Sound: A Novel - Softcover

Wolf, T. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865478503 ISBN 13: 9780865478503

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2012

Synopsis

Built on musical notation and modeled after hip-hop beats, an innovative first novel set on the New Jersey shore among neon-lit arcades, riot-haunted blocks, and dilapidated boatyards

Sound is the story of a young man who drops out of graduate school and returns to his hometown on the New Jersey shore, only to find that home is not what he remembers it to be. Brainy, music-obsessed, and adrift, Cincy spends his days managing the crew of a local boatyard, his nights roaming the shore's bars and boardwalks. His fleeting encounters with a woman called Vera, whose path he crosses but whose love he can never seem to earn, soon develop into an obsession. As he pursues Vera through a tangle of wild parties and packed clubs, Cincy is trailed at every step by the police, who have their own mysterious plans for him and his coworkers at the yard.

Loud with the sounds of thumping cars, riot-haunted blocks, and amusement parks, this first novel from T. M. Wolf takes the reader into uncharted territory. Sound braves an entirely new way to tell a poignant story about being young and searching for love and for home.

About this title

About the Author:

T. M. Wolf was born and grew up on the Jersey Shore. He is a recent graduate of Yale Law School, and his writings on music, technology, culture and law have appeared in PopMatters, Stylus, Okayplayer, the Stanford Technology Law Review, Undercover Magazine and The Foundation: A Mixtape Magazine. Sound is his first novel.

Review:

"[A] bracing read... For all that Wolf does to modify and play with the form in order to tell his story, he also has his storytelling basics down, making for a fine balance of innovation and tradition." - Capital New York

"[P]opular music has some catching up to do with Wolf for his multifaceted ambivalence towards reckoning with one's past. Nostalgia is a fetish; in Sound it's a compulsion, a habit to be tamed." - Full Stop

"If the Modernists have already mastered realistic dialogue, T.M. Wolf has given us the master mix: the pregnant pauses, the awkward stumbling, that too-loud radio in the background... [A]n aural and aesthetic experience, begging you to read the scenes out loud and revel in its beautiful, oftentimes chaotic, layout." - The Cowl

"[I]nnovative and engaging... Wolf's prose crackles with its own kind of improvised musical structure." - Minneapolis StarTribune

"T.M. Wolf, in his debut SOUND, has created an exception among exceptions..." - The Rumpus

"Wolf widens [the] modernist niche with gusto and the result is a novel that can truly be described as pitch perfect." - The Independent (UK)

"If this were a hip hop album, to sample from another genre would almost be par for the course. Since this is a novel, however, to do so seems ambitious, and in the spirit of the best hip hop, audacious." - Trop

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0865478503
• ISBN 13: 9780865478503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384