Static by Brendan Gillen

★★★★★ “Reverberates with the drumbeat of why we make art.” Will Musgrove, author of Asphalt Dreaming

For Paul, stealing is easy. When he's hungry, he strolls into a bodega and steals lunch. When rent’s due, he steals records and flips them for cash. As a lonely kid growing up in Ohio’s Rust Belt, stealing was the only way he could score the hip hop records and production equipment that fueled his musical dreams.

Now he’s in NYC fighting to keep his once-ascendant band alive and his life from falling apart. His bank account is flatlining. The love of his life has broken his heart. Bunky, his bandmate, is ditching him for Eloise, a soulful vagabond with an intoxicating voice. When financial trouble forces his parents from their lifelong home, Paul ramps up his stealing to save his family from collapse. And in a fever of creativity, he begins to steal from the voices in his life to make the music he’s sure will save his soul.

Set against the modern music industry, where a single social post can change your destiny, STATIC is alive to the weight of familial expectations, the pursuit of our deepest hopes and dreams, and the struggle to make meaningful connections in the anxiety of the digital age.

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Publication date: 16-July-2024

ISBN: 978-3-98832-073-5

Pages: 292