Radio Cacophony

by Michelle Dove

House Shows, Couch Swaps, and Roommate Swaps. Genres, Subgenres, and Post-genres. With its confessional language and intimate tête-à-tête style, Radio Cacophony pulls us into one woman’s familiar-yet-singular world of social anxiety, sexuality, and musical discovery. In these short vignettes centered around a college radio station in the early aughts, Michelle Dove builds a cool and fearless interplay between individuality and community, one where eccentricity coexists with the yearning to belong. Comical, animated, and provoked, Radio Cacophony is full of the imperfect encounters that make us human and buoyant revelations that we can love who we become.

Genres: Fiction

132 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2016

Reviews

[Lauren Dostal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did I love this book of brief vignettes about college life and working at a radio station? I did love this book of brief vignettes about college life and working at a radio station. Will I be shelving it on my bookshelf beside Nick Hornsby’s High Fidelity? Will I, in fact compare it for the rest of my days to a bookish version of Empire Records? The likelihood is high, though, as they say, only time will tell. It may, in fact, become the case that I will one day begin to describe Empire Records as the filmatic version of Radio Cacophony. Until then, well done, Michelle Dove and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.

[Jennifer J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a distinct pleasure to read a book so emotional and intimate (and so accurately depicting the things we did when we were young that it makes you call up that terrible cliche "on thank god there was not facebook back then so that the whole world was not privy to that time we took a bunch of ecstasy and broke into the park an spun in circles on the tire swing for 4 hours while drinking tequila out of pint glasses because it made us feel like we were floating"). It's even more delightful to experience that raw mix of joy and shame in a text by an author as you are becoming friends with her.

[Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There are questions we could've been asking—what does music teach us about repetition? I mean, what does repetition teach us about heartbreak? I mean, what does heartbreak have in common with music? [...] These are the questions that Twin A is not so sure that we weren't asking all along. Twin B, on the other hand, is confident we never asked them..."

[Aster Wamser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[Riley Zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 16 year old self felt painfully seen.

[Andrew Cruze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michelle Dove has created a beautiful, breezy book about life in a surreal work environment--a community radio station--, about navigating college friendships, about being young and figuring out what home looks like, and about the inevitability of change. I loved the time I spent with this book. My copy is filled with underlines and annotations. There are so many wonderful sentences to enjoy, but the one that means the most to me is, "But what does home feel like anyway--and when do you know that where you are, which is where you have consistently been, is no longer it?"