Sarah LaBrie’s memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart is an imaginatively told story of the author’s family past and present.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“Through restrained and subtle writing that never reveals too much, this novel entices readers to recognize grief’s paradoxically discreet nature.”
In her own words, here is Sarah LaBrie’s Book Notes music playlist for her memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart:
No One Gets to Fall Apart is a memoir about the year my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 53. We lived states apart and weren’t speaking, and the book follows my investigation into how we got to that point as well as the legacy of mental illness in my family. It’s also about obsessive creative ambition and Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Some of the songs below appear in the book and others influenced its writing.
Destiny’s Child – Survivor
I grew up in Third Ward in Houston, Texas. My mom and lived in an apartment until my grandmother bought us a house in Riverside Terrace on Parkwood, down the street from Beyonce and Solange Knowles. I went to theater camp with Solange and we both starred in a play together. We were not good enough friends that I was ever invited over (plus they were obviously very busy), but I did make sure each friend who came to my house knew exactly which house was hers. Alas, I never got to meet Beyonce, who was like a mythical creature to me. I remember watching the MTV Making the Video episode for this song on the dog-chewed, floral sectional in our living room late into the night over and over again.
Sarge – A Torch
My best friend in high school in Houston, “Amy” in the book, was way cooler than me and she listened to way cooler music. She wanted me to be cool, too, so she made me a mixtape with a bunch of girl bands on it: Veruca Salt, Le Tigre, That Dog, Save Ferris, Mariah, some other songs I can’t find on the internet at all anymore. Anyway, coming across this track again was shocking because I’d forgotten what it was about, which is a teenager taking revenge against her rapist. It’s much more disturbing to listen to now. It’s trippy to hear it and suddenly feel like I’m inhabiting two selves – both the current, late 30s version, and the fifteen-year-old version shouting along to it in Amy’s car.
Belle and Sebastian – Seeing Other People
These lines:
Well, if I remain passive and you just want to cuddle
Then we should be ok, and we won’t get in a muddle
Cause we’re seeing other people
At least that’s what we say we are doing
Defined my relationship with the on again/off again college boyfriend I refer to as the Organic Chemistry Major in No One Gets to Fall Apart. Things did not work out between us for obvious reasons, but he was why I moved to LA after graduation and I’m grateful for that. Also Belle and Sebastian was one of the first live concerts I went to with my husband and I will always love them. If you like them too, please read the excellent and underrated book In the All Night Cafe, which I’m desperate for someone to turn into a musical.
Larnelle Harris – How Excellent is Thy Name
When my mom first had her psychotic break at the age of 53, she listened to Christian music obsessively, which was strange because we weren’t religious or anything. Before that, she mostly listened to R&B on the radio. One of the singers she started playing all the time was Larnelle Harris. I hadn’t ever streamed his music before I made this playlist and now that I have, I can’t stop laughing. I’d assumed it was gospel, but it really is not. There’s something about how the intensity of his gaze on the album cover is matched only by that of the song’s synthesizer solo. It reminds me of the Reading Rainbow theme. My husband says it sounds like a number from The Book of Mormon. I love it so much. Sorry to this man, who is, I’m certain, very wealthy and successful.
The Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star
Right after my mom was institutionalized in Houston for the first time, I left Los Angeles, where I lived, to go to a fancy wedding in wine country. I couldn’t stop thinking about how guilty I felt, because I should have been at home in Texas with her, even though we hadn’t spoken in years. The rideshare driver who took us to the rehearsal dinner made us play pop culture trivia for candy. One of the questions was “What was the first video MTV ever played?” and I got it right. I remember getting my prize (a Blow Pop) and thinking I was probably going to choke on it and that I deserved to.
Nina Simone – I’m Gonna Leave You
I watched a documentary on Nina Simone that explained how, by the end of her life, she was estranged from her daughter because of her Bipolar Disorder. I thought these lines:
I’m gonna leave you yes I’m gonna
I’m gonna leave you cos I wanna
And I’ll go where people love me
And I’ll stay there cos they love me
were a perfect encapsulation of how it felt when my mom had her own disordered outbursts, how they all seemed driven by a kind of restlessness and ennui that comes with feeling like you’re never in the right place or being loved by the right people. She always wanted to be elsewhere. Like she was born into the wrong world. I have a lot of sympathy for Simone–just like I have a lot of sympathy for my mother–but I think about her daughter all the time too.
Tindersticks – Sunrise
I listen to Claire Denis movie scores while I’m writing and my husband, who was in charge of the wedding playlist, suggested this as the song I would walk down the aisle to. I listen to it now and I’m taken back to all the emotions I experienced between 2017 and 2019, from absolute despair to the purest kind of joy.
Sarah LaBrie is a writer from Houston, Texas. She was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (HBO MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall with music written by Pulitzer-prize winning composer Ellen Reid. Her fiction also appears in Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. LaBrie’s first book, a memoir entitled No One Gets to Fall Apart, will be published by HarperCollins this fall. Most recently, Sarah was nominated for Best Television Comedy Script at the 2024 Women’s Image Network Awards for her episode of Blindspotting, “By Hook or By Crook”. She lives in Los Angeles.