Holly Wilson’s novel Kittentits is a surreal and unforgettable debut, one that features one of the year’s most unique protagonists.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“Readers won’t want to finish Wilson’s debut―or leave Molly’s world. Molly has one of the funniest internal monologues in literary fiction, with Wilson’s genius dialogue to match. The invented World’s Fair is a feat of massive imagination and a celebration of past fairs, Chicago lore, and 1990s culture. Cut the tethers of a hot-air balloon, visit a psychic in an iron lung, take a glass elevator to an underwater food court; laugh, cry, and be moved by this novel of great art.”
In her own words, here is Holly Wilson’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Kittentits:
Kittentits is about a lonely ten-year-old girl named Molly who, in pursuit of the ex-con she attempts to befriend, runs away to the fictional 1992 Chicago World’s Fair and gets caught up in a weird world of seances and ghosts and formerly conjoined twins hellbent on destroying each other. The playlist below is made up of songs I love that touch on the novel’s themes and characters and occasionally the writing process itself. I never listened to any of them while working at my desk since music with lyrics gets in the way of the sentences I’m trying to hear in my head. But writing is way more than the part where you sit at a desk and type things. I’ve spent countless hours listening to the songs below in my car on the way to work or while mowing the yard, zoning out to enter the right mind-state where ideas bubble up. Kittentits wouldn’t exist without music, and I owe a real debt to the artists below and so many others. Art feeds art, so here she is, the diet Kittentits grew on, behold:
“Guided by Angels” by Amyl and the Sniffers
My day-to-day life is pretty boring, which means to write something exciting I usually have to psych myself up. For Kittentits, where I needed the prose to have lots and lots of energy, I frequently found myself donning my grubby writing hoodie and hopping in place for the duration of this song before sitting down to work because 1) it has lots of energy, and 2) it’s about “energy,” but in this weird punk-mystical way. Plus doubt lurks around every corner when you write, so pretending to be guided by ethereal beings as you work is never a bad idea.
“Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill
I almost didn’t include this one because it’s kind of obvious. But then I decided I had to because no other song so perfectly articulates the main character Molly’s feelings about Jeanie, the badass ex-con who moves in at the beginning of the novel. Molly most definitely wants to ride Jeanie’s “trike” and wear her clothes. She constantly claims that Jeanie is her best friend. My favorite part is the line “That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood / I got news for you, she IS!” This line contains Molly’s voice completely.
“Fistful Of Love” by Anohni and the Johnsons
This is a novel about ghosts and this song has haunted me for years and years. While Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” contains Molly’s voice and feelings for Jeanie, this song gets at the masochism underpinning both. Jeanie treats Molly terribly, yet Molly remains devoted, full of affection and love. While “Fistful of Love” seems to be about a violently abusive romantic relationship, the difference in dynamic is a matter of degree. There’s something so amazing about the way the horns and guitar sneak in to punctuate then slap, ripping off whatever band-aids the singer’s got stuck on their heart. I’m not quite sure how to articulate what’s going on in this song without it coming off the wrong way, so I’ll pose this question instead: How can a song about abuse also express such longing and genuine love? Sit in a room with the lights off, turn this song up loud, and try to figure that out.
“Notorious Lightning” by Destroyer
This—the version from the 2005 EP Notorious Lightning and Other Works—is my favorite Destroyer song and for some reason independent from the song’s actual lyrics, it’s the song I most associate with the character of Demarcus. Similar to Dan Bejar (or at least Bejar’s Destroyer persona), Demarcus is a high-minded malcontent, a well-read artist moved by myth but never very happy in a world where it makes sense not to be. I said the connection was independent from the song’s lyrics, but that’s not strictly true. Demarcus, a ghost, is made of electrical sparks and fire, so Notorious Lightning is an apt description. Also, one of the more difficult tasks was figuring out how Demarcus died in the first place, and I always think of this part at 3:37, when Destroyer begins the awesome repetition of “someone’s got to fall before someone goes free,” and then at 4:19, when things speed up and the song itself now is falling fast toward something, seemingly the end.
“(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear” by The Beards
This is my favorite Blondie cover and I’ve always loved how hard it leans into the kookiness of the lyrics. I’m including it here because something about it reminds me of the relationship between two minor characters in the book, Head On The Pillow, an elderly psychic medium who resides full-time in an iron lung, and her caretaker, the accommodating spiritualist Nurse Le Feb. Their relationship is questionable and possibly exploitive, but I don’t know, if you squint hard enough there’s something sweet about it, too.
“Plastic Surprise Box” by Gina X Performance
There’s a black box in the novel that functions as a plot device. When I wrote the box into the story, I had no idea what would be inside, I just needed the device in order to keep going. Every time I hear this mysterious German electropop song I think about that, the faith you have to have that you’ll figure things out. What’s inside the box, what will happen on the next page. What will become of you. I don’t know exactly what’s going on in this song yet, but clearly something is.
“Movies” by Weyes Blood
It’s not on the jacket copy or mentioned in any of the blurbs, but for me, at least, this book is very much about art. I think about the nature of art all the time. Several characters in the book are artists: a painter, two actors, a wax sculptor, a science illustrator, someone who paints glass eyes. They all have different relationships to art, but the one who pulls me the most is the B-movie actress and formerly conjoined twin, Mombie. At one point she says, “If I could exist only inside movies I would.” That’s what this shiver-inducing song is all about. “Put me in a movie and everyone will know me” Weyes Blood sings with flat insistence, most definitely an insistence shared by Mombie, but also by probably every artist ever, including myself. The feeling that you can be truly and fully seen only by projecting yourself into artifice is no doubt why I write, why anyone writes or paints or makes music or whatever. But then, when at 3:34 the synths give way to real-life strings, to the real? Beautiful and terrifying! But what does it mean? That art can never be sustained? That art’s not real and you can’t live inside it? That art is realer than real? I don’t know, but I think about Mombie every time I hear it.
“Desolation’s Flower” by Ragana
Another song best played at the loudest volume, this is Ragana’s powerful black metal “hymn to queer and trans ancestors,” though I hope they wouldn’t mind me describing it also as a visceral expression of grief. Kittentits is filled with grief, and while I lost someone very important to me halfway through writing it, my book doesn’t get nearly as close to the inarticulable experience of profound mourning the way this song does. “Desolation’s Flower” gets not only the mixture of rage and sorrow exactly right, but also how urgently the need to pay tribute hits: “Holy are the names, holy are the names, holy are the names.”
“O Superman” by Laurie Anderson
This is the song I think about when I think of the scene where Molly finally gets to meet her mother, who died when she was a baby. The concept of Mother is very important in the book, and sure, this song is really about the Iran hostage crisis and the idea that technology is no savior, but I like to think it’s about the idea of Mother(s), too, how they know us in ways we’ll never know them, how both their presence and absence can wound. Sometimes a mother can save you. But also sometimes she can’t.
“Born to Be Alive” by Amyl and the Sniffers
I attach this song, a wonderful cover of the Patrick Hernandez disco hit, to the novel’s epilogue, its theoretical closing credits, because even though this novel is so much about grief and loss, ultimately the feeling I want the reader to have is joy. Or more specifically, Aliveness. I want the book’s language to be alive, I want Molly to be alive, I want all the characters, even the dead ones, to be alive. I want to feel alive for having written it and I want readers to feel alive from reading it. No feeling is better than that.
Holly Wilson’s work has appeared in Narrative magazine, Redivider, Northwest Review, Short Story, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere. She was a Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University, where she received a PhD in creative writing. She grew up in Kansas and currently makes her home in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where she lives with her son. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.