Three modern novels that fuse soundtracks with memory and maternal themes
Music often serves as the backdrop for personal growth, memory, and family ties. The trio of new releases examined here—Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, The Book of Lost Hours by Hayley Gelfuso, and Departure 37 by Scott Carson—pulls these threads through distinct genres. Each book uses music, time, and the maternal dimension to craft memorable narratives that linger long after the final page. Below we explore how each author binds sound, memory, and motherhood into a cohesive, page-turning experience.
Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley
Set in Berkeley around the year 2000, Deep Cuts follows Percy Marks as she navigates college life, musical judgment, and evolving relationships. Percy’s gift for critiquing songs draws her into the inner circle of a budding songwriter, Joe Morrow, and a complicated entanglement with his roommate Zoe. Brickley captures the indie sleaze era with a nostalgic, sunlit ache—the kind of memory that gains texture with a soundtrack. Each chapter is a song title that resonates with Percy’s anxieties, ambitions, and friendships, transforming the novel into a living mixtape of a generation finding its voice.
Over more than a decade, the novel unfolds across New York, Europe, and LA’s iconic venues, tracing how talent, belonging, and the act of listening shape identity. The timeline sweeps from just before 9/11 to the Obama era, offering a layered meditation on how cultures and subcultures rise and recede with the music they worship. Deep Cuts isn’t just about how a perfect tune can lift someone up; it’s about how the imperfect recording — and the imperfect person behind it — can still be a lifeline during life’s most dissonant moments.
The Book of Lost Hours, by Hayley Gelfuso
Gelfuso’s novel is a sweeping meditation on memory, truth, and the costs of holding onto histories that shape us. At its core lies Time Space, a library of memories that straddles reality and dreams. The story begins with Lisavet Levy, an 11-year-old in 1938 Nuremberg, who escapes catastrophe through a secret access to Time Space. As decades unfold—from Lisavet’s escape to 1965, where Amelia Duquesne weighs the disappearance of her uncle Ernest—memory becomes a terrain you can walk, distort, or defend.
The narrative weaves espionage with speculative time-shift, probing who controls memory and which memories we are willing to preserve for future generations. Family loyalty, especially when tested by fear and political volatility, anchors the plot. Gelfuso’s prose invites readers to question the victors of history and to consider what the heart will do to protect loved ones. The result is a spellbinding blend of thriller vigor and intimate portraiture—the kind of book that lingers when you turn the last page.
Departure 37, by Scott Carson
Paid tribute to Rod Serling and the spirit of The Twilight Zone, Departure 37 entwines espionage, Cold War intrigue, and supernatural unease. The action begins with a spectral warning: mothers reach out across time to pilots who must not fly, even as a weathered B-52 from 1962 unexpectedly appears in 2025. The story cycles between Charlie, a 17-year-old on Maine’s remote coast, and the hidden history of a nuclear mission that vanished decades ago.
Carson (the Michael Koryta pen name) delivers a double-strand narrative: one timeline anchors a scientist behind the vanishings, the other drifts through present-day consequences as the town of Ash Coast becomes a crucible for extraordinary events. The book’s tone honors classic Twilight Zone sensibilities—creepy, humane, and mind-bending—while maintaining a clear emotional center: the enduring bond between mothers, children, and the unknown futures we fear or crave. It’s a brisk, imaginative thriller that respects its influences while carving out its own eerie cadence.
Why these novels resonate today
Each novel uses memory as both a map and a mirror, asking how songs, memories, and familial love shape who we become. Brickley’s indie-era nostalgia invites readers to relive a formative musical moment, Gelfuso’s memory-espionage hybrid unsettles concepts of truth, and Carson’s zone-honoring thriller keeps a pulse on the human stakes behind Cold War relics. Collectively, they celebrate music’s power to anchor identity, memory’s stubborn continuity, and motherhood as a persistent, often courageous force across time and genre.
