Music can reach us, surprise us, and offer a story of its own in the most unexpected places. The ways in which writers employ music vary immensely, from an entire work chronicling the life of a virtuoso to a single song serving as strategic backdrop to a scene. They may use works that already exist, reimagine or recontextualise them, or create them anew.
In my novel The Gunners, music appears in various contexts. Classical music enthusiast Mikey Callahan is losing his vision and has begun to assign specific pieces of music to cherished images he wants to remember with as much clarity as possible – such as the faces of his childhood friends, around whom the novel is based. Another character, a pianist, attended a conservatory in Manhattan on a full scholarship until her career was devastated by a mysterious injury. Various pieces of music performed by characters in scenes throughout the book are intended to evoke a particular atmosphere and inspire the characters along a certain line of thinking or towards a sense of togetherness.
Here are 10 great works of fiction that incorporate music and/or musicians.
1. Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
The second novel in Cather’s Prairie trilogy, this work follows Thea Kronborg on her journey from talented but relatively obscure pianist in a small Colorado town to massively successful singer in New York City. The story is loosely based on Cather’s friend, the opera singer Olive Fremstad. The book offers a hard look at the complexity of ambition and seems to wonder if a life spent in single-minded pursuit of art (and recognition for it) can ultimately be anything but self-centred. This is probably the least known of the trilogy that also includes O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, but to me it’s the standout.
2. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
This book is a monster, with almost 1,000 pages and what feels like 10,000 characters. But it’s well worth the effort – it’s one of the most comical books I’ve ever read. Stanley, described as “a funny boy with a moustache” is a composer of organ music who is obsessed with his own expendability. The lead-up to his highly anticipated performance on the organ of the Church of Fenestrula and the way this scene plays out, are masterful.
3. The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
While Mel and Sharon’s partnership and creative mission are rooted in the field of animation, Whitaker weaves many musical references into this debut, from Wu-Tang Clan to Joy Division, which ground the reader in the characters’ experiences and sensibility. It is one of my favourite novels of recent years, and I have read it in a single day on two separate occasions. It’s about friendship, creativity and collaboration, as well as self-doubt, isolation and the painful reckoning with one’s own past that many artists undergo.
4. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Terrorists raid a party held in honour of a wealthy and powerful Japanese businessman, where a renowned soprano has been hired to perform. The story, with Stockholm syndrome at its core, accelerates at a surprising clip while offering wonderful insights and lines about music: “Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God’s own voice poured from her.”
5. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
This early Murakami novel is named after the narrator Toru Watanabe’s favourite Beatles song. When he happens to hear an orchestral version many years later, the melody transports him back to the days of student revolt in the 1960s. Music is similarly potent for the other characters in a story that was a huge success in Japan and made the author a reluctant star.
6. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Two girls’ love of the golden age of musicals drives their life paths. The book moves from London to the US to Africa, and tackles themes of class, creativity, talent and ambition. In interviews, Smith has spoken about her own love of singing and dancing in her younger years, as well as the musical pursuits of her family members, and it’s great fun to see these personal interests come to life in her fiction.
7. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
“‘The thing with the new world,’ the tuba had said once, ‘is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.’” Members of the Traveling Symphony roam a post-apocalyptic world performing Shakespeare and musical numbers for the remaining humans. The book opens with a scene from King Lear and uses classic motifs throughout. It is a wonderfully bizarre and haunting tribute to the endurance of art in the face of an unrecognisable world.
8. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The 13 chapters of this book are told from different perspectives and non-chronologically. They are mostly about the lives of Bennie, an ageing record producer, and Sasha, his kleptomaniac assistant, and are vivid and precise slice-of-life stories. The whole book explores the passage of time and the bonds that bind us to one another, for better or for worse.
9. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
The death of photographer Molly Lane brings together several men with whom she had relationships including Clive Linley, a composer who has been commissioned to write a symphony to premiere in Amsterdam. The book shows great interest in ethical questions relating to privacy, politics, assisted suicide and displacement of responsibility, and explores them to great effect, without preaching.
10. Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
This collection is subtitled Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. In straightforward prose, Ishiguro offers tales of loss and longing and unrealised potential in music and in love. My favourite story is Nocturne, in which the narrator, a saxophonist whose manager has demanded he get plastic surgery in order to compete with less proficient but handsomer players, rooms next to a wealthy American woman while he is healing from his surgery. Their friendship results in absurdity, hilarity, and a surprisingly tender and devastating conclusion.
• The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman is published by Profile, priced £12.99. It is available from the Guardian bookshop for £11.43, including free UK p&p.
