Review
PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST• GMA BUZZ PICK • AN OPRAH DAILY FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A PEOPLE MUST READ • A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE NOMINEE • GOLDEN POPPY BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A Most Anticipated Book: The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, PEOPLE, The Millions, Literary Hub, The Root, Apartment Therapy, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Oprah Daily •
“Soulful . . . Structured like a jam session, the novel favors a series of riffs over any one melodic theme. Warrell gives a supporting cast of women their own solos, through close-third-person chapters that detail their entanglements with the elusive Circus . . . Elegant, unexpected and wrenching as the “fierce” sounds that emerge from Circus’s trumpet . . . Unforgettable.” —Lauren Christensen, New York Times Book Review
“[An] emerging literary superstar . . . Warrell writes a mean bad boy! This sensual and sensuous debut is a kaleidoscopic character study, a polyphonic riff on the modern-day Casanova from the perspectives of the myriad women in his wake. Both visceral and finely observed, the novel captures social nuance and emotional wreckage with precision and compassion.” —Oprah Daily, “30 of the Best Fall Fiction Books of 2022 to Cuddle Up With”
"Soulful and gripping . . . In her debut novel, Warrell assembles a lush orchestra of female voices to sing a story about passion and risk, fathers and daughters and the missed opportunities of unrequited love." —The Millions
“Circus Palmer, a 40-year-old jazz trumpet player, has spent a lifetime fleeing from romantic entanglements. Left in his wake are all the former wives, single mothers and other women he has avoided, including his teenage daughter, Koko. Warrell’s engaging debut novel spotlights their stories, weaving together the lives of indelibly created characters as they struggle to forge and maintain intimate connections.” —The Washington Post, “10 Noteworthy Books for September”
“[A] moody and musical debut . . . No man is an island, not even a loner who has dodged commitment for all of his 40 years. And when a man like that goes off the rails the impact on others can be profound . . . Warrell excels at describing these points of contact—more often bruising impact than connection—conveying the varying degrees of longing, loneliness, and even aversion that can bring two people together . . . Sprawling and ambitious.” —Clea Simon, Boston Globe
“Moody, sexy, and (sometimes painfully) real.” —People, “Best Fall Books 2022”
“Jazz sets the tone in this tender debut from Laura Warrell . . . Through smoky bars and clubs, hotel rooms, and bedrooms in New York, Boston, and Miami, Warrell spins a big-hearted multicultural world that never ignores race but still allows each character to live their lives as they see fit.” —Apartment Therapy, “If You’re Going to Read One Book in September, Make It This One”
“A highly lyrical blockbuster debut . . . An enticing exploration of jazz music and the inner lives of women.” —Hollywood Reporter, “What to Read Right Now: Timely Books With Hollywood Appeal”
“A buzzed-about debut that takes readers behind the scenes of jazz clubs and into the private lives of touring musicians.” —The Boston Globe, “The 20 Books We’re Most Excited to Read This Fall”
“A deeply engaging multifocal debut novel . . . [Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm] is built like a hastily assembled jazz ensemble, a group of players taking turns on a rough theme, gathering their solos into a rich, indelible composition, so much stronger than the sum of its parts.” —Literary Hub, “22 Novels You Need to Read This Fall”
“‘Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm,’ proclaimed Jelly Roll Morton, and Warrell plays her exceptional first novel with plenty of rhythm and tenderness, delivered in brisk, mordantly gorgeous language that has its own natural flow. Each woman has her own life, her own story . . . and as in any good jazz piece these stories play off one another seamlessly. A highly recommended story of love and life that makes beautiful music.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“An impressive debut novel weaves storylines of lost love, coming-of-age, and midlife crisis . . . Warrell displays delicately wrought characterization and a formidable command of physical and emotional detail. Her more intimate set pieces deliver sensual, erotic vibrations . . . she knows how to write about the way it feels to deliver jazz—and receive it. A captivating modern romance evoking love, loss, recovery, and redemption.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Warrell unfurls in her engaging debut the story of a peripatetic trumpet player. . . [She] evocatively describes the women who inspire Circus’s music and his lust . . . and finds the sadness deep in his heart. Warrell hits all the right notes." —Publishers Weekly
“Warrell tells this powerful, polyphonic tale mainly through the voices of those people Circus loves and leaves . . . All of these narrators appear and reappear as recurring motifs in the fugue-like tapestry of Circus' life, each playing a variation on the theme of this deeply flawed but charismatic man's hold on them, but also displaying their determination to establish individual lives . . . [A] remarkably assured, unforgettable debut.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Told in a rich array of voices, this gorgeously written debut explores the myriad syncopations of love and desire. Laura Warrell writes with an enormous understanding of human nature, a boundless sympathy for life’s complications, and a keen eye for life’s unexpected joys.” —Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
“Beautifully and cleverly written, Laura Warrell’s Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a stunner. The novel’s tender, sensual, enchanting prose entices you into a world of deep longing and so much heartache. Still, I didn’t want to leave it. A truly mesmerizing debut!” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“The most memorable novels of my life are boiling over with insatiably written secondary characters that crave their own books. The same can be said about our most jamming jazz quartets. This peculiar cacophony is exactly what we see in at least five characters in Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. Koko, for example, is a once in lifetime, once in a galaxy character. Laura Warrell has crafted a world within the world with the achy mystery, wonder and subtexual bounce of the greatest jazz. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a soulful, fleshy and absolutely stunning debut. Warrell will re-teach us how to wail, pause and reckon. I am thankful.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
“In an exceptional debut, Warrell turns love, or at least the love life of musician Circus Palmer into the proverbial jazz club: dark and sexy, freeing and frightening, ecstatic and lonely. This story is an example of how love, in all of its polyrhythms, can sometimes sound like song, and other times like noise. And this book is an example of how a great story can become a bass drum, kicking and thumping in your belly far after it’s over. A modern masterpiece.” —Jason Reynolds, author of Look Both Ways
“Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a sultry and subversive debut. Laura Warrell’s prose sparkles, but it’s what she’s got to say about sex and love and being a woman that will take your breath away. This book is a love song, and Warrell knows how to hold all the right notes.” —Rachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever
“Lyrical, sweeping, and life affirming, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is an astonishing debut that wraps you in the passionate pulse of its characters and their world, and doesn't let go until its pitch perfect final note.” —Liska Jacobs, author of Catalina and The Pink Hotel
“Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm kept me turning the pages to see what shenanigans the titular jazz musician pulled next, while also waiting to cheer the moment when the women in his life finally blocked his number. Laura Warrell has cooked up one of the most compelling, entertaining, and heartfelt reads in recent memory.” —Chris Terry, author of Black Card
In Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, we meet trumpet player Circus Palmer, as problematic as he is enigmatic, as irresistible as your favorite song, and the women whom he seeks out, and walks away from, are just as compelling. Laura Warrell writes with such assurance and grace—her sentences sing—and she has created a world I didn’t want to leave: it’s sexy and profound, painful and joyful. A remarkable, unforgettable debut.” —Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
“A book about desire and about love, about where these emotions meet and part and sometimes interlace in inescapable ways. But it is about so much more: these characters, for instance, painted by Warrell’s uniquely masterful brush so that even in small moments they seem entirely whole, entirely alive. Sentence by sentence, this is a novel showing its author at the top of her game—a classic in the making.” —Brian Castleberry, author of Nine Shiny Objects
About the Author
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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRO
*
Circus
The girl may have been the end for him. The end’s beginning, like the bend of a road too slight to notice where it leads. She could have happened to him a day later or a day before, but she was there on that day, in that moment, just hours after Circus Palmer turned forty, a predictable time for a certain kind of end to come, and just seconds after Maggie slid her hand from his wrist and with her lips parted just enough to slip his finger through if he’d wanted, whispered, “I have something to tell you.”
Outstretched on a chaise longue beside the hotel pool, Circus watched from a distance as the girl—in her mid-twenties, he figured—did cartwheels alone on the beach, her linen skirt falling open to bare the smooth plane of her hips and the slide of her calves sloping up to her toes. She lured his eyes away from Maggie, who was lying in another chaise longue beside him. All afternoon Maggie had been acting strangely, staring at nothing and losing the thread of conversations. This wasn’t Maggie. Circus figured whatever it was she had to say wasn’t anything he wanted to hear, so he let his attention be taken by the girl doing flips back and forth across the sand. When she landed on her feet, her hair lashed across her back like a whip, her shoulders lifted and hands spread beneath the melon sunset as if she carried it on her fingertips. Hips, calves, toes, shoulders, hands, she circled in the air again.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Maggie hummed, the sound not fully making its way to him, not quite breaking through his focus. “But I thought you should know.”
If she were any other woman, he would have told her to come to the point. But this was Maggie, so he waited, a sense of dread needling in his gut. Chewing at the inside of his cheek—always his mouth needed something to do—he concentrated on the melody the girl made inside his head as he tapped a nervous rhythm on his knee.
“Listen to what I’m telling you.” The push in Maggie’s voice, major-keyed and salty, brought Circus back to the cabana, back to the Wild Turkey warm in his glass and Maggie beside him. Her lips were pursed as she stroked her long neck and watched the night begin to fall, possibly without noticing the girl, possibly trying not to.
Six days earlier, after not seeing each other for weeks, they’d arrived in Miami and hastily made their way to the hotel in order to get into a bed together. They’d paid extra for a room with a round marble bathtub where they could spend mornings sipping champagne before heading out to the city to visit Little Havana markets and smoke cigars. On the nights Circus played in the horn section of his friend’s band—the reason they’d made the trip—Maggie went into the city on her own, dancing in salsa bars and kicking drummers off their kits so she could play. And when he wasn’t gigging, they found hole-in-the-wall clubs where they could jam onstage with the band. Other players would recognize Maggie on occasion, asking what it was like to drum behind jazz greats and rock stars, and she’d tell stories about filled stadiums and rowdy tour buses, letting them craft fantasies around her. Usually Circus liked being the storyteller in a room, but watching Maggie hold court gave him a charge. That morning she’d sung Happy Birthday” to him playing a ukulele while wearing her bikini bottoms and a birthday hat. He’d laughed and lusted and wished they’d never have to leave the room.
But now this.
He’d come to Miami to draw a clean line between his first forty years and his next, and he’d invited Maggie because she was the only female in his life who knew how to be easy. He didn’t love traveling with women. A woman in the room meant ending the night back at the hotel where she was waiting.
“Sorry, baby.” He stroked her knee. “I’m listening.”
The air was slick with heat, the sky in full dusk. A breeze stuck in the palm trees clung stubbornly to coconuts instead of drifting down to cool him. As Maggie sipped a Manhattan, Circus felt crowded in a way he never had with her before.
“The sun’s going down.” He finished his drink and looked around for the server to bring another. “Why isn’t it getting cooler?”
A barman came with a bottle of bourbon from the other side of the deck, and Circus listened to the soft burble of the pour. Beside him, Maggie hiked up her dress to let the breeze reach across her brown thighs. He couldn’t stop himself from looking. To him, she’d always seemed designed rather than birthed, her body lean with crisp angles and slight curves. Circus resented her then for knowing how to steal his gaze from whatever spot on the horizon it had settled on, and he squirmed, sensing the tie lodged somewhere deep inside where he didn’t have access, the tie that attached him to her over three years—loosely, but attached nonetheless.
After the barman went away, he said, “I remember when I was a little tyke, me and my buddies did the math to see how old we’d be in 1999. Thought we’d be flying around in spaceships by then. Now here we are, 2013.” He looked over at Maggie, who didn’t seem to be listening. “Time, man.”
She answered only, “Light me a cigarette.”
Circus reached into his pants on the cement, pulled two Marlboros from the pack, lit them, and handed one to Maggie. He liked watching her smoke—the moist spread of her lips and the way she always let the tip of the cigarette linger at her mouth before she took a hit.
“I was late.” Casually, she ashed the cigarette into the air. “So I took the test.”
He let out a hard breath he didn’t know had been stuck in his throat and waited for her to smile, to laugh, to do something to let him know she was joking. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe, sugar.”
“We’re careful.”
“Only sometimes.”
“You sure it’s mine?”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Nice try.”
“I’ll be damned.” Circus opened his legs wider across the chaise. “We’re like a couple teenagers.”
A chuckle tapered out of Maggie’s mouth with a velvety line of smoke. “I didn’t think it could happen. Not with the number of years I got on me.”
“Baby, you’re not of this world. Who knows the miracles that body can do.” He took her hand, kissed the inside of her wrist, and linked his fingers through hers. “I got you, darlin’. We’ll take care of things when we get back to Boston.”
She ashed the cigarette again, winced.
“Right?”
The cigarette smoking between Maggie’s fingers and the liquor in her glass reassured him momentarily, but then he noticed the edge in her gaze.
“Maggie, come on,” he said.
“I’m thinking.”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool.”
“You know nothing good could come of this. Shit, I already got a kid barely talks to me.”
“Koko would talk to you plenty if you saw her once in a while.”
“Jesus, Maggie, don’t ask me to do something I’m no good at.”
“I didn’t ask you for a damn thing.”
Circus’s body seized as if everything keeping him alive had shut down at once. He tried to stay calm but felt like a cage was rising around him. He imagined climbing back through the moments of the day and settling into the space where he didn’t know so it wasn’t yet true, where she hadn’t yet told him so he was still free.
“Don’t do this to me,” he said. “Everything’s about to happen, you know this. I got Peacock Evans trying to set me up with that producer in New York so I gotta be ready, gotta focus. Man, just talking about it’s giving me the jitters.”
On the other side of the pool, a woman glanced up, letting her opened book fall to her chest to watch them. He was used to being watched with Maggie. They were loud and beautiful together.
Circus lowered his voice. “You got everything you could want in your world. You want some kid messing that up? You gonna let some kid get in the way of me finally having what I want? Don’t mess with what we got. You’re brilliant and kinky and don’t need jack from anybody. You’re my wildcat, Mags. Don’t get soft on me.”
When Maggie turned her eyes, Circus knew he had the choice to take back what he’d said or let it widen between them. Maggie rose from the chair, her body blocking his sun. He braced himself, his hand sweating around his glass. Maggie’s tall frame towered over him, holding him down. Even his clothes seemed to pull at their seams.
“Say something else,” she said.
He took a defiant sip of his bourbon. “You’re no mother.”
Maggie collected her bag and stormed across the deck, back inside the hotel. He was surprised to feel a twinge of regret at her walking away, but a swig of bourbon took care of that. It was the dread that stayed in his gut and grew solid, so that the only relief came from down the beach where the girl was pinwheeling through the air.
