She didn’t think about that first song again for years, and by the time she remembered, it was almost too late. She was embarrassed about the whole thing, and so she pretended to herself that it hadn’t happened. This convinced Laura that the first song hadn’t really been hers. The next day she wrote another song: this one wasn’t perfect it wasn’t even okay it was barely a song. Laura started to think that she must have heard it somewhere and remembered it. Callie asked where she’d heard it and didn’t believe her when she said she’d written it, because it was the kind of song that sounds like it has always existed. Her mother made an approving noise and went back to paying attention to one of Laura’s brothers. She played it on her guitar alone in her bedroom, and then for her best friend, Callie, and then for her mother. She didn’t know that the song was perfect, just that it was as good as anything on the radio. She still thought, then, that making something was primarily a way to have fun. It was the first song she’d ever written, so she didn’t understand how hard it was to write even an okay song, or how hard it was to make anything new, in general. When Laura was sixteen she wrote a perfect song. It is a delightful and poignant tale of music and motherhood, ambition and compromise-of life, in all its dissonance and harmony. “A zippy and profound story of love, loss, heredity, and parenthood (Emma Straub), Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines in our most important relationships, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura’s songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams. Laura has built a stable life in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to the one she envisioned when she left Ohio all those years ago, and she’s taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. Their time together is stormy and short-lived-but will reverberate for the rest of Laura’s life.įifteen years later, Laura’s teenage daughter, Marie, is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. It’s the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. Have you ever wondered what your mother was like before she became your mother, and what she gave up in order to have you? “An intoxicating blend of music, love, and family from one of the essential writers of the internet generation” (Stephanie Danler).

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