Muriel Leung’s How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster might be my favorite debut novel of the year, climate fiction filled with dystopia and longing.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“Leung’s novel strikes a satisfying chord, harmonizing joy and optimism with despair and melancholia. Surreal imagery combines with poetic prose to illustrate what life and love look like when crisis becomes commonplace and everyone is grieving―even the ghosts. At once absurd and profound.”
In her own words, here is Muriel Leung’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster:
Acid rainstorms, all of New York City in quarantine, mourning an ex-girlfriend one borough/checkpoint away, trying to make it work in a rebound relationship with a headless man—this is all content ripe for Mira’s radio show, which shares the same title as my novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster. How, in fact, does anyone manage love in a period of sustained crisis? It’s a question that protagonist Mira tackles through earnest, albeit oftentimes misguided wisdom, throughout the weekly acid rainstorms that has taken over New York City.
This playlist is what I imagine Mira would be playing in between Dear Listener musings, songs that map the evolution of her longing and that of the people she loves. I encourage you to listen to this playlist as you read my novel.
Dancing On My Own by Robyn
Many of Robyn’s songs are queer anthems of yearning, and this one certainly devastates through the resonance of club beats. At the start of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, Mira and Mal split up, and while there’s no ex-lover sighting across the dancefloor as Robyn sings, the two are stuck in their respective boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, unable to communicate with each other. At her mother’s home, Mira starts a radio show in her bedroom as a way of trying to get into contact with Mal. However, it’s not Mal’s attention that she ends up getting…
Wasted Away by Dum Dum Girls
From Mira’s mother’s perspective, her daughter’s grief is overblown. Much of this has to do with Ma’s refusal to accept her daughter’s queerness. Dealing greater damage, she encourages what feels like a more conventional (heterosexual) relationship, much to Mira’s heartache. In a parallel journey, Ma’s best friend Lucinda moves through her own loss, also coming to terms with her son’s sexuality. Both are haunted by prophetic dreams or impulses to commune with ghosts to resolve what feels unresolvable in their living days. In Dum Dum Girls’ “Wasted Away,” lead singer Kristin Gundred belts, “I want to save you anyway I can/ I’ll steal your rings and make these your hands.” These heartbreaking lines sing of devotion, a desire to bring a child back to life and joy no matter the futility ahead.
再見…露絲瑪莉 by Denise Ho
“再見…露絲瑪莉” is known as Hong Kong Cantopop singer Denise Ho’s “coming out” song (though she would not explicitly come out until years later at the 2012 Hong Kong Pride Festival), a follow-up to the song’s part one, “露絲瑪莉,” which introduces the characters of Mary and Rose, code names between two lesbian lovers. In this sequel, the singer declares that Mary and Rose, Rose and Mary are no more, that the dissolution of one person’s bond means that the other too must let go. Similarly, Mira acknowledges that what was once “Mal and Mira, Mira and Mal” can no longer be.
I’m in Love Again by Diana Ross and the Supremes
The premise of “I’m in Love Again” by Diana Ross and the Supremes is pretty straightforward at first—heartbroken and feeling as if love would not be possible again, “Suddenly, you came, you saw, you captured my heart.” It should be a hopeful message, but my reading of this song is always that there’s a note of caution and uncertainty. Just as Mira stumbles into a relationship with her headless neighbor Sad following some devastating news, the suddenness of this new love is not what it seems, and she’s about to learn it the hard way.
Be My Baby by The Barbarettes
After a long time alone in the misery of his apartment, the headless Sad has found love with Mira. However, she harbors a secret. In this cover of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Korean girl group The Barbarettes do an incredibly sweet harmonizing job of portraying the type of begging that comes with knowing love is not fully requited. A bonus touch: Sad often pokes fun at his own headlessness, which means lines such as “We’ll make ‘em turn their heads every place we go” a point of gallows humor.
Will You Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles
Despite the love flowing between Mira and Sad, there’s also a lot of doubt, leading Sad to plead along the lines of The Shirelles song, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”: “Tonight with words unspoken/ You say that I’m the only one/ But will my heart be broken/ When the night/ Meets the morning sun?”
Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone by Lykke Li
“Love me when it storms,” Lykke Li pleads in the ballad “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone,” just as the world of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is besieged by acid rainstorms and heartbreak. Love is not easy in any scenario, that’s for sure, but loving someone in the midst of deep trauma and turmoil while the world around them is falling apart? Lykke Li’s song is a call to be loved for every shadow and demon that clings to her, just as Sad too, in being haunted, desires his fresh start with Mira.
Thinkin About You by Frank Ocean
Some of us may remember Frank Ocean’s release of his demo, “Thinking About You,” a beautifully spare song that tells of the end of a relationship, which the artist refers to as his “first time,” implying that this relationship was with another boy. This bisexual ballad feels appropriate for Mira who finds herself caught in a love triangle between her past and present.
Pendulum by FKA Twigs
“You forgot/ how we fell in love/ I’m your sweet/ little love maker,” is such an excruciatingly heartbreaking verse from “Pendulum” by FKA Twigs in which she describes the gradual dissolution of her relationship with her lover. While she does not want to let go and proclaims she can wait for the upswing of the up and down relationship, her partner has already drifted away. As Sad declares, quoting our literary predecessor in grief and mourning Roland Barthes, “I am the one who waits.” Perhaps like FKA Twigs, Sad feels a similar sense of injustice of being the one who is always the constant, but the truth is, people don’t always stay. What then?
1000 Oceans by Tori Amos
Tori Amos claimed she wrote “1000 Oceans” as a way of bringing her despondent husband back to her when his father died, and he was overtaken by grief. For me, like many a Tori Amos song, I think of a girl ghost wandering through the underworld, beseeching the gods for the return of her love. “I’m aware what the rules are,/ But you know that I will run./ You know that I will follow you,” Tori Amos sings. Indeed, there are rules, spoken and unspoken, that govern the afterlife and ghosthood in the world of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster. Call it the hubris of lovers then that attempt to defy these rules.
altar by Kehlani
It’s tradition in Chinese cultural practices to lay out altars for those who have passed. Every year, on Qing Ming, it is custom to visit family graves, laying out food, water, wine, and other sustenance the loved one would have enjoyed in their living days. Qing Ming comes with a twist in How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, as one would expect in a time of death taking place at such rapid pace on top of ghost and ghost and ghost.
Other people in the building have their own altars and rituals to honor their loved ones too. Of note is Lucinda whose ghost conjuring abilities may be the skill needed to bring everyone to resolution… or to their demise.
Do You Love Me Like You Used To by Best Coast
One of my favorite bands Best Coast is exemplary of the unapologetically bratty music that speaks to a particularly exaggerated heartache and yearning (what I often call “the queer high femme condition”). “Do You Love Me Like You Used To” takes place in the brutal aftermath of a relationship in which lead singer Bethany Consentino, through her incessant crying, still wonders if her ex still loves her. It’s an admission that many of us would rather keep to ourselves and close confidantes, this endless wondering if the people we were once so connected to still care about us too.
Mira is faced with a difficult choice, and at the heart of her worries is that so much time has passed. Should she live in the past or move forward in the present? And what does that mean in a time when past and present co-exist? Can you love a ghost forever?
似水流年 by Anita Mui
Anita Mui, otherwise known as Hong Kong Cantopop royalty, famed for her boisterously loud sequin numbers and for being the mentor to many young queer artists during her time. She passed away from cervical cancer in her 50s, and her music still conjures many emotions for queer listeners who see her as an icon of her time, as someone who lived boldly and set forth the path for others to do the same (Denise Ho, being one of her queer apprentices.)
In “似水流年,” which translates to “The Years Flow Like Water,” Anita Mui sings of a long-lost love whose memory remains with her years after. The singer describes herself as a boat on endless water and which is guided by her tears. Mira too feels similarly adrift, especially as the storms rage on outside, melding sky and water in shared toxicity. Time passes but her love is enduring, and she is not the only one carrying this in their heart.
It’s A Journey by Bethany Consentino
Bethany Consentino’s most recent album “Natural Disaster” is a bit of a departure from Best Coast, swapping out bratty and fast paced songs for a more earnest and grown perspective of life and love. “It’s A Journey” is the penultimate song of this album, and when I first heard it driving down the 101, I cried. Consentino knows that the message of self-growth in this album may border on cheesy, but perhaps it is simply just a true and non-ironic admission that all of us battle the demons in our brain to survive every day. In the song, the sky is falling and things are crashing down, just as Mira, in her world of acid rainstorms, reaches a pinnacle point of her journey.
追 by Leslie Cheung
“追” translates to “Chase” in one of Hong Kong Cantopop star Leslie Cheung’s most famous love songs. Cheung died by suicide at an early age, but his impact, much like Anita Mui, is still felt today, especially given his significance as an out bisexual person in a homophobic industry in the ‘90s. It feels fitting to end this playlist with Leslie Cheung as tribute and whose journey also mirrors the pain felt by one of the novel’s main characters. In “追,” the artist sings that no matter what, he will chase after his love through even the fiercest and most brutal rains, a fitting final message for How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster.
Muriel Leung is the prize-winning author of three poetry collections and teaches critical studies and creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles, California.