was a standalone). I thought the characters were so incredibly well-developed, which can't be easy in a short story. Also he got the amateur/struggling musician atmosphere down.
Finally there's a part in one of the stories that literally made me EEP in surprise. I was at the laundromat when I read it - good thing the dryers are loud!
Finally there's a part in one of the stories that literally made me EEP in surprise. I was at the laundromat when I read it - good thing the dryers are loud!
wilczynska's review against another edition
5.0
Boast's ability to wield these narratives is awe-inspiring. Beginning with a preteen tuba player who wants to polka, through rock stars and their loved ones, through choir masters and rapping teens, each story echos with musical truth. These stories take the music industry and make it universal, accessible.
Several of the stories have common characters, revolving around Tim, the drummer trying to make it in the Chicago music sphere, and his girlfriend Kate. They way these short stories are independent and yet interwoven provides almost a novel-like quality. This includes 6 of the 10 stories. A 7th is tangentially related, similar to the stories interwoven in Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. Admittedly, I had read the final story "Coda" in Narrative Magazine several months ago. While I enjoyed it then, I found it much richer and a more fulfilling read this time, prefaced by several other stories about the same characters, giving more depth to the emotions therein. The emotions that build over the course of the stories is also quite powerful. After "The Bridge", I had to stop reading. Fiction almost never makes me cry, but this story was one exception.
The other stories show other aspects of the music industry. Perhaps my favorite of these, "Sidemen", examines the life of a touring rock musician's wife and the difficulties with that lifestyle. The sorrow Boast captures in this story resonate with me, someone who has no connection with the music industry. Yet the feelings of loneliness are common and approachable.
I love all of the stories in this collection. Congratulations to Will Boast for winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award. From this selection of his work, it is clear he deserved it.
Several of the stories have common characters, revolving around Tim, the drummer trying to make it in the Chicago music sphere, and his girlfriend Kate. They way these short stories are independent and yet interwoven provides almost a novel-like quality. This includes 6 of the 10 stories. A 7th is tangentially related, similar to the stories interwoven in Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. Admittedly, I had read the final story "Coda" in Narrative Magazine several months ago. While I enjoyed it then, I found it much richer and a more fulfilling read this time, prefaced by several other stories about the same characters, giving more depth to the emotions therein. The emotions that build over the course of the stories is also quite powerful. After "The Bridge", I had to stop reading. Fiction almost never makes me cry, but this story was one exception.
The other stories show other aspects of the music industry. Perhaps my favorite of these, "Sidemen", examines the life of a touring rock musician's wife and the difficulties with that lifestyle. The sorrow Boast captures in this story resonate with me, someone who has no connection with the music industry. Yet the feelings of loneliness are common and approachable.
I love all of the stories in this collection. Congratulations to Will Boast for winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award. From this selection of his work, it is clear he deserved it.
lindagreen's review against another edition
4.0
When I first opened this book, I thought I had perhaps been given the wrong book. The first selection is the story of a tuba player in a local polka band which is the complete polar opposite of “Power Ballad” which has its own unique connotations to anyone that lived through the eighties. I continued on, though, and quickly realized that was the point of this book – to take music industry people from all walks and all points in their career and give us a snapshot of what their real lives are like. At this it excels phenomenally. For anyone interested in music, this book provides a wonderful foundation of what lives are really like underneath all the glitz and glamour of rock stars that we usually hear about. The highs, the lows, the struggles and successes – it’s all here for the reader to submerge themselves in. Written in what feels like individual diary entries, each chapter brings you close to the person and allows you insight into their world as no other book I’ve read has ever done. If you are interested in music or just curious of how real musicians live and work, then I highly recommend you try this book.
bookishlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
These stories feature the lives of working musicians, their disappointments and frustrations and moments of collaboration and transcendence, whether toiling in obscurity, selling out, or remembering past glories. Tim, a drummer that drifts from band to band, and his sometimes girlfriend, Kate, recur in many of the stories. I found this collection to be consistently strong across the board, no real clunkers for me, but my favorite stories were probably "Sidemen" about the wife of a constantly touring musician, "Mr. Fern, Freestyle" about an aging choir director and his reluctant involvement with a trio of aspiring rappers, and "Lost Coast" which features a rock critic's visit to his dead brother's friend.
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