A Song for a New Day
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
A Song for a New Day
Buy Now for $26.22
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dylan Moore
-
Nicol Zanzarella
-
Written by:
-
Sarah Pinsker
About this listen
Winner of the Nebula Award
After a global pandemic makes public gatherings illegal and concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music - and for one chance at human connection.
In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world - her music, her purpose - is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: She performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.
Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery - no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.
©2019 Sarah Pinsker (P)2019 Penguin AudioWhat the critics say
"An all-too plausible version of the apocalypse, rendered in such compelling prose that you won’t be able to put it down...a lively and hopeful look at how community and music and life goes on even in the middle of dark days and malevolent corporate shenanigans." (Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Get In Trouble)
"You'd better keep a copy of A Song for a New Day with you at all times, because this book will help you survive the future. Sarah Pinsker has written a wonderful epic about music, community, and rediscovering the things that make us human. Pinsker has an amazing ear for dialogue, a brilliant knack for describing music, and most importantly a profound awareness of silence, in both its positive and negative aspects. A Song for a New Day restored some of my faith in community, and I didn't even realize how much I needed this book right now." (Charlie Jane Anders, national best-selling author of All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night)
"Experiencing Sarah Pinsker's A Song For a New Day is like listening to a fine, well-rehearsed song unleashed live. It's a deeply human song of queer found family and the tension between independence and belonging, thoughtful and raw like the best live music. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when we privilege convenience over connection. If you love performance - the magic of head-thrown-back ecstatic musical communion - read this book." (Nicola Griffith, author of Hild)
What listeners say about A Song for a New Day
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall3 out of 5 stars
-
Performance3 out of 5 stars
-
Story3 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2021-01-28
As a musician, I enjoyed. But other parts lacking.
The writer must be quite a self-aware musician, but she's inexperienced at creating settings that indulge curiosity and build suspense. I wish the story explored the obviously topical themes, like lack of political engagement, or avoiding institutional surveillance, or how everyone either relies on or eschews the use of [what is essentially Discord] to communicate.
Meanwhile, the story meticulously documents the day-to-day life of characters, who sit in about 10 different cafes while the reader waits for something to happen. The writer's main point, "People are meant to interact with each other", gets blatantly re-stated in about 6 different outbursts which break the reader's immersion in the story.
I'll give a pass on the pandemic/lockdown descriptions since this book came out in 2019.
All that being said, I thought the story raised some good points. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the music. Describing how a song sounds without actually writing down the notes is a hard thing to do, and I am impressed how well this book was able to do it, and took every opportunity to do so.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!