I think your enjoyment of Holly Brickley’s debut novel Deep Cuts will very much depend on how much you love music…and not just in a casual way but in an all-consuming, possessive, nerdy way.

Percy and Joe meet at a campus bar in Berkeley in 2000. They are both students and peripherally known to each other “in that vague way you can know people in college, without ever having been introduced or had a conversation.”

Then “Sara Smile” comes on while they are both waiting for drinks and it kicks off a conversation about the difference between a perfect track and a perfect song. Apparently, there is a difference. Percy explains:

“A perfect song has stronger bones. Lyrics. Chords. Melody. It can be played differently, produced differently, and it will almost always be great. Take ‘Both Sides, Now,’ if you’ll excuse me being a girl in a bar talking about Joni Mitchell–any singer who doesn’t suck can cover that song and you’ll be drowning in goosebumps, right?

[…]

“Now, ‘Sara Smile’–can you imagine anyone besides Daryl Hall singing this, exactly as he sang it on this particular day?”

Joe is an aspiring musician and Percy a writer and their meet cute morphs into a decade long will they/won’t they, should they/shouldn’t they relationship. Joe has a girlfriend, Zoe, “a tasteful punk”. Joe describes their relationship to Percy as “a perfect track [because you] need the context–family, friends, our hometown.” Soon, the three are hanging out together, although it’s clear that Percy has a thing for Joe.

Joe asks for Percy’s advice about some of his music and Percy is nothing if she isn’t honest. She tells him his song “is over-written [and] kind of forced” but that his singing is “magical.” Joe comes to depend on this honesty as he starts to chase a professional musical career.

When Zoe and Joe break up and Zoe gives Percy her blessing to make her move, things are further complicated because Joe, it seems, doesn’t want to mess up this musical partnership the two have going. Thus the will they/won’t they. Their lives pull them in different directions after college, but they are besties (without the benefits) until one night at a wedding when they suddenly aren’t.

I enjoyed Deep Cuts well enough. I did find all the song references tedious, but that didn’t stop me from making a playlist. I found Joe and Percy sort of tedious, too, but only in that way many kids in their 20s are – especially as seen from the viewpoint of someone in their 60s. I suspect that had I read this book in my 20s, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this. I loved the angst; I enjoyed some of the secondary characters. The dialogue felt authentic and so did the 20-something navel gazing.

Life itself provides some deep cuts of its own. Mistakes are made. Feelings are hurt. Friendships ebb and flow. By the end of the book I was trying to decide if Percy and Joe actually should or shouldn’t be together. They hurt each other, but they love each other, too. Like any great song, they are a sum of all their parts.