I first saw The Distant Hours on a grocery store shelf (yes, I am someone who actually browses the paltry book section at the supermarket - political memoirs and fad diet betsellers galore). I rarely seek out stories to read. I like to just find them. And maybe you can never judge a book by its cover, but title and artwork had me picking up this tiny giant of a novel and, next, I was off to my public library to check it out (get yourself the best present ever, if you don't have one: a library card). I cannot get over this book. It haunted me. It haunts me still (like, up-late-into-the-summer-nights, listening-for-creaks-in-floorboards haunting). Kate Morton's tale of the Sisters Blythe crazy-eights through decades, weeks, and days as a young editor, her mother and an isolated family of ancient spinsters piece together a mystery of literature, loneliness, and madness. Just like Edie and Meredith, I became enchanted by these characters, despite my instigated imaginings of the unspeakable things they'd done. Morton's charming and suspenseful ramble towards closure is tragic with a touch of bittersweet. The past will always hold on to some secrets.
Though it hardly felt it to me, The Distant Hours is nearly 600 pages long. A book (though deliciously) so cumbersome needs a gargantuan playlist. This mixtape is that - it's 24 songs. The list was grown from two instrumental tracks shuffled back-to-back one night in novel-and-mixtape serendipity: "Sydney to Newcastle" (The Middle East) and "The Violet Hour" (The Civil Wars). After this, I found myself searching for lyricless songs, wanting moments in this book to have accompaniment, but to talk for themselves. "Sydney to Newcastle" soundtracked Meredith's evacuation to Milderhurst (train conductor-speak and all), The Low Anthem's "Music Box" the night Tom Cavill never came, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore's "Flyrock #2" and Noah & the Whale's "Paradise Stars" the fading ghosts of two lovers on a Notting Hill windowsill.
This story takes place between 1939 and 1992. Not a single song on this mixtape comes from any of the time in between (or the bookends). I let it be this way, not hoping to score the era of Morton's paper dolls. Instead, I wanted songs that evoked a sense of another time (those distant hours) as a young person can only imagine it: Johnny Flynn's folktale warble on "Lost and Found", Beirut's whimsical waltz "Forks and Knives (La Fete)", Grizzly Bear's "Dory" (opening with an otherworldly chorus that could have been Juniper Blythe's 'visitors'). Tori Amos and Florence + the Machine match Juniper's fiercely independent spirit in song - and even her appearance as a cat-eyed enchantress. Rogue Wave's "Love's Lost Guarantee" starts musically clock-like, ticking time and channeling June's abandonment. The inevitable tragedy, when told, had to beat like a heart in my head; cue Nick Cave's "Midnight Man" (also so close to Saffy's nightmare Mud Man). I cannot think of an album that does melancholia more beautifully than Beck's Sea Change ("It's All In Your Mind"). Laura Marling sings of "Night Terror", a man's madness and his protector. Finally, I titled this novel and a mixtape with a line from Bon Iver's "Towers". A story like this cannot be told in tunes without Justin Vernon's ethereal voice, singing of young love (and where there is a castle, there is a tower). Morton wrote, "The ancient walls sing the distant hours". This is how they sing to me.
Soundtrack to a novel: The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
1. Vapour Trail, Josh Ritter as The Cake Sale
2. Lost and Found, Johnny Flynn
3. Welcome to England, Tori Amos
4. Pear, Damien Jurado
5. Love's Lost Guarantee, Rogue Wave
6. The Violet Hour, The Civil Wars
7. It's All In Your Mind, Beck
8. Sydney to Newcastle, The Middle East
9. Forks and Knives (La Fete), Beirut
10. Dory, Grizzly Bear
11. I Remembered What I Was Going To Say (The Silly Pillows), Nada Surf
12. Towers, Bon Iver
13. The Garden That You Planted, Sea Wolf
14. Remnants and Pictures, Mimicking Birds
15. Lemonworld, The National
16. Night Terror, Laura Marling
17. Midnight Man, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
18. Music Box, The Low Anthem
19. To The Ghosts Who Write History Books, The Low Anthem
20. What the Water Gave Me, Florence + the Machine
21. Shallow Grave, The Tallest Man on Earth
22. You Are One of the Only Outsiders Who Really Understands Us, Fanfarlo
23. Flyrock #2, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore
24. Paradise Stars, Noah & the Whale
Listen to this mixtape on Spotify (partial)
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