Signal To Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I would like to thank Jess from Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Solaris
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, discovers how to cast spells using music, and with her friends Sebastian and Daniela will piece together their broken families, and even find love... Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns for her estranged father's funeral, reviving memories from her childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? Is there any magic left?
Music when you grow up has a way of giving an instant shape and expression to our emotions that particularly as teenagers, we do not yet have the language for telling people what we feel. As we get older those same songs can bring us back to our past selves within just a few beats and give us an opportunity o see a person we haven’t been for 20, 30, 40 years. A chance to see how we have changed or perhaps need to change further. In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s wonderful fantasy novel Signal to Noise re-issued in the UK this is a tale with a focus on growing up and re-confirming something we all know deep down that music is magic.
Merche in 2009 is a music obsessed computer programmer, returning to Mexico City after many years working abroad after the death of her father. She has stayed away from the city since she was fifteen, but family duties cannot be ignored. Charged with sorting through his extensive record collection Merche finds her life growing up in the 80s on her mind and she also finds that her old friends once close and now parted Daniela and Sebastian are around. This makes the mysterious time in 1988 when the three discovered that they could with music make what they want happened but with ever stranger and devastating results. Will the past repeat itself?
Signal to Noise feels a remarkably intimate book focused on the relationships of the main characters but in particular Merche and Sebastian. We will get to know these two friends and their loves and hopes – in some ways Moreno-Garcia makes us also understand both better than they do themselves. At its heart though we have two best friends who do not understand that they actually love each other. Neither wants to try to start that conversation despite the way they pretty much live in each other’s pockets, they share Merche’s music and Sebastian’s books and constantly tease or argue to avoid every showing an emotion. Instead, each one has crushes on the two people at school who are their direct opposites the popular Isadora and Constantino. Now on its own that would be any teenager coming of age tale but Moreno-Garcia adds an unusual dimension in Merche discovering that certain records played with all three give the group the power to make a wish come true – money, popularity and more could all be in sight. Merche also sees a chance for something even greater.
We shift from 2009 to 1988 to watch the events that led to Merche leaving in anger and how she deals with the same people on her return. I liked Merche because she is still someone in their mid-thirties with growing up to do. A lot of this as we will discover is down to the events of this year in the 80s but she doesn’t handle talking about her feelings well at all. When Sebastian arrives on her doorstep again, she tends to go on the attack first to prevent being hurt. The success of the story is how we get to understand that underneath the armours of the sharp smile and comeback remark is someone quite sensitive; struggling with grief, betrayal and lost love and at a crossroads in her life. We tend to think growing up is linear and only in our teenager phase but actually processing our life is a constant work in progress and part of this tale is very much Merche finally learning these lessons. One character I’d love to have seen a little more of is Daniella the quiet peacemaker of the group who understands these two better than they do and a bit more of her perspective being the more dreamy yet stable of the three would have been fascinating.
In our 80s scenes its less constant 80s references on every page (this is no Ready Player One) but a very accurate feel for the joys and horror of growing up. That accurate feeling that no one but your friends understand you; that teachers can be as cruel as the bullies and our on/off love of our families. With Merche is watching her parent’s marriage disintegrate and we watch her DJ father embrace all the signs of a midlife crisis as well as a rapidly escalating drinking problem which we know in the future will kill him. With Sebastian it’s a poorer family with a violent father and a brother who doesn’t understand his sensitive geeky brother and yet both families’ relationships are strained yet equally loving. They’re not pits of despair to escape but they do shape our characters’ outlooks and even as we see in the 2009 scenes the balances are ever shifting. Moreno-Garcia very accurately makes us see the world through teenage and adult eyes and for me this works even if you’ve never played a vinyl record or played a Walkman yourself as these moments in 1988 could easily have been mine in 1994.
One interesting aspect of me reading this novel for the first time is I’m much more familiar with Moreno-Garcia’s later work. This book is a reminder that debuts are always fascinating, but writers will mature and strengthen over the course of their future stories. Merche is a classic prickly female lead we will see re-occurring in a variety of forms and while I’m used to specific historical period being explored I do think the worldbuilding that Moreno-Garcia shows us is both familiar to anyone growing up but also captures a unique subtle feel of what Mexican teenagers had to deal with – the use/fear of the church; town gossips; teenagers having to do a school nativity all help to underline the familiar and the unusual. By the end we understand the world and even though some of the music described is not familiar to my UK ears the reasons that they evoke passion is made clear.
When magic enters it initially just seems just for fun things – riches lead to a fully stocked wallet being found but as Merche grows more interested we get some darker hues that those more familiar with Moreno-Garcia’s later horror novels will recognise. Merche’s temper is dangerous, and magic is seductive. We see the undoing of her friendships begin and in some ways this tale is more a tragedy of miscommunications; mistakes and pride leading to a huge fall. But this novel also believes in second chances. There are wonderful tonal shifts and some exquisite turns of phrase to help explain what people see or express that show even in this debut tale that Moreno-Garcia is an exceptional writer.
With musical hits helping to capture moods throughout there is so much for the reader to enjoy. And yes there is a playlist can be found! For me it has been a delight to sample this earlier tale from one of my favourite authors but also an opportunity to relive very accurately the joys and horrors of learning to grow up and a gentle reminder that that is a life-long process. Heartfelt, bewitching and on occasion disquieting this is a wonderful ride through time and well worth your time.
