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GennaRose Nethercott’s playlist for her story collection “Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart”

“Nothing says ‘I was in middle school in the early 2000s’ like the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack. A deeply underrated movie, for one—and an absolute banger of an album.”

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.

GennaRose Nethercott’s debut Thistlefoot was one of my favorite novels of 2022. Her recently published story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart is filled with modern fables that captivate and haunt on every page.

Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:

“Nethercott (Thistlefoot) collects 14 delectable dark fairy tales which tend to start in worlds that feel almost comfortable—until the shadows thicken and all at once everything has teeth.”

In her own words, here is GennaRose Nethercott’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart:

1. Sundown at the Eternal Staircase

            “Emily I’m Sorry” –  boygenius

On the surface, “Sundown” is a story about a roadside attraction: a mysterious, eternally-descending staircase—and the people drawn deeper and deeper into descent…

But beneath that, it’s really a story about addiction. About living in a small tourist town, the weight of that, the strange magnetism of those places that seems to lay claim to people. I’m from a town like that. It’s a palpable thing. In the story, we see this place through the eyes of two girls working a crappy summer job there at the staircase. And we see this deep, at times romantic, love they have for each other–even as one of them strays further and further into the staircase.

Really, anything of boygenius’ feels right for this story—but especially “Emily I’m Sorry” or “Graceland Too.” Songs about queer, loyal, fucked up female friendships. “I can feel myself becoming / someone only you could want” are two lines I’m obsessed with in that song that feel so true to this particular brand of relationship. The codependence of it. Plus, the song perfectly captures that languishing sensation you get when you’re young, and bored, and dreaming of getting-out-of-this-nowhere-town—but getting out with someone, escaping together (“just take me back to Montreal / I’ll get a real job, you’ll go back to school / We can burn out in the freezing cold / And just get lost…”).

2. A Diviner’s Abecedarian

            “3 Small Words” –  Josie and the Pussycats

Nothing says “I was in middle school in the early 2000s” like the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack. A deeply underrated movie, for one—and an absolute banger of an album. “A Diviner’s Abecedarian” is me processing my middle school trauma. It follows a pack of sinister girls who turn to the occult in efforts to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. It’s all slumber parties and Valentine’s Day carnation sales and trips to the skating rink. In other words, absolute adolescent horror. I guarantee you these girls know every word of the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack—and they also know exactly how to ruin your life.

3. The Thread Boy

            “Young Man in America” –  Anaïs Mitchell

No playlist of mine could ever be complete with at least one Anaïs Mitchell song. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the G.O.A.T. when it comes to contemporary songwriters.

A road trip fable, “The Thread Boy” follows a boy made of string as he journeys across America (and through living), snagging on loves and attachments along the way. “Young Man in America” captures the same feeling I’m hoping the story achieves: a singularly American marriage between yearning and entitlement and curiosity and hunger: “I come out like a cannonball / Come of age of alcohol / Raven in a field of rye / With a black and roving eye / Black and roving eye / Ravenous, ravenous / What you got, it’s not enough / Young man in America.” I mean, that’s it, right there.

4. Fox Jaw

            “If I Had a Boat” –  James Vincent McMorrow

This is the oldest story in the collection. I wrote it in 2013—and it’s the only story in the bunch that is a direct memoir piece, and not fiction. And I know, for those of you who’ve read it, you’ll say “but… a man shapeshifts into a fox.” Listen—I said what I said.

As the story suggests, I drafted this while backpacking through Europe. I’d just graduated from college, and I’d had the trip planned for years. Ever since I was a kid, I’d had it in my head that as soon as I was done with my studies, I was going to hitchhike and train-travel like my dad did when he was that age. What I hadn’t accounted for, though, was that just before I was due to leave, I fell in love with this guy I’d been dating, who was a bit of a brat, but I loved him anyway. And even though I knew sticking to my plan was the right call—well, it complicated the leaving quite a bit. Suddenly, there I was across the ocean, on this trip I’d dreamt of my whole life—but all I could do was pine for this person. I spent hours and hours on long train rides through Scotland and Norway and Italy, listening to sad songs and thinking about him. And all the while, I poured it into this story. I listened to James Vincent McMorrow’s album Early in the Morning on loop. Especially this song.

“If I had a boat, I would sail to you / Hold you in my arms, ask you to be true.”

(I was 22, okay? Give me a break.)

5. The War of Fog

            “The Partisan” –   Leonard Cohen

Written by Russian-born Anna Marly with lyrics by French Resistance leader Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigerie, “The Partisan” is an anti-fascist anthem. Though Cohen didn’t record his rendition until the late 1960s, the original was actually released during WWII. And yet, even in Cohen’s time—and yes, our time too–it remains ever-relevant. Why? Because one war bleeds into the next. There is always another war, and in that way, there is only one war, continuing eternally.

Or, to quote from “The War of Fog:” “The Army of Fog blurred and ebbed. A day went by. We began to believe it would never end…”

Though “The Partisan” is a WWII song, “The War of Fog,” was inspired by WWI. Specifically, I had become fascinated with the visuals of the German army invading Belgium. The German war machine was eighty times the size of any medieval army—and as it crossed through Belgium, wending along back roads, the sight of the gray-clad troops were reported to resemble a great, terrible mist rolling across the land, unbroken for hours upon hours.

There’s something about not just this song, but Cohen’s work in general that carries a similar timelessness. A great, spanning melancholia of love and war and God that stretches ever outward, like wings.

6. Drowning Lessons

            “Annan Water” –   The Decemberists

In “Drowning Lessons,” a young woman drowns 37 times—none by her own hand.

Let’s be real, I could have chosen any of a dozen Decemberists songs. “We Both Go Down Together.” “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” “Eli the Barrow Boy.” Hell, there is literally an entire, well-stocked Spotify playlist called “Every Decemberists Song Where Somebody Drowns”—and it doesn’t even include this song because technically, the song’s narrator hasn’t drowned yet; he’s just gearing up for it.

But to me, it’s got to be “Annan Water.” It’s a begging song—a man yearning for his distant love, and begging the waters not to swallow him before he can reach her. “Drowning Lessons,” too, is a story of yearning. Of reaching and reaching and never quite making it to shore.

7. The Autumn Kill

            “Ribs” –   The Crane Wives

I’ll admit, I’m cheating a little with this one. My friend Bri, when they read an early ARC of the book, texted me specifically to say how “The Autumn Kill” reminded them of this song. Had I heard the song before? Nope. Have I heard it now? Yes, and I can verify, it’s a killer match.

8. Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart

            “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” –   Paul Simon

No explanation necessary. No brainer.

9. A Lily Is a Lily

            “Tristan und Isold WWV 90” –   Richard Wagner

“A Lily is a Lily” draws loosely from the mythology of Tristan and Isolde—specifically, a variant of the story involving a love triangle between Tristan and two different women named Isolde: Isolde of Ireland and Isolde of the White Hands. Though in the old stories, these are two actual, physical women, I’ve always been drawn to how well the tale works as an allegory for falling in love with a spectral double of a person—or rather, loving the version of someone in your head to the point that you forsake the real human being in front of you. Thus came “A Lily is a Lily,” in which a boy named Tristan falls in love with his sweetheart’s ghostly doppelganger.

10. Dear Henrietta

            “Vigilante Shit” –   Taylor Swift

This is a revenge story. A bitches-facing-off story. A story of a woman getting hers. And who can claim a better soundtrack to vengeance than Taylor Swift with her banger “Vigilante Shit.” It’s flawless.

“I don’t dress for women / I don’t dress for men / Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.”

Now, if by “dress” Taylor were referring to a killer outfit stitched from an erotically-cursed, sullied sheepskin dragged from a Norwegian barn, we’d really be speaking the same language…

11. Possessions

            “Second Hand News” –   Fleetwood Mac

Sometimes, the simplest song to pair with a story is a song that’s, well, in the story. In the opening scene of “Possessions,” our protagonists are wending their way through a cornfield at night, en route to do some seriously fucked dark magic. One of them is nervously humming “Second Hand News” under her breath, the tempo sped up due to nerves. I can’t remember why I chose this song for that moment, but my best guess is that it was probably stuck in my own head while I was writing it. Easter egg tip: if I mention an existing song in a book, it’s probably because the dang thing was stuck in my head at the time of writing.

12. Homebody

            “Body to Flame” –   Lucy Dacus    

In “Body to Flame,” Dacus sings with regret of suggesting to a beloved that they cut their hair short—which they do, despite that sweetheart’s preference to keep it long. “Didn’t mean to empty your perfect body / And fill it with my passing will,” Dacus croons—and with that, she says everything “Homebody” seeks to convey in a mere fourteen words.

Who among us has not, at one point, hollowed ourself to become more hospitable to another? Who among us has not clung to a passing comment, and twisted ourselves into what we think will win approval? We have all turned ourselves into homes for other people, and inadvertently pushed others to carve themselves into homes for us.

In “Homebody,” that just so happens to be literal…

13. A Haunted Calendar

            “The Ghost of Smokey Joe” –   Cab Calloway

“A Haunted Calendar” is just what it sounds like: a series of thirty-one bite-sized ghost stories, one for each day in October. And all in all, they’re just here for a good time. These tidbits evoke, to me, a 1920s Halloween party, all orange and black crepe paper and black cats playing fiddles and punch bowls with a skeleton-shaped ladle. All October, I listen to classic Halloween music on loop—and this Cab Calloway tune is a hard one to top.

“Remember when I kicked the bucket / In my mansion up on Strivers’ Row / When they came and took me off in / A zillion dollar coffin / ‘Cause I’m the ghost of Smokey Joe.”

Someday, I want to write a stage musical where the score is entirely based on 1920s and 1930s Halloween party music. I’m scheming. In the meantime: “A Haunted Calendar.” Best paired with candy corn.

14. The Plums at the End of the World

            “Katie Cruel” –   Lankum

“Am I a monster?,” says the Goat Woman (a have girl, half goat abomination) in “The Plums at the End of the World.” “Yes, love, I am. I am a monster because I contain too much.”

In Lankum’s rendition of the old folk tune Katie Cruel, vocalist Radie Peat sings with a slow, relentless drone, a sound both confident and lamenting:

When I first came to town / They called me the roving jewel / Now they’ve changed their tune / They call me Katie Cruel”

Both Katie Cruel and the Goat Woman are characters of contradiction. In turn viewed as beautiful and monstrous, feminine and dangerous, these characters fail to—or, perhaps, refuse to—be confined to the mold society tries to press them into. It leads each to be branded as a villain. But they don’t mind being villains. Being a villain, after all, is not the worst thing a woman can be.

“The Plums at the End of the World” closes out the collection on a folkloric note. It has the cadence of an old story, as “Katie Cruel” is an old story. And as the final story, I like to think it contains a bit of everything else in the collection: A protagonist struggling against their yearnings. Untamable beastliness. Cruelty. Love. Horror and horniness. Friendship. All the little things that make a life.


For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.


GENNAROSE NETHERCOTT is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, and a book-length poem, The Lumberjack’s Dove, which was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and helps create the podcast Lore. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.


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