Review: Impossible Music by Sean Williams

What do you do when music is the biggest thing in your life, but a ministroke leaves you unable to hear? That is the challenge faced by Simon Rain, the eighteen-year-old protagonist of Impossible Music, a brilliant new novel by Adelaide author Sean Williams. The novel opens with Simon hurting and angry, and resisting all opportunities to adjust to his new circumstances. And then he meets G (or George, or George who likes coffee,) a smart, tough girl who is learning to cope with her own newfound hearing loss, and who challenges Simon on a number of occasions. But what ultimately leads Simon on a path toward self-acceptance is an idea. He wants to create a new form of music. Something that the Deaf community can experience, along with the hearing world.

The novel starts off on a dark note, but that is understandable, given the subject matter. Though Simon's circumstances are unusual (he's the thirteenth recorded case in the world of having this type of hearing loss,) the character is drawn realistically, and with empathy. (On that, G is a lot of fun to read about too.) I also very much appreciated the use and descriptions of Auslan in the novel, along with Simon's descriptions of the music that he creates. (Creativity is a huge theme in the book.) However, where the story really shines is through its originality. It subverts from the usual YA tropes to tell the story of an adolescent who struggles with and finds the strength to cope with his newfound circumstances in a way that is original and pleasingly free from excessive sentimentality. This one will probably appeal to readers who are at, or who are advancing toward, the older end of the YA spectrum. 

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Sean Williams for my copy of Impossible Music. 

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2019. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more