In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Anbara Salam’s novel The Salvage is a suspenseful and thought-provoking literary thriller.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“As an ethnic and professional outlier in a patriarchal, homogeneous society, Palestinian Scottish Salam’s protagonist provides plenty of opportunities to expose and confront misogyny, racism, entitlement, and abusive history…. [a] slow-burn mystery.”
In her own words, here is Anbara Salam’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Salvage:
Perhaps an odd confession to kick off a writer’s playlist is that I don’t tend to write to music. Most of The Salvage was written between the hours of 5 – 6.30 in the morning, terrified of waking my sleeping toddler, so the brief moments of silence and solitude were something I had to protect. I write historical fiction, and my process is that I usually spend between 6 months to a year researching the period, reading and listening to as much as I can, and then once I feel saturated with all the facts, I feel confident to start inventing. This means that the list here isn’t necessarily what I might choose for myself to unwind, but mostly music that the characters of the novels might have listened to. Much like considering the food and clothes of the time, I find that thinking about the musical world that shaped my characters is a really useful texture to help ground me in the worldbuilding of the story.
The Salvage is a gothic literary thriller that takes place over the winter of 1962, and is set on a fictional Scottish island, with the characters unable to access the outside world after the end of October. Writing about the winter of 1962 is such an interesting slice of time in terms of music because we are looking at a moment just before a transformative change in the music scene with the explosion of the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan (to name just a few). This reflects how I thought more broadly about the events of the novel, which take place during one of the worst winters on record; a period of deep freeze before profound social change.
Harbour Lights, recorded by The Platters, 1960
The story about this song is that it was written after 1937 when the writer, Jimmy Kennedy, got lost in coastal fog and took refuge in a pub called the Harbour Lights in Portsmouth, England. This 1960 recording by The Platters has such a buttery sound to the vocals that it has an inherent seductiveness. I could imagine it playing in the background of a smoky lobby while two lovers covertly shift closer together on the leather bench. Much of The Salvage takes place in the bar of a coastal hotel that has seen better days, and this song is so fitting as a ballad about longing from the seashore, and reminiscing over hard farewells.
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Bob Dylan 1963
A slightly cheating choice here, as Dylan first performed this at Carnegie Hall in September 1962 which puts it barely inside the probability of the world of the novel. The events of The Salvage are shaped by the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even though Dylan wrote this before the crisis, this song became an unofficial anthem for the horrors of the nuclear threat. I love the contradiction between the sweet melody and almost lullabye-like call-and-answer framework, with Dylan’s confronting and otherworldly poetry.
Silkie, recorded by Joan Baez, 1961
This is a recording of a version of ‘The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry’, a traditional Scottish folk ballad originally from the Orkney and the Shetland Islands, very close to where the events of The Salvage are set. Silkies, or selkies are a huge part of Scottish folklore, as shapeshifting creatures who can move between human and seal forms. You have to be careful with a selkie; they are seducers, often fickle, and not to be trusted with your heart. The main character of The Salvage, Marta Khoury, is a marine archaeologist who is more at home in the water than she is on land. Also, perhaps, fickle, hard to read, and untrustworthy in matters of the heart. Baez’ vocals here are haunting and hypnotic at the same time. Perfect for a spooky maritime novel.
Wondrous Place, Billy Fury, 1960
Wondrous Place was in the British charts in 1960, and has an eerie resonance to me that gives the song an almost ironic quality to my ears. I imagined it echoing in the cold corridors of the Grand Hotel where my characters are trapped for much of the book as they turn to each other for solace through the long winter nights.
Perfidia, Helen Forrest (vocals), Benny Goodman and Orchestra, 1941
Originally written in 1939, this piece has been recorded and re-recorded many times, one of my favourites is a later version, recorded by Phyllis Dillon in 1967 which is really worth a listen. This Big band version of the early 1940s has such sweet vocals from Helen Forrest that make it almost playfully rueful. That this song has been frequently re-arranged and re-recorded is a testament to the longevity of its theme – kicking yourself after being betrayed and broken-hearted.
Night Time is the Right Time, Ray Charles, recorded 1958
This song was recorded earlier in other variations, but in this 1958 recording by Ray Charles it is lent incredible power and poignancy by Margie Hendrix, the lead female backing vocalist. Hendrix’s career didn’t take off the way she deserved, and she died tragically young. This recording has so much force and intensity behind it that it is both uplifting and bittersweet. The Salvage is about many things – shipwrecks, regrets, ghostly encounters, but at its heart it is also a love story. Turn off the lights and wait out the winter with the one you love.
Anbara Salam is the author of The Salvage: A Novel (Tin House).