The Song Is You [Paperback]

Megan Abbott (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster; First Printing edition (2007)
• ISBN-10: 0743291727
• ISBN-13: 978-0743291729
• ASIN: B001HKX130
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

More About the Author

MEGAN ABBOTT is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Die a Little, The Song Is You, Queenpin and Bury Me Deep, which was nominated for six awards: the Edgar Award, Hammett Prize, the Macavity, Anthony and Barry Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in Wall Street Noir, Detroit Noir, Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, Phoenix Noir, Storyglossia, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer, Queens Noir and the LA Noire Anthology.

Her upcoming novel, The End of Everything, comes out in July 2011.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English Literature and went on to receive her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She lives in Queens, New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Song is a Hit, January 21, 2007

By 

J. Nazare - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Song Is You: A Novel (Hardcover)

Megan Abbott, in her terrfic second novel, The Song is You, proves a writer with a keen understanding of hard-boiled noir and a vivid sense of the time period of which she writes. The novel instantly transports the reader to the Hollywood scene of the mid-20th Century, in all its grandeur and grotesqueness. Readers interested in (the inner workings of) Hollywood will love the sense of realism that this novel creates.

Inevitably, the comparisons will be to the work of James Ellroy (Like The Black Dahlia, The Song is You offers a fictional extrapolation of a real-life unsolved mystery from mid-century L.A.). In many ways, though, Abbott's is a quieter and tighter novel, a more affecting reading experience. Abbott deserves kudos for foregoing the use of first-person narration by a male protagonist A)because it's been done to death in this genre, and B)because the third-person perspective simply works better here. As readers, we are able to get inside the protagonist's head and experience his doubts and dilemmas as he proceeds with his investigations (rather than having a first-person narrator telling us his story in retrospect). We are on closer terms with the whole character, and not just recipients of the voice of a narrator. This, of course, only heightens the impact of the novel's ending (which is as moving as it is surprising).

I recommend this book highly not just to fans of noir-tinged mysteries, but also to anyone who appreciates good writing. Like many of the characters and settings depicted here, the prose is wonderfully seductive. Some genre fiction is meant to be hastily consumed, and some is meant to be relished. The Song is You definitely falls into the latter category.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your new favorite SONG, April 5, 2007

By 

Shannon Clute "Clute at noircast" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Song Is You: A Novel (Hardcover)

Megan Abbott's THE SONG IS YOU may be the best throwback hard-boiled novel ever written. It's part Chandler, part Ellroy, yet all her own--a masterpiece of nostalgic longing and pulp nerve.

Abbott's fictional worlds are as glamorous and ugly as Rick's Café Américain--teeming with life, and darkness both foreign and familiar. They make you say "what the hell" and belly up to the bar, where an endless procession of compelling lowlifes and tarnished heroes file past you like a cortège, so close you can smell their breath as they whisper stories you'd swear were your own.

Her prose is bourbon straight-up; it makes your heart burn and your guts hurt, and as it goes to your head a crooked smile twists your mug and sticks. All you can do is nod, and mutter, "you're right, Megan, you've got us pegged--we're all suckers." But you hang around like a bad blind date. Why? Because somewhere in your aching marrow you know the French are right: melancholy is the sweetest emotion.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Noir, March 4, 2007

By 

Dorene (West Bloomfield, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Song Is You: A Novel (Hardcover)

Megan Abbott has made a solid fan of me. She's smart, she's talented and she knows how to do her homework. The dark underbelly of 50s Hollywood, replete with characters whose motivations run the gamut from simple survival to satisfying their grotesque and sometimes terrifying urges, is evoked effortlessly in prose the big boys of noir can't touch. The Song is You may be a noir fan's dream, but the writing is so lyrical and precise that this book will appeal to all readers of great fiction.