Book Review
Aug. 21st, 2020 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariA Song for a New Day
by Sarah Pinsker
A Song for a New Day is set in a near-future dystopia in which a series of terror attacks and a virus have made gathering in large groups illegal and driving many people to rely on virtual space for employment, socialization, and leisure. The story centers around two women: Luce, a musician whose career was just taking off in the before times and is now performing in underground clubs; and Rosemary, who barely remembers the before times and has just started a new job as a talent recruiter for a company that creates online concerts. Luce is working to sustain the music and community that survives in the shadows and the margins, and Rosemary is just discovering that world and the vision it offers of how things could be.
I read this book in the midst of a pandemic that is keeping people from gathering and making most live music impossible, so it hit a little too close to home at times. I still loved it. Pinsker writes so compellingly about the experience of live music that I could almost hear every fictional band and song, and feel the press of bodies in the audience. The characters were great, too. Both Rosemary and Luce were so real and relatable that it's hard to believe they aren't out there somewhere. Pinsker beautifully takes on so many aspects of present-day life - corporate control and over-reach, how fear breeds isolation, rampant consumerism, resistance to all these things, and the power of music. It's all surprisingly hopeful and energizing.
by Sarah Pinsker
A Song for a New Day is set in a near-future dystopia in which a series of terror attacks and a virus have made gathering in large groups illegal and driving many people to rely on virtual space for employment, socialization, and leisure. The story centers around two women: Luce, a musician whose career was just taking off in the before times and is now performing in underground clubs; and Rosemary, who barely remembers the before times and has just started a new job as a talent recruiter for a company that creates online concerts. Luce is working to sustain the music and community that survives in the shadows and the margins, and Rosemary is just discovering that world and the vision it offers of how things could be.
I read this book in the midst of a pandemic that is keeping people from gathering and making most live music impossible, so it hit a little too close to home at times. I still loved it. Pinsker writes so compellingly about the experience of live music that I could almost hear every fictional band and song, and feel the press of bodies in the audience. The characters were great, too. Both Rosemary and Luce were so real and relatable that it's hard to believe they aren't out there somewhere. Pinsker beautifully takes on so many aspects of present-day life - corporate control and over-reach, how fear breeds isolation, rampant consumerism, resistance to all these things, and the power of music. It's all surprisingly hopeful and energizing.
