Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir

by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

Overview

A young woman leaves Appalachia for life as a classical musician-or so she thinks.



When aspiring violinist Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman lands a job with a professional ensemble in New York City, she imagines she has achieved her lifelong dream. But the ensemble proves to be a sham. When the group "performs," the microphones are never on. Instead, the music blares from a CD. The mastermind behind this scheme is a peculiar and mysterious figure known as The Composer, who is gaslighting his audiences with music that sounds suspiciously like the Titanic movie soundtrack. On tour with his chaotic ensemble, Hindman spirals into crises of identity and disillusionment as she "plays" for audiences genuinely moved by the performance, unable to differentiate real from fake.



Sounds Like Titanic is a surreal, often hilarious coming-of-age story. Hindman writes with precise, candid prose and sharp insight into ambition and gender, especially when it comes to the difficulties young women face in a world that views them as silly, shallow, and stupid. As the story swells to a crescendo, it gives voice to the anxieties and illusions of a generation of women, and reveals the failed promises of a nation that takes comfort in false realities.

Editorial Reviews

NPR - Martha Anne Toll

"A memoir with bite."

Tom Bissell

"It’s difficult to write a funny, angry book. It’s even harder to write a merciless, empathetic book. But here comes Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, doing the impossible with a funny, angry, merciless, empathetic book that’s not only a hugely entertaining memoir, but an insightful meditation on a—time in our nation’s recent—history whose strange and ominous influence grows more apparent by the day."

Vivian Gornick

"[A] most original memoir.… I salute Jessica Hindman for having shaped so well a remarkable piece of experience."

Colorado Sun

"[A] timely, searing look at one of America’s recent dips into the pool of post-truth… and a breathtaking breakdown of the hundreds of ways society tries—and largely succeeds—in breaking the spirits of young women without giving them the vocabulary to ask for help."

The New Yorker

"Sardonic, moving."

The Oprah Magazine O

"[An] outrageously funny, shrewdly meta memoir."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Tucker Coombe

"Brave and captivating."

Time - Elizabeth Held

"Sounds Like Titanic is one of those books that’s impossible to put down because you’ll keep thinking, 'How is this real?'.…It’s an absurd, fascinating coming-of-age memoir that explores the nature of truth (or truthiness) in post-9/11 America. It’s one of my favorite books of the last five years."

Justin St. Germain

"An evocative portrait of America’s literal and figurative landscapes, an incisive look at class and gender, and an examination of what authenticity means."

Vox - Constance Grady

"Sounds Like Titanic… is the definition of an overdeliver.… On top of [Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman’s] ability to mine unexpected resonances from a story, she writes marvelously lucid prose.… [A] rich, powerful book."

Angela Palm

"Hindman is an emissary for a generation, repurposing its sarcasm and irony in a nuanced, humorous, and intelligent look at what it means to construct and consume fake realities in post-9/11 America."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-11-12

A provocative memoir "about working as a fake violinist for a famous American composer."

Hindman insists that "all of the events chronicled here, to the best of my knowledge and memory, are true," but she also admits that the "I" of a memoir is "perhaps the biggest fakery of all." So she generally substitutes "you" for "I," particularly in her accounts of coming-of-age in Appalachia, where she developed a passion for the violin without ever demonstrating the gift of a prodigy. She also swallowed the lie that if you work hard enough, you can be anything you want, an assertion she learned was particularly problematic for a young female. These interludes provide context for the main narrative, which concerns the four years she spent touring to perform the music of a man identified as "The Composer," an experience that "almost killed" her. The Composer had his ensembles "play" their music with minimal amplification, while what the audience heard was the music from a hidden CD player. When someone occasionally asked if they were really playing, they could honestly say they were, but what they were playing was not what the audience was hearing. Hindman kept the job as a faux violinist because she was desperate, because her college tuition was beyond the means of her Appalachian parents, and because as an egg donor she had already exhausted her resources with "the thirty egg-children I sold to pay…undergraduate tuition." As the author connects the dots among American gullibility over fake weapons of mass destruction, chain restaurants offering faux authenticity, and her own psychological breakdown, the emotional honesty of her narrative permits no doubt. "Faking violin stardom," writes the author, "ultimately allowed me to return to what captivated me at four years old….It was simply this: I loved a song."

Like the most discerning members of the audiences for whom Hindman played, readers may be left wondering what's really real—and how it matters. A tricky, unnerving, consistently fascinating memoir.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171475826
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	02/12/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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