White Tears

January 31, 2018 7:51 PM - by Hari Kunzru

Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.
posted by DirtyOldTown (3 comments total)

This was fantastic. It manages to be, at various times and in various combinations, a comeuppance story about cultural appropriation, a satire of record collecting obsessives, a thriller, a love letter to classic blues sides, a ghost story, an effortless dismantling of analog fetishism, and more.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:56 AM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I just picked this up after seeing the post and am about 40 pages in. Good so far, but I'll check back after I finish it.
posted by Literaryhero at 8:06 PM on February 1, 2018

Ok, I am back. I couldn't put it down. I am glad I saw this post because I had never heard of the book before. Thanks.
posted by Literaryhero at 9:33 PM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]