Alison B. Hart’s novel April May June July is a heartfelt novel of loss and hope.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“A compelling, engaging look at a family falling apart and coming back together.”
In her own words, here is Alison B. Hart’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel April May June July:
April May June July tells the story of the four Barber siblings, named April, May, June-who-now-goes-by-Juniper, and July. Estranged since the disappearance of their father in Iraq ten years before, they come together again over four months (guess which ones?) for Juniper’s wedding to her college sweetheart. All the while, they follow a new lead in their dad’s case, hoping for answers to the question: where has he been while their lives were growing ever more complicated? April, a hard-charging lawyer, is cheating on her husband. May still lives at home and prefers the animals in the zoo where she works to people. Soccer coach Juniper finds success on the field but she drinks too much. And July, a college student pining for his straight best friend, wonders if his dad would’ve accepted him for who he really is. The songs below are touchstones—some taken from the novel’s pages, some from the pages of my life—for each of their stories and for mine.
“Summer Soft” by Stevie Wonder
Any excuse will do to listen to Stevie Wonder’s paean to the seasons, but at some point in the writing process, this became my anthem. April May June July is told in rotating perspectives, and while in my debut novel The Work Wife, I employed three different POVs in whatever order the plot demanded, with this book the logic of the calendar determined that April would yield to May, then June, and then July, before wrapping back around to April again. The more I listened to “Summer Soft,” and the edges of the song blurred, dissolving into an endless cycle of abandonment by summer and winter—and he’s gone lamented over and over—the more I understood how the years could pile up on top of the Barber family, driving them apart.
“Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac
April doesn’t mean to lie to her family, but she’s not great at stating her needs without fear of judgment. There’s a world in which she and her husband Russ could’ve talked about what she wanted—and wasn’t getting—from their sexual connection. But when her dad goes missing, her priorities necessarily re-shuffle and the project of her self-exploration goes underground. No one captures the illicit thrill of cheating better than Christine McVie.
“My Love Mine All Mine” by Mitski
May is sure their dad (her dad is how she would put it) loved her best. “It was something you either felt, or you didn’t, and she’d felt it all the time.” There are a lot of reasons why she’s withdrawn from people in the last ten years—temperament for one, unaddressed mental health issues for another—but part of it is her reluctance to share her love and grief with her siblings, or with anyone but her old rescue dog Jack Nicholson.
“All for You” by Janet Jackson
The day of their engagement party, Juniper and her fiancé Hana travel from their home in Philadelphia to Hana’s family home in Lancaster. None of Juniper’s moody siblings will be there, and she likes it that way. In a hectic season of wedding planning, the drive is a romantic date unto itself for Juniper and Hana, “nothing actually required of them but to share road snacks and vibe to Janet Jackson and remember how much they still cracked each other up.” This bonafide bop is one of my personal Janet faves. What better song to remember how sexy/fun your partner is than “All for You”?
“We Are Young” by f.u.n.
In a flashback that I had to cut for length—#deletedscenealert—July and his roommate Lucas meet during their freshman year at Johns Hopkins. They bond over politics at breakfast and July’s smitten, but at a mixer that night he can’t figure out how to approach Lucas, who doesn’t dance. Then “We Are Young” comes on. The song has been everywhere for the past year, an earworm that July’s sick to death of—back in my day, “Groove Is in the Heart” would’ve taken that honor—but Lucas weirdly perks up. He locks eyes with July, storms the dance floor, and offers his chest for a bump. Hell yes, July thinks as he leaps—into the air and hopelessly into love.
“Cheftak” by Soap Kills
The first night Juniper and Hana spend together, they go for a long walk and talk about music, but they’re really talking about love and identity. There are a lot of songs by Soap Kills—the Lebanese electro-pop duo that’s one of Hana’s favorite bands—that I could’ve chosen for this list, but “Cheftak,” with its neosoul vibes, seems like the one she would age best with, that she’d put on when she’s home from work and wants to relax, or when she’s cooking dinner for her and Juniper, or when she’s otherwise turning their house into a home.
“Baeed Anak” by Umm Kulthum
In flashbacks we see parts of the solo trip May took to Iraq in November 2004, determined to find her dad when no one else has. Because of the ongoing war, she gets a visa for Iran instead, flies to Tehran, and then hires a series of cars to take her through Kurdistan to Mosul, where her father was working when he was kidnapped. The third driver she hires, Adar, speaks enough English for them to form a little bit of a connection. They listen to the radio—the news and, I imagine, a little bit of Umm Kulthum. May still hasn’t let herself cry yet, and I think there would be some vicarious catharsis for her in the way the Egyptian singer’s voice expresses all the pain and longing she feels.
“She Used to Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles
I already knew this song by Sara Bareilles, but it really grabbed me when I saw it performed as a duet with Brandi Carlisle. I played on repeat TikToks of the two of them crooning in the rain on stage in Mexico when I was fine-tuning Juniper and Hana’s relationship. The teammates meet at pre-season training, a couple months after Juniper’s dad is kidnapped. Juniper’s problems with alcohol start to emerge then, and while she’s a high performer on the soccer pitch, she’s underfunctioning in her personal life. She’s good but she lies; she’s messy but she’s kind. Deep down, they both know she needs help that can’t from Hana always magically stepping in. It’s up to Juniper to really grapple with her guilt and fear, internal work she’s been running from. If she can do it, though, they might be able to rewrite an ending or two.
“Could You Be Loved” by Bob Marley and the Wailers
July has spent a year and a half mooning over his straight friend, so the idea that anyone—but especially his high school nemesis Nate who he’s unexpectedly back in contact with—could care for him in a physical, embodied way feels far-fetched. At a Memorial Day picnic that Nate talks him into attending, Bob Marley’s hit plays on the speakers, and July is filled with a lightness that’s utterly new.
“Peace Train” by Cat Stevens
I lost my father to cancer during the years I worked on this book. When I started writing it, my dad was healthy, and the idea of me missing him one day (or my brothers having to miss him) was purely theoretical. I had friends who’d lost a parent and I’d seen how shattering that experience was, so I wasn’t operating completely in the dark, but I could still pick up the phone and call my dad anytime. (Sometimes I did.) With his passing I became a person who knows deep loss. When I eventually re-read what I’d already written, I was relieved that the feelings I’d reproduced in my characters were a pretty accurate reflection of how I actually felt. Our situations were different—April, May, June, and July don’t know what has happened to their father, whereas I’d lived through every moment of my father’s illness and was at his side when he died—but I’d imagined it would tear me open, and it did. We played “Peace Train” at my dad’s memorial to conjure the happy times of our 1970s childhoods with him.
“Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone
Every family reunion needs this groove.
“Tell Me You Love Me” by Sufjan Stevens
Fun fact: Sufjan and I went to grad school together, and I’ve always found his music to be A++++ to write to. I had this moody but earnest song on a lot as I considered where all the characters, but especially July, would end up in the flash-forward in the novel’s fourth part. I know the lyric in the last stanza is I’m gonna love you every day but I hear I’m gonna love you anyway, a powerful pledge for people who’ve already lost so much.
Alison B. Hart is the author of The Work Wife and April May June July. Her writing has appeared in Joyland Magazine, Literary Hub, The Missouri Review, and The Millions, among others. She co-founded the long-running reading series at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn and received her MFA from The New School. She grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in North Carolina. Find her on Twitter, @alisonbhart, and on Instagram, @alisonhart800.