Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

THE PLATFORM: A hotly tipped debut from the US, with a 200,000 copy first printing there, and tremendous buzz in advance of its publication, with stellar endorsements from writers such as Celeste Ng and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds, a buzz piece in New York Times, and Publishers Weekly 'Writers to Watch'.THE BOOK: A sensuous novel about love and desire voiced by a chorus of women whose lives intertwine around a jazz trumpeter called Circus Palmer. This is about the choices we make - for better, for worse - in pursuit of that elusive thing called love.THE AUTHOR: Laura Warrell's writing has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, Racialicious, Post Road Magazine, and the Boston Globe. She teaches in Los Angeles, where she now lives. This is her debut novel.COMPS: The sultry atmosphere of Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (TCM 20K hbs, 130K pbs); the brilliantly nuanced chorus of female characters of Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo (71K hbs, 391K pbs) or the cool jazziness of Half-Blood Blues (12K hbs, 61K pbs).CAMPAIGN

'Told in a rich array of voices, this gorgeously written debut explores the myriad syncopations of love and desire' Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

'Beautifully and cleverly written...The novel's tender, sensual, enchanting prose entices you into a world of deep longing' Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Love is messy. Love can make us feel alive. It can also bring us down. Sometimes we look for it in all the wrong places. This is a novel about longing, desire and dreams; about passion and risk and all the places in between.

Maggie is pregnant with Circus Palmer's child. This may be her last chance, but she craves her freedom.

Pia is Circus's ex-wife, still in love with the fantasy of the man who conjured jazz tunes for her into the night, but who left many years before.

Koko, Circus's daughter, is lost in the maelstrom of teenage years, the confusion of awakening desire and yearning for the father she barely knows.

Peach is a barmaid who just wants someone to see the person she is inside.

Odessa is on the run from a mistake that can't be undone.

And then there's Circus, Circus Palmer, a jazz trumpeter whose moment of glory is fading. Selfish, damaged, scared, perhaps the only person Circus is fooling is himself.

Delivered in a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a provocative and gripping novel about the desire to be loved, and the need to belong.

*****

'An exceptional debut...This story is an example of how love, in all of its polyrhythms, can sometimes sound like song, and other times like noise. And this book is an example of how a great story can become a bass drum, kicking and thumping in your belly far after it's over. A modern masterpiece.' Jason Reynolds, author of Look Both Ways

'A sultry and subversive debut. Laura Warrell's prose sparkles, but it's what she's got to say about sex and love and being a woman that will take your breath away. This book is a love song, and Warrell knows how to hold all the right notes.' Rachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever

'Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm,' proclaimed Jelly Roll Morton, and Warrell plays her exceptional first novel with plenty of rhythm and tenderness, delivered in brisk, mordantly gorgeous language' Library Journal

'A book about desire and about love, about where these emotions meet and part and sometimes interlace in inescapable ways...a classic in the making.' Brian Castleberry, author of Nine Shiny Objects

Laura Warrell makes a striking debut with the musical Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, weaving together women's voices like a jam session . . . Warrell's sentences are sinuous, her characters fully formed, as they perform a dance of seduction and rebuttal, pursuit and withdrawal, yearning and regret. Using an elegant structure with echoes of Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, she weaves a lushly textured tale of real emotional depth, conjuring a world of voices moving in concert.Set to be one of 2023's biggest books with plaudits from Celeste Ng and Oprah, this multi-narrative story is all about the power of being a woman, destructive love and hopeful endurance.Soulful . . . Structured like a jam session, the novel favors a series of riffs over any one melodic theme. Warrell gives a supporting cast of women their own solos, through close-third-person chapters that detail their entanglements with the elusive Circus . . . Elegant, unexpected and wrenching as the "fierce" sounds that emerge from Circus's trumpet . . . Unforgettable.[An] emerging literary superstar . . . Warrell writes a mean bad boy! This sensual and sensuous debut is a kaleidoscopic character study, a polyphonic riff on the modern-day Casanova from the perspectives of the myriad women in his wake. Both visceral and finely observed, the novel captures social nuance and emotional wreckage with precision and compassion.Told in a rich array of voices, this gorgeously written debut explores the myriad syncopations of love and desire. Laura Warrell writes with an enormous understanding of human nature, a boundless sympathy for life's complications, and a keen eye for life's unexpected joys.