‘A novel about love, chaos and the music in between,” reads the cover of Claire Zorn’s latest novel, Better Days. It’s interesting to see a confluence of similar books published together: over the next few months there will also be Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, Once More from the Top by Emily Layden and Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston. All of these novels centre around musically gifted women and examine how their ambition and past loves and losses haunt them. Perhaps they’re inspired by the success of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six, or perhaps it’s simply part of the zeitgeist.
Music ultimately plays only a minor role in Better Days. Although Grace is a successful talent manager at a record label, the novel focuses more on family dynamics, women’s roles inside and outside the household, and how to grow up when you’re emotionally immature, with only occasional glimpses of understanding why music is important to Grace and the artistic sustenance it provides her.
After a devastating break-up with her boyfriend, the talented musician but commitment-phobic Trent, Grace moves to London. Compared with the Blue Mountains in Australia, where Grace grew up, London is a big change, and she finally feels like “real life” has started.
Grace’s friend Nish (possibly given the best lines in the book: “toddlers are fuckwits; they’ll break everything they touch” and “I meant go to Top Shop, not find some homeless Spaniard to shag”) helps her find a job as a receptionist at a small-time music management office. But Grace’s childhood listening to records with her father pays off: she has an ear for good musicians. She manages to nab up-and-coming star Ada Black and her career explodes. Ada is a prodigious talent – a mix of Amy Winehouse and Adele. She is superstar material, but suffers from overwhelming stage fright and impostor syndrome. Grace is the only one who can help her, and while she’s paid generously for the role, when she meets Ed and starts a family, being on call for Ada’s every whim becomes impossible.
Zorn doesn’t take a position on how women with demanding jobs should manage the struggle between parenting and work. She simply shows how it allows Grace to hide from her fears, how her relationships with her children are shaped by her absence and the inclusion of a nanny, and how her work allows Grace to continue to be herself in the face of so many people asking her to change.
Better Days skips between Sydney and London, between Grace’s university days and her life 20 years later, presumably to add tension about which romantic future Grace will choose.
It also slips between character point of view, though this is clearly Grace’s story. Despite being pitched as a book about love, the most compelling relationship isn’t Grace’s relationship with Trent, or with her husband, or even with Nish: it is between Grace and her mother Dorothy. Zorn’s sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Dorothy, struggling to find herself after a lifetime of sacrifice, was a highlight.
Better known for her YA books, Zorn is writing for adults for the first time in Better Days. There were at times a few too many parentheses ‒ sometimes to add humour, welcome; sometimes to dump a huge plot development, jarring ‒ but that is a minor quibble about an enjoyable and easy-going read.
Better Days, by Claire Zorn (Atlantic, $37.99), is out now.
