WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARDAfter 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 … 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.
more
Wow! What a fantastic book. I really was rooting for Rosemary as she took a chance and ventured out into the real world with real people. She grew a lot in this book. Luce lived for the music and the performance. The power of music is an awesome thing. Thank you for such a wonderful story.
Never has a science fiction book struck so close to home as this one! Although Pinsker wrote this before Covid, she did a fantastic job of predicting how an extended lockdown could affect society.
As a musician, what I find most fascinating is that she focuses on lockdown’s devastating effect on performing musicians. Except for a few stars, most musicians
have no economic room for error, and if gigs vanish because people are afraid of congregating, there goes the musicians’ living. Pinsker is a musician as well as an author, so it’s a great use of her personal experience!
One huge caveat: In Pinsker’s fictional world, the problem to be overcome is convincing people to get over their fear and come to concerts. In the real world, of course, it isn’t that simple, because Covid is an omnipresent reason to stay home. Following the solution laid out in this book would result in sickness, agony, and death.
But I can’t blame Pinsker for that. The situation she postulates is different than the reality we face. In her world, people are so spooked by their plague that in ten years they’re still scared to congregate. Fear, not disease, holds them back. This book is about getting over that fear for the love of music.
Where do start when the present world is written between the covers of a newfound author. A Song for Anew Day exemplifies a paradox of modern-day society without knowing it would be so true in such a short period of time from its release. Sarah Pinsker tells of a world in a unique set of first-person before POV and after third-person POV. The unique perspectives allow Luce Cannon and Rosemary Laws (the names an Irony of beauty in terms of the characterization and sub-themes) to represent the larger picture of the views of the world. The message is clear that a song for a new day is needed when the world takes to one extreme or another and free will is taken off the table. A Song for a New Day is a must-read!
Let freedom ring in the growl of an angry guitar chord! Sarah Pinsker’s A Song For a New Day is an absorbing tale of a quiet, all-too-believable American dystopia in which a passion for music becomes the secretive, surprising seed of rebellion.
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.
A compelling book about the importance of music — and any sort of art — in a world where it seems like the least essential thing. This is an expertly drawn post-catastrophe world peopled by compassionately written characters.
Woven through Pinsker’s meticulously crafted future of technology-enabled isolation and corporate-consumerist powerlessness is a stirring anthem against the politics of fear. A dazzling tale told in multiple voices, with not a single note out of place. This is the lyrical protest song that we have always needed, perhaps more so now than ever.
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.
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.
A Song For a New Day is amazing. Pinsker has one of the strongest voices for character in fiction today; everything her characters do is compelling. Pinsker accomplishes a scary look at a future and still gives us comfort within it. She helps us remember that the world isn’t over yet, after all.
Sarah Pinsker shares an unsparing vision of a near-future world only a few degrees removed from our own, but has the nerve and audacity to leaven the darkness with hope. A powerful novel whose unforgettable characters channel humanity’s true superpowers: art and the act of creation.
A Song for a New Day is a compulsively readable story about music, freedom, taking chances, and living with your past. I meant to read it slowly, savoring Pinsker’s near-future world-building and her perfect descriptions of performance, but I ended up gulping it down, so eager to see what happens next for Luce and Rosemary, each brave and resourceful in her own way.
Sarah Pinsker plays genre like a favorite guitar, and I am in awe of her talents. How can a writer so new be so central, so necessary?
A full-throated call to arms in the service of music, creation, and shared experience, A Song for a New Day resists both extremes and easy tropes, offering hope in the face of catastrophe through the engrossing stories of characters you’ll want to spend more time with.
A Song for a New Day is a must-read from a new voice you won’t forget.
Sarah Pinsker imbues her long-awaited debut novel with heart, humor, dystopian horror, and a probing look at the reality and unreality of pop stardom.
I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.
I’m a big fan of Sarah Pinsker’s work. I adored her collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and have been genuinely excited that her first novel would be inspired by her fantastic novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road.” The book absolutely lived up to my high expectations.
Pinsker’s science fiction is eerily plausible: a near-future world where a series of terrorist attacks and illness with high mortality have led to laws against congregations of people. Society fully embraces the digital and insular, relying on drone delivery for most all goods and on virtual experiences for dating, sports events, and–most notably for this book–concerts, with StageHoloLive being the major purveyor of much entertainment.
Enter the two protagonists: Luce, a gifted musician on the cusp of going big when the world fell apart, and Rosemary, a young woman rendered agoraphobic by her parents and culture, but who perkily heads out to find undercover musical acts as part of her new job for StageHoloLive. All of the characters in the book are nuanced and realistic, and Pinsker’s own background in bands completely grounds the world. This develops into a book with some shades of Charles de Lint’s works, yet with an original, fresh approach to a timeless theme: a celebration of music, of EXPERIENCING music, of how much more is involved than merely listening.
This book is beautiful, and its depths with linger with me for a long while.
I enjoyed this one, both for its fantastic descriptions of music (how it feels to see a live show, the power of a great song, the community) and for its timely warning about how a society can fracture and fall into isolation and mistrust due to blind belief and authority-stoked fear.
I would have liked Pinsker to expand a bit more on Luce’s background growing up in a very closed community since it was a prescient allegory for the events to come. I also wanted to know what happened after the ending!
Overall, a really creative take on the dystopian genre that often hits pretty close to home.