Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

Laura Warrell makes a striking debut with the musical Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, weaving together women’s voices like a jam session … Warrell’s sentences are sinuous, her characters fully formed, as they perform a dance of seduction and rebuttal, pursuit and withdrawal, yearning and regret. Using an elegant structure with echoes of Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, she weaves a lushly textured tale of real emotional depth, conjuring a world of voices moving in concert. * TELEGRAPH *Set to be one of 2023’s biggest books with plaudits from Celeste Ng and Oprah, this multi-narrative story is all about the power of being a woman, destructive love and hopeful endurance. * STYLIST *Soulful … Structured like a jam session, the novel favors a series of riffs over any one melodic theme. Warrell gives a supporting cast of women their own solos, through close-third-person chapters that detail their entanglements with the elusive Circus … Elegant, unexpected and wrenching as the “fierce” sounds that emerge from Circus’s trumpet … Unforgettable. – Lauren Christensen * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *[An] emerging literary superstar … Warrell writes a mean bad boy! This sensual and sensuous debut is a kaleidoscopic character study, a polyphonic riff on the modern-day Casanova from the perspectives of the myriad women in his wake. Both visceral and finely observed, the novel captures social nuance and emotional wreckage with precision and compassion. * OPRAH DAILY, 30 of the Best Fall Fiction Books of 2022 *Told in a rich array of voices, this gorgeously written debut explores the myriad syncopations of love and desire. Laura Warrell writes with an enormous understanding of human nature, a boundless sympathy for life’s complications, and a keen eye for life’s unexpected joys. * Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere *Beautifully and cleverly written, Laura Warrell’s Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a stunner. The novel’s tender, sensual, enchanting prose entices you into a world of deep longing and so much heartache. Still, I didn’t want to leave it. A truly mesmerizing debut! * Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies *The most memorable novels of my life are boiling over with insatiably written secondary characters that crave their own books. The same can be said about our most jamming jazz quartets. This peculiar cacophony is exactly what we see in at least five characters in Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. Koko, for example, is a once in lifetime, once in a galaxy character. Laura Warrell has crafted a world within the world with the achy mystery, wonder and subtexual bounce of the greatest jazz. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a soulful, fleshy and absolutely stunning debut. Warrell will re-teach us how to wail, pause and reckon. I am thankful. * Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy *Jazz sets the tone in this tender debut from Laura Warrell … Through smoky bars and clubs, hotel rooms, and bedrooms in New York, Boston, and Miami, Warrell spins a big-hearted multicultural world that never ignores race but still allows each character to live their lives as they see fit. * APARTMENT THERAPY, If You’re Going to Read One Book in September, Make It This One *Moody, sexy, and (sometimes painfully) real. * PEOPLE, Best Fall Books of 2022 *A deeply engaging multifocal debut novel … [Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm] is built like a hastily assembled jazz ensemble, a group of players taking turns on a rough theme, gathering their solos into a rich, indelible composition, so much stronger than the sum of its parts. * LITERARY HUB *

Laura Warrell is a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, Racialicious, Post Road Magazine, and the Boston Globe. She has taught creative writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America in Los Angeles, where she now lives.

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