In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut Jean is an unforgettable coming-of-age novel, as precise in its language as it is tender and profound.
Bookpage wrote of the book:
“Dunnigan’s storytelling is immersive from the very first pages, sweeping readers into 17-year-old Jean’s world . . . Dunnigan tackles both emotional and sexual scenes with immediacy, nuance and grace, fully conveying the immense uncertainty, excitement, longing and discovery of teens exploring their sexual identities. Her finely layered prose seamlessly weaves Jean’s past, present and future into the narrative . . . Jean is a gorgeous novel about a teenager navigating his way toward an uncertain future amid soul-gutting longing, vulnerability and betrayals. This memorable coming-of-age tale will leave a resounding ache in readers’ hearts.”
In her own words, here is Madeleine Dunnigan’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Jean:
When I first started writing, I was precious. Total silence. The right air temperature. The perfect air quality. Even the birdsong had to be at the right pitch and volume. Then I moved to New York. My apartment had barely any natural light and I realised that I would need to work elsewhere if I were going to feel sane. In cafes, there was not only the ruckus of New York’s city streets to contend with, but it was not uncommon for several people to have zoom meetings at once, some without headphones. Silence was not possible. I had to adapt.
While music has never been a part of my writing process, my time in New York shifted my relationship with noise. Sometimes I listen to white noise while writing (and I think, just like a baby in the womb), sometimes when I edit, I listen to John Coltrane or Chet Baker. My ability to write within noise and around noise has made it possible to write almost anywhere.
Music is a huge part of Jean. The novel is set in the summer of 1976, at Compton Manor, a hippie, rural boarding school for boys with ‘problems’. Antisocial and violent, seventeen-year-old Jean is turned inside out when he meets Tom, a wealthier, fee-paying boy; when the relationship turns romantic, it seems as if Jean might, finally, have found his place in this world.
Although the action of the novel takes place in the countryside, Jean’s London life provides its backdrop. It is the cusp of the punk era, and Jean has grown up going to reggae and dub clubs, and losing himself in punk gigs. The UK’s shifting pattern of music is the blueprint for his psychological and social development, and informs how he interacts with people.
Music is laced through every relationship in the novel. At school, one of the first questions Tom, Jean’s love interest, asks him is whether he likes Black Sabbath or The Clash? Later, Jean watches with yearning as Tom performs with his band, The Larks. Their hippie teacher, Charles, plays Sun Ra from the classroom. The Christian headmaster, David, makes the boys sing hymns. Jean’s mother, Rosa, plays jazz throughout the house, having parties with her art students. On the same street as Jean’s childhood home is the house of Mick Caro, an aging folk star. Central to the novel’s plot is Mick and Jean’s relationship, which crystalises in the song Micky wrote for Jean when Jean was little.
Music, then, is not just the cultural capital and fabric of Jean’s world, but a conduit to deeper human interaction: it is through music that Jean feels. Loved, used, manipulated, understood, rejected. And it is, ultimately, through the song Micky wrote for Jean, that Jean finds some kind of freedom at the end.
Below is a short playlist of the music that Jean would have listened to, and the songs that percolate the novel itself.
Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, played by André Levy, 1960
This record plays throughout Jean’s home, as a young boy. It is a favourite of Rosa’s, his mother. It is also the first record Mick Caro plays to him on his new sound system. Bach’s sonorous tones speak to the love of music and culture that Jean is surrounded by.
‘Blackbird’ by Paul McCartney, 1968
The gentle tones of the sixties and seventies folk movement inform Jean’s childhood. This is one of the songs that Mick would strum on his guitar for Jean, when Jean was little. The beauty and innocence of it foreshadows the darker forces that come to shape their relationship.
‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie, 1969
Jean, like any other little boy in the sixties, is obsessed with space travel. This song captures the existential wonder and anxiety that emerged from such technological advancements. The song that Mick Caro writes for Jean comes out of this space mania and the music that surrounds it.
‘Raga Desh’, Ravi Shankar, 1971
Jean grows up fascinated by Eastern philosophy. To this West-London boy Ravi Shankar’s music opens a new consciousness which follows him through his teenage years.
‘Lonely Street’, by Delroy Washington, 1973
Jean would have been fourteen in 1973 and just beginning to explore London’s music scene for himself. Delroy Washington was one of the first singles he bought himself. And would continue to be a favourite. This music speaks to Jean’s newfound independence and burgeoning appetite.
‘Train to Rhodesia’ from Dread Locks Dread by Big Youth, 1975
Growing up in West London, Jean and his then best friend Kelly spent time in and out of the reggae clubs there. This was the beginning of sound system culture; later in 1976, the first sound systems appeared at Notting Hill Carnival. As a young, white, teenage boy, Jean’s access to this music was limited by location. It is albums like Big Youth’s Dread Locks Dread, released on London-based record label Klik, which he would have been exposed to, and which would have coloured the backdrop of his youth. And it is songs like ‘Train to Rhodesia’ which would go on to influence the dub and ska beats of punk.
‘Anarchy in the UK’ by Sex Pistols, 1976
Jean would have heard this song when he saw Sex Pistols play in London, earlier in the year (it wasn’t released until November 1976). The anarchist, nihilistic, and shameless message of the song captures Jean’s own sense of alienation in a world that doesn’t seem made for him.
‘Sunology: Part 1’, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, 1957
Charles Burrows, the young English Teacher at Compton Manor, and a deep influence on Jean, is a hippie with expanded and expansive ideas. He likes to recite poetry out loud. He keeps Angora rabbits from which he spins yarn. He blares Sun Ra from his rooms on summer solstice. Sun Ra represents, for Jean, the potential for another life.
‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’, Duke Ellington, 1932
Rosa, Jean’s mother, is a lover of jazz, which, inversely turns Jean away from it. This song happens to be playing on the radio during their last confrontation together. The joyous beats, rather than uplift, make Jean feel claustrophobic and trapped.
Madeleine Dunnigan was a Jill Davis Fellow in the MFA program at New York University. While there she was awarded a Global Reporting Initiative Fellowship in Paris. She lives in London, where she was born and raised.