https://spotify.link/mfop8FmZ4Jb )
Africa by Toto
This iconic 1980s hit has become synonymous with college acapella performances (see here for Ohio University’s adorkable version). So when we decided that our main character, Jenny Green, would be an acapella enthusiast, we knew that she would absolutely have to sing this song, the sooner the better. With its upbeat synth-pop drum tracks and nonsensical lyrics, “Africa” is an earworm imbued with emo-positive vibes. It can even cheer up Jenny, a 35-year-old woman riddled with regrets – especially that sinking feeling that she didn’t get the memo. “To think of all the money I had wasted on therapists,” Jenny muses as she belts out the song alongside her fellow Looney Tunes in her newly adopted city of Pittsburgh. “It turned out the most dependable way to shake off my troubles and improve my mood was to lose myself in a cluster of loud, searching souls.” And when we cue up this song and hear the layered harmonies and nonsensical musings about “gonna take some time to do the the things we never had” we, too, are swept up in a wave of nostalgia for the life unlived.
Daughters by John Mayer
Jenny graduated from college in the mid-aughts, when John Mayer’s acoustic hit about a girl with major daddy Issues was a mainstay that piped through the speakers of drugstores and dentists’ waiting rooms across America. So it’s no surprise that Jenny’s friend, Leigh Sullivan, includes it in her “You Aughts to Know” playlist curated for the friends’ drive up to Sequoia Falls, a charming town in upstate New York, for their 15th college reunion. When Jenny hears the (vaguely misogynistic) line “girls become lovers who turn into mothers,” she wonders at first if he meant that she is turning into her own mother, then realizes that she is likely not going to turn into a mother at all: she’s dating a guy who doesn’t want children while her biological clock is tick, tick, ticking away.
Starships by Nicki Minaj
When Jenny travels back in time to undo one of her many mistakes, she winds up in New York City in 2013. There was no question that Nicki Minaj’s upbeat hip-hop/dance-pop hit would be playing at the mysterious boutique boxing gym to which Jenny is summoned to learn how to fight (and get her nose broken, long story). The fast-paced lyrics are inspiring for anyone who has ever gone deep into a workout, sweating while thinking (but not thinking) about how they “can’t stop ’cause we’re so high,” and “let’s do this one more time.” Ka-pow!
A Long December by Counting Crows
Not that she’s proud, but the top artist in Lauren’s year-end Spotify wrap up of 2022 was the Counting Crows. Unapologetically cheesy, indulgently bittersweet and not a little nonsensical (“the smell of hospitals and winter” / “I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower” / “To see the way the light attaches to that girl”–what? really?), A Long December is Adam Duritz’s most addictive banger. Look, we have no idea what he is talking about when he croons about that light attaching to a girl and yet… we also kinda do. Jenny and her a capella buds sing this tune on the day when her dear (and strangely attractive) Looney Tunes pal Gabe is pulling away from her. The plangent melody doesn’t help tamp down her misery, loneliness, and longing.
Macarena by Los del Río
Near the end of the book, Jenny is looking back on the parallel tracks of her life and trying to figure out how to proceed. Does she want to pursue an “optimized” path or stay true to her ugly, messy yet… irrefutably real life. She finds herself thinking about her best friend Geeta’s wedding, and remembering the time that the two of them were sloppy-dancing to this cheesy late-90s hit. The song’s tempo is fast, the language is foreign (to Jenny), and its meaning (about a woman cheating on her boyfriend) is lost to her. Jenny is rocking out until she trips and falls on her butt but no matter—she is having a ball. This song has become something of a cultural punchline-we see it as the precursor to Gangnam Style-but go back and listen to it. It’s a tightly composed piece whose jittery tempo and jubilant chorus will take you back to a simpler time.
THE MEMO by Lauren Mechling, Rachel Dodes
If you could rewrite your life story, would you dare? That’s the question at the heart of this charming and propulsive debut novel about love, life, and a woman finding herself and what it means to be happy and successful.
Do you ever feel like your life doesn’t measure up to everyone else’s—and wonder if you just didn’t get the memo helping you make the right choices?
Jenny Green dreads her upcoming college reunion. Once top of her class, the thirty-five-year-old finds herself stuck in a life that isn’t the one she expected. Her promising career has flamed out (literally) and her deadbeat boyfriend is cheating on her (again). All her friends seem to have it all figured it out, enjoying glittering lives and careers that she can only envy from the sidelines. Did she just not get the memo they all did?
As it turns out, she didn’t!
When she arrives at her alma mater for the festivities, she receives a text from an unlisted number.
“Jenny Green: please collect your memo.”
Somewhere on campus, a discreet female-led organization provides comprehensive memos to select students, a set of instructions that are a blueprint for success.
The first time around, Jenny didn’t receive hers. Now, she’s being given the second chance she wants—an opportunity to relive her life and make all the right decisions this time around. But at what price?
Smart, addictive, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant, The Memo will enchant readers of In Five Years and Cassandra in Reverse as well as fans of Emma Straub and Maria Semple.
Women’s Fiction Friendship | Romance [Harper Perennial, On Sale: June 18, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063319356 / eISBN: 9780063319370]
Buy THE MEMO: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Target.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Lauren Mechling
Lauren Mechling has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she writes a book column. She’s worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for The New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER
About Rachel Dodes
Rachel Dodes is a freelance culture writer. She’s a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, and her work has also appeared in Town & Country, ELLE, Esquire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed among other publications.
Her first novel, The Memo—co-written with her friend Lauren Mechling —will be published by Harper Perennial in June 2024. It’s currently being developed for television by Wiip.
Dodes previously was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal where she covered the fashion and film industries. Starting in 2017, she co-hosted a weekly independent news/comedy podcast called “Nope,” until the news became so unfunny she had to go on hiatus. She lives in New York with her husband, son and dog.
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