Book Review: "Deep Cuts" by Holly Brickley

“I think songs gave me a window into a magical life,” I said. “Something bigger, or whatever, waiting out there. And I felt like the only way to get there was through the songs. Like the songs, if I listened hard enough, would show me how to get it right.”

Have you ever met someone that got you completely, someone on the exact same wavelength as you? A person who shares your obsession about a particular subject, which you can discuss for hours?

When Percy meets Joe for the first time in the fall of 2000, they’re both students at Berkeley. Percy loves music—listening to it, not performing—and she is sitting in a bar, commenting about a song, when Joe overhears her. Percy has lots of opinions about music, and a lot of knowledge about musical minutiae, and she’s not shy about sharing them.

Unlike many people Percy has encountered, Joe is utterly fixated on her opinions, and counters with his own. This marks the beginning of a friendship, a collaboration, which will impact their lives tremendously.

Joe is a songwriter, and he asks Percy for her opinion on a song. She gives her thoughts—not always as diplomatically or constructively as she should—and Joe listens. The first song she helps him with becomes the jumping-off point for a relationship shaped by Joe’s need for feedback and Percy’s desire to give it. But does her unequivocal honesty harm their relationship? Does this collaboration put Percy at a disadvantage?

I am a huge fan of music, so much of the dialogue in this book resonated for me. At times, though, I felt like an outsider looking in, because I wasn’t familiar with the bands and/or songs Percy referred to. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, but I found their relationship to be flawed and fascinating.