Book Review: Deep Cuts
An emo story without a single emo song reference.
Hello! Welcome to a new section I’m launching here on Katrina Wrote This, where I do deeper reviews of books than the ones I share in my monthly reading recap posts. I’m kicking it off with a deep-dive into Holly Brickley’s Deep Cuts.
Spoilers ahead!
The book starts when Percy Marks is a college junior in the year 2000. At this point in my life, I was a high school freshman. Music is a huge part of Percy’s life, and as she talks about how music impacted her life in the early aughts, it made me nostalgic for my own high school and college years.
Percy tangentially knows Joe Morrow the way you tangentially know most people on your college campus. Then run into each other at a bar and get into a deep conversation about music, which leads to Percy helping Joe, who is a musician, with some of his songs. And thus kicks off a years long pseudo-partnership between Joe and Percy.
It’s no secret Percy is attracted to Joe. This is obvious to everyone, including Joe’s girlfriend, Zoe. But not to worry, Zoe is a lesbian and she breaks up with Joe and gives Percy her blessing to pursue him. Eventually, in a tense afternoon in the wake of 9/11, Percy makes her move…only to be rejected. Joe doesn’t want to mess up their friendship or lose the help Percy is giving him with his music.
Eventually, the trio graduates and goes their separate ways. Joe sees some moderate success with his band. Percy goes to grad school and tries to figure out what to do with her life. She loves music, but isn’t musically inclined. She just has strong opinions about music and believes she, and she alone, knows what makes a good song. (She is self aware about this, which to me makes her less insufferable, but you may disagree.) Post-grad she starts a music blog and gets a job at a trendsetter agency, where she’s sent to the streets of popular cities to report back to brand clients about what kids these days are into. (This was pre-influencers. What a time.)
Percy’s musical tastes definitely skew towards older music, meaning from the 70s or before, and the indie music that was popular at the time (The Shins, Neutral Milk Hotel) which makes sense for a college student. But it’s disappointing that Percy doesn’t seem to have ever dabbled in the emo music scene, because I think she really would have identified with some Dashboard Confessional, maybe some Taking Back Sunday. She’s got a whole chapter of her life dedicated to “Hey Ya!” by OutKast but not a single mention of Something Corporate? Girl, be so fr. She is the embodiment of emo and doesn’t even know it.
Then there’s Joe. Oh, Joey, Joey, Joey. Joe is the fragile male ego personified. And yet over the course of years - many of which she has zero contact with him - Percy remains attached to Joe. He’s the song that she cannot get out of her head, though for a large portion of this book I wished she would. He was toxic and no good for her and used her again and again and she let him. It was hard to say whether or not the author wanted us to root for Percy and Joe. I got the impression we were supposed to, but all I could see was red flags. Yet still I got it, because I saw a lot of myself in Percy. Her struggle to figure out where she fit into the world, always feeling as though she was on the edges and never part of something, working at a job that wasn’t really her at all but it paid the bills and she was good at it. I can identify with all of this, and could see myself falling into a toxic obsession with a sexy musician. The only difference is Percy is in her 20s for much of the novel, and I’m pushing 40. I have the gift of life experience and a growing lack of fucks. I would not have given Joe a second thought after what he did to Percy at that wedding. And bless Zoe for her patience with Percy’s Joe obsession over the years.
Let’s talk about Zoe, who I consider the real love interest of this story, even though it’s platonic. It’s not Percy’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Joe that drives this novel, but her friendship with Zoe. Zoe is her constant, her safe space, the one she calls in her times of need. The one who encourages and supports her. There’s a scene where Zoe and Percy are at a bar and Percy looks at her friend and is overwhelmed with love for her. That level of love you only get from a female friendship is incomparable to anything you’ll get from any man. Of course it’s Joe that brought Percy and Zoe together, and while at first it seemed Zoe would disappear into obscurity and Joe would take center stage (he would have loved that), it’s Zoe who sticks around. I loved that.
And that ending. There’s no way this can end in any way but disaster, right? I think we’re meant to believe Joe and Percy have matured and they’re capable of handling this next step, but I don’t buy it for a second. The toxic loop this pair has been stuck in since college is only going to continue. I want it to work for them, I really do (especially if Joe keeps dropping more lines like “Fuck him, I’m your boyfriend”) but Joe only truly cares about Joe, and Percy so desperately wants more from him than he can ever give.
Joe doesn’t let himself get close to people. His mom died when he was young, his father is an alcoholic, and he dated a lesbian for most of his formative years. Percy is constantly seeking approval. She wants to fit in. She wants to be liked She grew up in the shadow of her star athlete brother and struggles to see herself as a main character, even in her own life. It’s never going to work unless they tackle those issues, and at no point in this story do they do that.
Despite all that, I really enjoyed this book. It did start to make my anxiety rise towards the end, which takes place in 2008. The economy is in free-fall and they’re all stressed about jobs and money. Who’s going to tell them it’s so much worse in 2025? I long for the recession of 2008 when I was too young to really care.
This book felt deeply nostalgic and even thought I recognized 0.05% of the songs mentioned, I loved the way each chapter was framed by the music that impacted that particular time in Percy’s life. Don’t we all associate music with our own personal eras? This Low Rise Jeans post captures that nostalgic feeling of youth, but Daci is much braver than me in that she attempted to relive that era, something I’m positive I would not survive at this point in my life. She also alerted me to this playlist for Deep Cuts, which is extremely helpful since I was looking up each song individually as I read.
Overall I’m giving this one a 4 out of 5 stars and think it’s worth the hype it’s been getting, if even just for the conversation it spurs alone. I’ve seen it comped as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow meets Normal People, and that feels like a fair assessment.
Have you read it yet? What did you think? Were you, too, upset by a lack of mentions of TRL?