The titular character inVictor Lodato’s novel Honey is as delightfully complex and interesting as any you will come across this year.
The New York Times wrote of the book:
“On every page Lodato’s prose sings with a robust, openhearted wit, making Edgar & Lucy a delight to read…Lodato keeps us in his thrall because his grip on the tiller stays reassuringly firm. Not to mention the supporting cast he’s gathered, a group so eclectic and beguiling that many of them could carry an entire novel of their own. A riveting and exuberant ride.”
In his own words, here is Victor Lodato’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Honey:
When I’m working on a novel, the rhythm of the sentences is essential to me. It’s not about music for music’s sake, but rather a way of tapping into the movement of a particular mind, a particular way of being. I can’t get far with any piece of writing unless I can feel the characters’ rhythms in my body. It’s through this music that I discover what happens next. The music always guides me, and often when I’m writing I’m literally rocking, swaying back and forth—and I’m always chanting the words out loud. Honey’s voice was very clear to me from the start. As for a playlist, here are some of the musical references in the novel.
“Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2” – Frédéric Chopin
This piece is so fluid, so open, that it seems as if the melody is capable of holding within it various flavors of reverie—sweet, bitter, salty with tears. In the following scene, Honey, who is 82, is listening to this music and finds herself drifting into the past, when she was pregnant at age fifteen.
“As for Honey’s fury, there was no place for it in her father’s house; so she’d hidden it in her belly, beside the baby. Chopin knew all of this. A nocturne was playing now, and Honey tried to heed the warning. Memory is a trap. She understood that if she went too far—to the little house in Toms River where the baby was born—then the challenge would no longer be to forgive her family but to forgive herself. She, too, had done terrible things.”
“California” – Joni Mitchell
Oh, it gets so lonely
When you’re walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
Just give you the blues
Just give you the blues
So I bought me a ticket
I got on a plane to Spain
Went to a party down a red dirt road
There were lots of pretty people there
Reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue
They said, “How long can you hang around?”
I said a week, maybe two
Just until my skin turns brown
Then I’m going home to California
California, I’m coming home
Honey, who grew up in New Jersey, eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she ended up living for nearly fifty years. Here’s how she thinks of the Golden State.
“California. For Honey, the word always came in song, chirped by Joni Mitchell. There was still a bit of the folk song out there in Cali. The wide-open hearts of everyone, like messy bedrooms presented without shame. The whole innocent immorality of the place. Honey had loved L.A. enough to think she would spend her final years there.”
But, of course, she doesn’t stay there. She returns to New Jersey—and the fraught reunion with her family provides much of the novel’s drama.
“The Book of Love” – The Magnetic Fields
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and fact and figures
And instructions for dancing
But I
I love it when you read to me.
And you
You can read me anything.
Honey’s grandnephew, Mica, is a musician and a singer. In imagining one of his songs, I tried to create lyrics that were simple, direct, and unabashedly romantic, such as those in “The Book of Love.” Here’s the scene where Honey first experiences Mica’s music on YouTube.
“Honey recalled reading a version of these lyrics in Mica’s notebook. They hadn’t seemed anything special, just a bit of adolescent pap. But now, reunited with their creator’s breath, they came to life.
When I saw you on the corner,
You were crying black mascara.
Then you turned and called my name.
Baby, take my hand.
Baby, let’s just fall.
At this point, Mica leaned in deeply to his playing; his torso seemed to fold as his voice soared into a perfectly calibrated falsetto, the sound so unnaturally pure it was almost frightening.
Falling, oooh, oooh, oooh
Falling, oooh, oooh, oooh
Where our tears fly up like swallows,
All things free, yeah, all things rising.
Falling together, babe, we’re flying.
Honey listened to the remainder of the song in amazement, slack-jawed before the wizardry of the human voice. The high notes were miraculous, seizing ecstasy from heartache. As the performance was ending and the strumming came to a peaceful repose, Mica looked up and stared directly at the camera. He smiled shyly, revealing a triumphant set of teeth.”
“I Wanna Be Sedated” – The Ramones
20, 20, 24 hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothin’ to do, nowhere to go-oh
I wanna be sedated
When Honey’s lover, Dominic Sparra, dies, he’s buried in the same cemetery as the lead singer of the Ramones.
“Nicky was to be buried at Hillside Cemetery, where his wife and parents were. Honey’s people were there, too, along with Joey Ramone and William Carlos Williams. Hillside was quite the eclectic dinner party—not a place, it seemed, where one could get much sleep.”
And later:
“She drove on, toward the Jewish part of the cemetery—and here she did get out of the car. It would be a sin not to pay a visit to the grave of Jeff Hyman, aka Joey Ramone. Not that Honey had ever been a fan of the Ramones. By the time punk had reached its apex, Honey was nearly forty. But as she liked to stay au courant, she’d poked her nose in at the periphery of the scene. The music grated, but the style of the musicians intrigued her—the way they’d made a uniform entirely from scraps and scuffs. She’d seen the band only once, at Max’s Kansas City. Joey Ramone had walked stiffly onto the stage, a homely kid with a bulbous schnoz and beanpole legs. But as soon as he started to hop around and sing in that sweet voice rife with snarls and barks, he completely transformed himself.”
Just get me to the airport
Put me on a plane
Hurry, hurry, hurry
Before I go insane
And now that I think about it, this sentiment is very apt for Honey, who does begin to go a bit mad after returning to New Jersey. Not much has changed in her family; they’re still in the mob, and many of them are bullies. Honey has come home to make peace with her past—but when she sees how much toxic masculinity remains, she realizes that she’s still furious. Honey’s dilemma is whether to forgive and forget—or to finally raise her fist and say enough. The book considers the limits of compassion in a world of extraordinary violence.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Victor Lodato’s playlist for his novel Mathilda Savitch
Victor Lodato is a playwright and the author of the novels Edgar and Lucy and Mathilda Savitch, winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts, his stories and essays regularly appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. His novels and plays have been translated into eighteen languages. Born and raised in New Jersey, he now lives in Oregon and Arizona.