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Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm Book Review

Laura Warrell's Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a gorgeously written debut, the kind of book that reminds me how much I love writing. Following an ensemble cast of women and their interactions with a jazz musician, the story examines more than just desire, but also love and coming-of-age. 

Laura Warrell is a contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Tin House Summer Workshop, and is a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She has taught creative writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and through the Emerging Voices Fellowship at PEN America in Los Angeles, where she lives. You can find her online at laurawarrell.com or on Instagram and Twitter @LKWarrell. 

It's 2013, and Circus Palmer, a forty-year-old Boston-based trumpet player and old-school ladies' man, lives for his music and refuses to be tied down. Before a gig in Miami, he learns that the woman who is secretly closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him. Instead of facing the necessary conversation, Circus flees, setting off a chain of interlocking revelations from the various women in his life. Most notable among them is his teenage daughter, Koko, who idolizes him and is awakening to her own sexuality even as her mentally fragile mother struggles to overcome her rejection by Circus. Delivering a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Warrell has penned a provocative and gripping novel about the perennial dangers of desire and the answer to the age-old question: How do we find belonging when love is unrequited? 

The writing in this book is gorgeous. I loved how I could fall into the writing style, and how reading it did feel like listening to good music. There's definitely a rhythm to the book, and I enjoyed how I knew I'd think about some of Warrell's descriptions years and years later. I also enjoyed the structure—how characters Pia, Koko, and Circus had multiple chapters from their own points of view, interspersed with chapters from other characters' POVs. Sometimes, it made each chapter feel more like a standalone short story, which made the overall stringing together of all of the chapters beautiful, and reflective of life. Overall, I really enjoyed Warrell's writing and the structure of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm!

I think the only thing I'm really, truly struggling with is how I'm meant to feel after putting the book down. I do like the message of how everything goes on—Pia lives her life, Koko and Circus live theirs as Koko takes her next steps—because that's also reflective of life, like the structure. On the other hand, though, I almost wanted to know more. What happened to some of the other women, and what would happen to Circus now that Odessa is back in the picture? What about Maggie and the baby? I just felt this very strange feeling of knowing everything would be okay, because life moves on, but also feeling like everything was unresolved. 

You can find more about Laura online at laurawarrell.com or on Instagram and Twitter @LKWarrell. 

*This review could also be found on my Goodreads page*

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