Diane Thomas
The Year the Music Changed
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 5, 2005
Bestselling author Pat Conroy, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Japanese translation of The Year the Music Changed, Poplar Press
Italian translation of "The Year the Music Changed," Azimut Libres
Columbus [Ohio] Post Dispatch
Raleigh News and Observer
Atlanta alternative entertainment newspaper "Creative Loafing"
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REVIEWS PRAISE FOR THE YEAR THE MUSIC CHANGED A Book Sense *Notable Book* for September 2005 LIBRARY JOURNAL (*Starred review*) – “Touching, funny and tender. Highly recommended for all collections.” [Scroll down to read full review.] PUBLISHERS WEEKLY – “Warm, lively and immensely readable.” [Scroll down to read full review.] KIRKUS REVIEWS – “Sweet and gripping. . . . A touching coming-of-age tale, deepened rather than cheapened by the heroine’s connection to The King.” [Scroll down to read full review.] “I think it’s terrific.” — Bestselling author PAT CONROY in “What They’re Reading, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTUION RALEIGH NEWS-OBSERVER – “A nearly impossible feat of the creative imagination, defying the stigma of epistolary fiction and, better, defying the overpowering cliche of Elvis Presley.” [Scroll down to read full review.] ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION – “May engrave itself into the memories of more readers than To Kill a Mockingbird.” [Scroll down to see full review.] COLUMBUS [Ohio] DISPATCH - “Does the world need another book about Elvis? Maybe so, if it’s as good as The Year the Music Changed.. . . .Thomas pulls off the novel with panache.” John Siegenthaler, host of “The Word on Words,” NASHVILLE PUBLIC TELEVISION - “Tragic and beautiful, . . I could talk to you for three or four hours about this book, because it’s such a powerful story.” “Thomas unerringly depicts a pivotal time in American culture. More importantly, she has just as convincingly rendered the timeless intricacies of the human heart.” — Ron Rash, author of Serena “. . . . tender and often very funny. . . .” — Bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons “A bittersweet, funny, big-hearted book that perfectly captures an era. . . .” — Joshilyn Jackson, author of gods in Alabama, Between, Georgia, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Backstreet Saints “Startling in its beauty! Two enormous spirits do nothing less than solve the mystery of how we learn to love – each other and ourselves. The pitch here is perfect. The whole novel sings.” — David Bottoms, former Georgia Poet Laureate “A must read novel. . . .Fresh, surprising, full-hearted, joyful and sad. — Fred Chappell, former North Carolina Poet Laureate “. . . . you will not be able to put down this bittersweet correspondence. . . .” — Norris Church Mailer, author of Windchill Summer [Charleston, S.C.} POST AND COURIER - “When McEachern writes of her oppressive, claustrophobic home life or we see Presley’s goofy, big-kid joy at the purchase of a tricked-out Cadillac, those moments ring absolutely true.” ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE - “Thomas . . . has taken the icon and made him real.” “Poignant, and at times achingly funny. . . . Infused with a powerful realism that lingers in your mind long after you have put the novel down.” — Nigel Patterson, Elvis Information Network, top Internet site devoted to Elvis Presley “A stunning achievement. . . . simply dazzling.” — Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and Valley of Light “. . . . will engage your mind and break your heart.” — Steve Oney, author of And the Dead Shall Rise “. . . . a communication of the spirit, a transfer of the heart.” — Carol Lee Lorenzo, author of Nervous Dancer THE NASHVILLE SCENE – “You can’t help falling in love with this heart-thawing epistolary novel.” CREATIVE LOAFING ATLANTA – “Thomas nicely balances the electrifying naivete of the dreams of gifted youth with the inevitability that their actual accomplishment will fall short.” ______________________________ EXCERPTS FROM A WARNER BROTHERS SCRIPT ANALYSIS OF The Year the Music Changed, BY MATT SULLIVAN, SUBMITTED BY SCOTT BUDNICK, JULY 16, 2006: LOG LINE: A lonely 14-year-old sends a fan letter to the then unknown Elvis Presley, which begins a year-long correspondence as the two share their most intimate thoughts with each other. BRIEF: The author has so well blended fiction with fact that it is hard to believe that this is a work of fiction. Poignant and captivating, this novel succeeds on virtually every level and the wise-beyond-her-years heroine captures our hearts immediately. CONSIDER COMMENTS: . . . Achsa is a heartbreaking heroine whose voice is crystal clear and the author has managed to so accurately capture Elvis’s voice, we can easily imagine that the feelings of hope, fear, longing and doubt she has him express in his letters are emotions Elvis Presley most definitely shared with his nearest and dearest. However, this book is less about Elvis than it is about this young girl on the verge of coming into her own. Elvis’s rise to fame keeps us anchored in the time period, while our heart and real interest lies in what is taking place with Achsa. Fortunately, the author doesn’t let us down. This is a CONSIDER for the book. . . . Although we know so much about Elvis, the author has managed to depict him in a somewhat softer, more intimate way than we are familiar with and, despite the fact this is fiction, we feel as though we know him a bit more intimately. The author shows confidence and creativity as she blends fact with fiction and tosses in a few unexpected story twists along the way. . . . Overall, this is a thoroughly engaging read which pulls us in from page one. It’s great material for a small period teen drama a la A BRONX TALE and THAT NIGHT (Juliette Lewis, C. Thomas Howell and Eliza Dushku) and should be CONSIDERED as such. ______________________________ LIBRARY JOURNAL ** STARRED REVIEW** May 1, 2005 “Touching, funny and tender. . . . Highly recommended for all collections.” *Achsa McEachern, the spunky 14-year-old protagonist of Thomas’s inventive first novel, has an irrepressible need to understand the world. It’s conventional coming-of-age stuff, but Achsa is so full of passion that her quest takes on near-monumental proportions. Consider her letter writing, for example. While some girls would be content simply to swoon over a hot new musician, Achsa puts pen to paper and writes none other than Elvis Presley. And Elvis responds. The book chronicles their 15-month correspondence – from February 1955 to May 1956 – using data Thomas has unearthed about the then up-and-coming 20-year-old star. The result is a touching, funny, and tender exchange between two people trying to find their way through thorny emotional terrain. For Achsa, the struggle involves analyzing her parents’ tense relationship and coming to terms with her own slight disfigurement; for Elvis, it means understanding the sexual and financial power endemic to fame. While the denouement could have been better developed, this novel’s charm more than compensates for this flaw. Highly recommended for all collections. – Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY ______________________________ PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, June 27, 2005 “Warm, lively and immensely readable.” Fictional letters between an up-and-coming Elvis Presley and Achsa J. McEachern, a precocious 14-year-old fan, make up Thomas’s fanciful debut novel. Born with a disfiguring cleft palate, only child Achsa is a devoted listener to late-night WDDO, Daddy-O Radio 1360 in Atlanta. On Feb. 2, 1955, she writes her first fan letter to Presley, who at first mistakes her for a man. Presley, at 20, is just emerging on the radio circuit, soon to sign with Sun Records and take a screen test in Hollywood. For over a year, the pen pals (she calls him “Dearest Elvis”; he calls her “Baby Girl”) share their mutual admiration for James Dean, their secret shames and dreams and their devotion to (and annoyance with) their mothers (Presley’s is overprotective, while Achsa’s is at odds with her insanely jealous husband). Achsa reveals her feelings of social exclusion at school while Presley confesses to sinful temptations on the road. Achsa’s letters are long and thoughtful; Presley, in turn, comes off as an aw-shucks, God-fearing kid (with really bad grammar) who wants to sing gospel music and make people happy. Thomas has delved into Presley biographies, communed with his fans on the Internet and produced a warm, lively and immensely readable novel that will especially touch fans of “the King.” ______________________________ KIRKUS REVIEWS, July 1, 2005 “Imaginary correspondence between Elvis Presley and an Atlanta schoolgirl forms the unlikely basis for a sweet and gripping first novel.” Granted, the set-up is contrived. Fourteen-year-old Achsa McEachern writes a fan letter to Presley in 1955 after hearing “That’s All Right, Mama”; he thinks she’s a man because of her name and her sophisticated way with words; when she corrects him, he tells her to keep writing anyway, and he asks if she will help him with his grammar. As the fiercely ambitious Elvis puts it in a letter: “It is just I don’t want NOTHING not NOTHING AT ALL to hold me back.” Presley’s letters credibly reproduce the personality we know from countless biographies: intelligent but uneducated, ambitious but insecure, genuinely religious and wildly sexy. It’s Thomas’s fictional creation, Achsa, however, who really commands our attention. Born with a harelip, persecuted by her redneck classmates because of her plainness and her brains, she’s further troubled by her parents’ fraught marriage. Her creepily devout father is pathologically jealous of her beautiful mother, who clearly has secrets to keep. Achsa’s unhappiness and loneliness spill out in her letters. Elvis responds warmly and thoughtfully; on the brink of stardom, he too needs someone to confide in as his world changes with blinding speed. The two correspond over the next 14 months. The developments in Achsa’s life – a sudden death that could be suicide, revelation of a long hidden relationship – might be melodramatic if they weren’t chronicled with such painful fidelity to the agonized self-consciousness of a smart, sensitive teenager who longs to fit in but also knows that she’s destined for better things than high-school popularity. The ending is sad but triumphant for Achsa; added poignancy comes from readers’ knowledge that Elvis’s hopes and dreams will be both fulfilled and horribly betrayed. A touching coming-of-age tale, deepened rather than cheapened by the heroine’s connection to the King. ______________________________ RALEIGH NEWS-OBSERVER, Sunday, October 30, 2005 Novel sheds new light on Elvis Presley By DONALD HARINGTON, correspondent In “The Year the Music Changed,” first-time Georgia novelist Diane Thomas has pulled off a nearly impossible feat of the creative imagination, defying the stigma of epistolary fiction and, better, defying the overpowering cliché of Elvis Presley. In a year when Elvis ought to be arrested for overexposure (if he would only leave the building), Thomas has created an authentic Elvis who lives and breathes (and aches and grieves) and reveals sides of himself hitherto unknown. She accomplishes this revelation through letters written in 1955 – the year of Elvis’ breaktkhrough, the year that music changed. Thomas imagines a thoroughly believable correspondence between the rising young King-to-be and an Atlanta schoolgirl who is not some awestruck teenybopper (Elvis’ hordes of insane girl fans had not yet uttered their first shriek) but a sensitive, literate, lonely, disfigured 14-year-old who is destined to become famous in her own right as a playwright. Epistolary fiction supposedly went out of fashion with Jane Austen, who was pretty good at it, although in our time Alice Munro has crafted some admirable examples. The device is just perfect for telling an unconventional coming-of-age story of the developing love between two kindred souls who fill a deep need in each other. It is so easy to believe (not merely suspend disbelief) that Elvis Presley himself was the author of the ungainly, ungrammatical, ambitious letters that it becomes effortless to believe that the girl, Achsa McEachern, is just as much an actual person as Elvis. In fact, there are any number of touching moments when she becomes even more real than her correspondent. The 20-year-old Elvis, not legally old enough to sign contracts, is just starting out in the music world, getting his first gigs in the backwaters of the South. He receives in the mail what must surely be his first fan letter, from Achsa, who has heard “That’s All Right, Mama” on a hillbilly radio station and wishes to tell him that his song isn’t hillbilly but “that new music they call rock and roll.” Because of her unusual name (Biblical, from her great aunt) he mistakes her for a male and addresses his appreciative reply to “Mr. McEachern,” and that is the commencement of a correspondence that endures for more than a year. She sets him straight about her gender, and they begin to tell each other everything. In an introduction to the letters, the best faux introduction since “John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.” introduced “Lolita,” Achsa’s eventual biographer, a Vermont professor of theatre arts, writes, “Here was a teenage girl, destined to emerge as a lightning rod for New York’s alternative theater movement, writing to a young country singer who, arguably, would become America’s most recognizable cultural icon – and writing throughout the pivotal year that marked the birth of rock and roll.” Elvis repeatedly requests her photograph, which she ignores until she is finally forced to confess her disfigurement: She was born with a harelip, and the corrective surgery left a scar and caused her classmates (her intelligence has promoted her several grades ahead of her coevals) to call her “Nigger Lip.” He assures her that her appearance won’t concern him at all. They both have a strong liking and appreciation for black people, a subtheme of race relationships running throughout the book that comes to an important climax in the end. Elvis is painfully aware of his own disfigurement, which is verbal: his poor grammar, his unschooled mangling of the language, and he asks Achsa to give him lessons. Letter by letter, she teaches him correct English, so that this year becomes also The Year That Elvis Changed, improving himself to meet the demands of society. His letters, postmarked from towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi, are filled with news of his growing popularity, his conquests, increasing wealth and acquisition of Cadillacs, and his painful struggle to decide whether to sing only popular music or switch to gospel. His confessions to her are filled with both ambition and misgivings. Her letters, nearly all postmarked from Atlanta, reveal her problems at school of being an outcast, a nerd and misfit, and her increasing problems at home with her parents – a moody mother who is incredibly beautiful in contrast to her daughter, a father who is insanely jealous of his wife and oppressively devout. Inevitably, the father discovers one of Elvis’ letters to Achsa and dictates to her a reply written in all capital letters. (“FROM THIS DAY I REFUSE TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU FURTHER.”) Although she secretly mails Elvis many apologetic letters and explanations, he is apparently so stunned by that one that he can’t bring himself to write to her again for a long time. From that point on the correspondence becomes distinctly one-sided and desperate, as Achsa begins to relate to Elvis a severe crisis in her family involving her parents. She suspects that her mother may have been carrying on her own secret correspondence with a man in New York who was once her lover and, Achsa wants to believe, possibly her true father. She rushes off to confront the man, a professor of history at Columbia, and learn the truth. The story of Achsa’s mother’s secret romance is a masterpiece of lovely writing that can easily bring tears to your eyes. “The Year the Music Changed” is the most satisfying novel I’ve read in many years, the love story of two innocent young people (the six-year difference in their ages hardly matters) who touch each other profoundly from a distance as this great debut novel will touch you from your distance and draw you close. Donald Harington’s 13th novel, “The Pitcher Shower,” was published recently. A somewhat shorter version of this review, that appeared in The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, September 4, 2005, follows. [BOOKS SECTION LEAD REVIEW] ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, Sunday, September 4, 2005 A new spin on Elvis Novel uses correspondence with teen fan to trace singer’s early days By DONALD HARINGTON For the Journal-Constitution FICTION The Year the Music Changed: The Letters of Achsa McEachern-Isaacs and Elvis Presley. By Diane Thomas. Toby Press. $22.95. 244 pages. Verdict: Pulls off a nearly impossible feat of the creative imagination. MEET THE AUTHOR Diane Thomas will talk about her debut novel at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Margaret Mitchell House, 990 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. $8. (A 6 p.m. reception will feature the Mountain Laurel Band performing Elvis Presley songs.) 770-578-3502. The standard for greatness in literature is: How well do you remember the book long after you’ve finished it? By that standard, “The Year the Music Changed” may engrave itself into the memories of more readers than “To Kill a Mockingbird.” First-time Georgia novelist Diane Thomas has pulled off a nearly impossible feat of the creative imagination, defying the stigma of epistolary fiction and, better, defying the overpowering cliché of Elvis Presley. In a year (the 50th anniversary of the year the music changed) when Elvis ought to be arrested for overexposure (if he leaves the building, which he won’t), Thomas has created, with much research, an authentic Elvis who lives and breathes – and aches and grieves – and reveals sides of himself hitherto unknown. This revelation is accomplished by means of letters, a thoroughly believable correspondence between the rising young King-to-be and an Atlanta schoolgirl who is not some awestruck teenybopper but rather a sensitive, literate, lonely, disfigured 14-year-old who is destined to become famous in her own right as a playwright. Epistolary fiction supposedly went out of fashion with Jane Austen, who was pretty good at it, although in our time Alice Munro has crafted some admirable examples. The device is perfect for telling an unconventional coming-of-age story of the developing love between two kindred souls who fill a deep need in each other. The 20-year-old Elvis is just starting out in the music world, getting his first gigs in the backwaters of the South. He receives what must surely be his first fan letter, from Achsa, who has heard “That’s All Right, Mama” on a hillbilly radio station and wishes to tell him that his song isn’t hillbilly but “that new music they call rock and roll.” Thus begins a correspondence that will endure for more than a year, the year that Elvis’ music changed. The two correspondents begin to tell each other everything. After Elvis repeatedly requests her photograph, she finally confesses her disfigurement: She was born with a harelip, and the corrective surgery left a scar and prompted her classmates to call her by a racial slur. Both Elvis and Achsa have a strong liking and appreciation for black people, a subtheme of race relationships running throughout the book that will come to an important climax in the end. Elvis, meanwhile, is painfully aware of his own disfigurement, which is verbal: his poor grammar, his unschooled mangling of the language. He asks Achsa to give him lessons. Letter by letter, she teaches him correct English, for his betterment, so that this year becomes also The Year That Elvis Changed, improving himself to meet the demands of society. His letters, postmarked from towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi, are filled with news of his steady rise to tremendous popularity, his conquests, his growing wealth and his painful struggle to decide whether to sing only popular music or switch to gospel. His confessions to her are filled with both ambition and misgivings. The girl’s letters, nearly all postmarked from Atlanta, reveal her problems at school of being an outcast, a nerd and misfit, and her increasing problems at home with her parents, a moody mother who is incredibly beautiful in contrast to her daughter, a father who is insanely jealous of his wife and oppressively devout. Inevitably, the father discovers one of Elvis’ letters to Achsa and dictates to her a reply written in severe capital letters. (“FROM THIS DAY I REFUSE TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU FURTHER.”) Although she secretly mails Elvis many apologetic letters and explanations, he is apparently so stunned by that one that he can’t bring himself to write to her again, not for a long time. From that point on, the correspondence becomes distinctly one-sided and desperate, as Achsa begins to relate to Elvis a severe crisis in her family involving her parents. She discovers the possibility that her mother for years has been carrying on her own secret correspondence with a man in New York who was once her lover and, Achsa wants to believe, possibly her true father. She rushes off to New York to confront the man, a professor of history at Columbia, and learn the truth. The story of Achsa’s mother’s secret romance is a masterpiece of lovely writing, which can easily bring tears to your eyes. “The Year the Music Changed” is the most satisfying novel I’ve read in many years, the love story of two innocent young people who touch each other profoundly from a distance, as this great debut novel will touch you from your distance and draw you close. Donald Harington’s 13th novel, “The Pitcher Shower,” was published recently. [A somewhat longer version of this review appeared in the Raleigh News-Observer, above.] |
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