In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Sara Lippmann’s novel Hidden River is a powerful novel of trauma and friendship.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Crisp and unsettling…Readers will admire this gritty slice of life.”
In her own words, here is Sara Lippmann’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Hidden River:
Music plays throughout my novel, Hidden River. While the forward story unfolds over the summer of 2008, its emotional heart is lodged squarely in the mid ‘80s to early ‘90s, when any Gen Xer could tell you: music was life. Our spark plug, our deliverance. We lived at the mercy of the radio, lugged around our battery-operated portable tape decks smug with the technology of dubbing. We waited (and waited) for the DJs to play our songs. A Gen Xer can tell you their first purchased cassette (Foreigner’s 4), their first CD (Pearl Jam’s Ten), their coveted vinyl (The Who’s Tommy), their first heartfelt mixtape (from Robbie C. in 6th grade). Music not only lent shape to feeling, it was a driver, a reason to stand outside the record store in the rain for Kinks tickets, to plaster those Duran Duran pinups on our walls, to stare wide-eyed, slack-jawed into the glare of MTV.
For my narrator, Cass, who is being groomed by her friend Sally’s father, music is a sign and guide from the universe. “Waiting for a Girl Like You” – could it get any clearer? Popular hits are speaking directly to her, messaging her on sex and desire, affirming all that longing and possibility. What she understands, what she misunderstands, all of it, makes her feel less alone.
What we watched, what we heard, what we wore (courtesy of Lex Wexner) flooded the waters of complicity. I don’t merely mean the countless ways we were sexualized and objectified (as we belted out numbers like “Legs,” like “Girls”), but also made to feel adult male attention was normal, if not desirable. Stoned on Led Zeppelin we did not think about Jimmy Page’s 14-year-old girlfriend. Or if we did, if we thought about the swarms of teenage girls dripping on guitar arms, we chalked it all up to rock-n-roll.
And so, nothing fringe, nothing off the back wall here. This list is as mainstream, as omnipresent as it gets. Which is the whole kick. I dedicate it to Cass. To all the Cassandras.
Cassidy by the Grateful Dead
Although my narrator, Cassandra Trout, is named as much for Sweet Mama Cass as the Trojan princess who was disbelieved, Len Sellers, Sally’s father, nicknames her Cassidy after the song written by Bob Weir.
Unlike most of the other songs in this playlist, Weir’s lyrics are not sexual (the song was written about the birth of a friend’s daughter, Cassidy Law, with nods to the death of Neal Cassady of Kerouac and Merry Pranksters fame), and yet, Len anoints Cass with them – Ah, child of countless trees – infusing them with suggestion.
He will take her to the back room of Wonderland, the longstanding Philadelphia headshop (now closed) to scroll through the racks of concert bootlegs and Dead posters; he will take her to South Street to tattoo the lyric on her arm: what you are, what you’re meant to be, and he will take her to a show after graduation, in the parking lot of which he will take from her the one thing he hasn’t yet taken.
It is a song about two certainties: life and death. A song that pulses through Hidden River‘s pages as Len will die and Cass will become stuck in time, unable to free herself from her past trauma, to embrace her own future.
Private Eyes, Hall & Oates
To be at the whims of Philadelphia disc jockeys in these years meant being subjected to a lot of local favorites – the Hooters, Patti LaBelle, Daryl Hall & John Oates. The cheesy claps in this Billboard Top Hit make it feel cheerful, even innocent, but as Len slowly works his hooks into her, so much transpires in watching, waiting for a flicker of recognition, the silent exchange in a glance. The glimmers, the withholding. They’re watching you watching you watching you watching you. Desire, in abeyance. This is how obsession builds.
Panama by Van Halen
We’re talking the glory days of MTV. Eddie Van Halen’s winsome mug, the wild hair and zealous gyrations of David Lee Roth. “Panama,” written purportedly as an exercise in range, to show David Lee Roth could do more than strut among beach bodies singing about “California Girls,” is not really about a car at all. Reach down between my legs, ease the seat back. It is just the kind of blatant doubling inherent to grooming, and Len was adept at serving lines like this, that could pass in public, and vibrate with implication beneath.
Second Hand News by Fleetwood Mac
Speaking of cars, Len’s big hands on the wheel, percuss the dash – Lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff – as he drives Cass home one evening from a playdate with Sally.
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Len takes Cass and his daughter, Sally, to the Momentary Lapse of Reason concert tour at Vet Stadium in 1988. He gives them money for beers, for merch. Afterward, he watches in the rearview as the girls try on their new T-shirts. Again, the loadedness of a look. Again, the encouragement to all that adolescent pining. Two long souls swimming in a fish bowl – who hasn’t scrawled that on the brown paper bag covers of their biology textbooks?
Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen
Another artist beloved by Philly’s DJs, Bruce and Len share a passing resemblance: dark, curly, veined in the forearms. “I’m on Fire” might be the obvious choice, but who can forget Courteney Cox being brought up on stage in the video? Before we knew who Cox was, one could believe that she was a nobody plucked from the crowd, discovered in thousands of fans. Cass believes this. Cass believes she was picked by Len, selected, chosen. It makes her feel almost special.
Summer, Highland Falls by Billy Joel
At one point, Cass lays down a mixtape, ostensibly for Sally, but the rule of mixtapes is they’re as much (if not more) about the maker than the receiver. This is one of her curated tracks. It’s either sadness or euphoria.
Gonna Fly Now by Bill Conti
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Rocky soundtrack lands on every Philly athlete’s playlist. Cass wouldn’t call herself an athlete. She is a runner but not a competitor. She becomes a runner because Len is a runner. She remains a runner long after Len is no longer in the picture because running is the one thing she can do. This song lends flight to the flightless. It also happens to be just the right tempo for a few paced miles along the Schuylkill River.
Lithium by Nirvana
The day Senator Heinz’s small plane collides with a helicopter over Merion Elementary, killing everyone on board and two small children in the schoolyard, Cass and her friends hang out in a friend’s basement after last period, as if it’s a day like any other. Only thing, is they’re waiting for word from their friend’s missing little sister. It is April 4, 1991. The basement smells like worn socks. I’m not gonna crack.
Vive la Vida by Coldplay
In June 2008, Cass, at 35, is going nowhere fast. As the novel advances, as she slowly begins to process her trauma, the tethers to her past begin to loosen, to break down, enough for her to start moving forward. The hit of that summer, “Vive la Vida,” is a rallying cry for Cass to start living, which leads to her booking plane tickets to Sally’s extravagant wedding in late August.
Forever by Chris Brown
Abuse allegations against Brown would arise in 2009. In the summer of 2008 this song played rent free in our heads. Undoubtedly, it would’ve been cued up at Sally’s London wedding. It would have brought the whole party to their drunken feet. Once his abuse becomes known, does it stop anyone from listening? We know the answer to that.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Sara Lippmann’s playlist for her novel Lech
SARA LIPPMANN is the author of the novels Hidden River and Lech and the story collections Doll Palace and Jerks. Her fiction has won the Lilith Fiction Prize and has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, The Chicago Review of Books, The Lit Hub and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she co-edited the anthology Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible (SUNY Press). She received a BA from Brown and an MFA from The New School, and has been teaching creative writing for over 20 years to people of all ages. She is a founding member of the Writing Co-Lab, an artist-run online teaching cooperative, and the editor-in-chief of Epiphany magazine. You can visit her online at saralippmann.com.