Noise

January 22, 2009
Verdict: Inspired by the art rock band Sonic Youth, the stories collected here might find a receptive audience in the right YA collection, but readers are advised instead to go straight to the source and consult the seminal album Daydream Nation. Background: For this first entry in the new "Noise" series, editor Wild commissioned the likes of Mary Gaitskill, Shelley Jackson, and Tom McCarthy to dream up 22 short stories based on the songbook of Sonic Youth. Unfortunately, even those who appreciate the band's place in rock'n'roll history and its vast influence on legions of great bands will probably find these stories too amateurish to stand on their own.-John Helling, Bloomfield-Eastern Greene Cty. P.L.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2009
In a collection of 22 stories inspired by the music of Sonic Youth, an American alt-rock band with a strong punk ethos, most of the writers are relative unknowns, the exceptions being Katherine Dunn (Geek Love, 1989) and Mary Gaitskill, whose Secretary was made into the indie movie Secretary. Given the dark content of the bands songs, its hardly surprising that their contributions tend toward the sinister (the exceedingly ugly cover indicates the nature of what lies within). Their topics range from suicide to repression to social disintegration to addiction. Most are quite short, sometimes no more than a few pages, yet they reverberate with tension. The best of them, such as J. Robert Lennons Death to Our Friends, Matt Thornes Disappearer, and Catherine OFlynns Snare, Girl, are haunting and often disturbing, hinting of unpredictability and mystery, residing in a world located somewhere between reality and fantasy. Like the music they emulate, these stories keep the reader slightly off-kilter. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldoprovides the introduction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)