In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Adelaide Faith’s novel Happiness Forever is a totally absorbing debut, a coming-of-age story with an unforgettable protagonist.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Witty and irreverent . . . Faith’s razor-sharp prose and Sylvie’s fanciful thinking sustain the offbeat narrative. Readers will fall in love with this meditative and heartfelt novel.”
In her own words, here is Adelaide Faith’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Happiness Forever:
- “Use It Up and Wear It Out” by Odyssey
The chorus of this song comes into Sylvie’s head every time she goes up the stairs to the therapy room. One, two, three, shake your body down (shake it all down). I guess her body is worried that she is just about to give a well-kept secret away in therapy? I don’t know. It similarly kept coming into my head when I was writing. What are they doing all night long? I’ve let you listen to the original version by Odyssey but Sylvie is hearing the charity cover version by Pat and Mick.
- “Lullaby” by The Cure
In Chapter One, “Cobwebs”, Sylvie tells the therapist about the time she was making out with her boyfriend and thought he was acting out the video for “Lullaby.” He wasn’t, he was hallucinating, and it’s sad for Sylvie because she never found a boyfriend that she could understand, she was always thinking something different was going on.
When I was about fourteen I saw a sticker for The Cure in the bedroom window of two brothers I liked. I went to Woolworths and got the Cure single that was out at the time, “Lullaby.” When I finally dated one of the brothers, I saw he’d written my name on his college ring-binder using the spider-font of the “Lullaby” cover.
- “All That We Are” by Scritti Politti
Sylvie had always thought Green Gartside was singing Nothing compares with the love of the One Form in this song. Her belief systems all developed from the pop songs she listened to over and over as a teenager. But if she didn’t realise the meaning of the lyrics carried over onto the next line, if she didn’t realise it was important to love “All that We Are”, not “The One Form”, maybe it ruined her life.
- “Exorcism of the bridge@Eastham Rake” by Mark Leckey
Sylvie’s new friend sends her a link to a video by the artist Mark Leckey after they first meet, saying she used it as an exorcism once, saying Useful Art! This song (or mutated audio dialogue) is amazing, you have to listen to it. OUT DEMONS OUT! Imagine if everything people made was as powerful and interesting as this.
- “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller Band
Sylvie had to dance to this song with the Girl Guides. The video is ’80s, has a Pierrot in it, but the lyrics are really gross, and unsuitable for Girl Guides. Black panties with an angel’s face?!
- “Babble” by The Cure
This is the B-side that Sylvie was playing when her dad came into her bedroom. He was furious, he probably didn’t like the lyrics: Shut up shut up shut up shut up/ Shut up! And let me breathe…
- “From Her to Eternity” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Sylvie and her friends all read Nick Cave’s novel And the Ass Saw the Angel together as teenagers. I went to see Nick Cave play last winter, it was amazing, especially this song, and I realised then that Sylvie would particularly like it: “This desire to possess her is a wound/ And it’s nagging at me like a shrew/ But I know, that to possess her/ Is, therefore, not to desire her.”
- “Pure Imagination” from the Willy Wonka Soundtrack
Sylvie’s favourite boyfriend liked getting ready to this song, though he had very cool taste in music when he left the house. Sylvie agrees that “there is no life I know that compares with pure imagination.”
- “Medusa’s Song” by Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas
The show that Chloe gives Sylvie a ticket for is based on Anne Imhof’s show Sex that was shown at the tanks at the Tate Modern. Chloe then sends Sylvie Medusa’s Song from Imhof ‘s show Faust to try to help her get over the therapist. It probably had the opposite effect though, since it’s a beautiful and painful song of longing.
- “All Cats Are Grey” by The Cure
This is the song that Sylvie wants played at her funeral. I think this is my favourite song ever.
- “March – From A Clockwork Orange” Beethoven / Mark Ayres
Chloe tells Sylvie how she learned to play “Ode to Joy” on the piano because she was suffering from unrequited love for a pianist.
- “On ne change pas” by Céline Dion
Sylvie hears this song when she nearly falls over going to her last therapy session. She knows it from the amazing scene in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, where the mother and son and neighbour who has stopped speaking all dance together in the kitchen.
- “Left” by Hope of the States
The editor said that Sylvie was looking for “a bravery of feeling” and I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot. It’s how I would describe this band. Sylvie needs to listen to both albums over and over.
- “Dream within a Dream” by Propaganda
Sylvie and Chloe watch Picnic at Hanging Rock together, which starts with one of the girls reciting a version of the “Dream within a Dream” poem by Edgar Allen Poe. I’m sure Sylvie would listen to this song thinking of her therapy sessions as grains of sand that are slipping through her fingers.
- “Cry Little Sister” by Gerard McMann
This seems like a preview for my second novel.
Adelaide Faith worked as an editor in the Schools Department of Channel 4 before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the RSPCA and the PDSA. Her short fiction has appeared in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, ExPat Press, and Stone of Madness Press. She is a member of Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club, and she lives in Hastings with her young daughter and old dog, Pierrot.