Amy Harmon

A piano man in 1960s New York keeps to himself and away from his father's mob ties until his hit collaboration with Esther Mine thrusts him into a national spotlight that also stirs up issues with his father's associates.

A Novel

The Songbook of Benny Lament

Anika | @chaptersofmay

My final read of 2021 turned out to be one of my favourites of the entire year. What a story! This books is stirring, romantic, and so very captivating. While the main plot line follows Benny Lament, Esther Mine, and her brothers on their journey to music fame, there’s also a brilliant portrayal of produce and race relations in 1960’s New York.

Benny and Esther’s relationship is beautifully written. The author really gets to show off her charm and humour in the couple’s dialogue, especially when they bicker. Despite the dynamic feeling so fresh and exciting, Harmon stays true to the era of the time. Benny and Esther are an interracial duo, and this understandably turns heads in 60’s New York, but I like the way this is portrayed, it’s passionate but accurate. This lyrical, thrilling, historical romance is well worth the read, not just for the escape, but for the music and the wonderful characters.

Amy Grieve

This book truly gave me everything I could have dreamed of and more. Like I honestly have not been so impressed with a book in a long time. This year I’ve read plenty of books I’ve enjoyed and I have even found some five stars among those, but this is something more. If this site allowed I’d give this a ten star review because it really was just beautiful from start to finish.

The novel follows Benny Lament a prolific songwriter with family connections to the mob and Esther Mine a young singer with a powerful voice and her own dark past as they come together to make history both on stage and off.

I don’t think I’m ever going to get over Benny and Esther any time soon. I’m writing this review over a week after finishing the book and still I think about them on the daily. It’s probably slightly unhealthy, yet I just don’t have the words for how much they work together as a musical team and as a couple. I don’t think it would be a spoiler to say that Benny and Esther become romantically involved because their chemistry is palpable from their first meeting. They just love, respect and understand one another. 

I loved this novel so much because it wasn’t just two musicians falling in love, it was two musicians from different cultural backgrounds falling in love with one another amongst the background of hate, racism and family trauma which filled the entire story. Both of them are pushing back against society and the family legacies they cannot do anything about. This is much more than a love story set against the background of Motown music. This a story of learning to accept and reject inherited histories.

Jo H

March 2021 group/buddy read with the Turning Pages At Midnight group.

This book. Fuck, this book... is on Kennedy Ryan level and that is a HUGE statement for me to make considering how I feel about KR's works. 
  
    Recording—especially with Esther—was my idea of heaven. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t need much. I needed a piano, I needed a song, and I desperately needed Esther too.
  
 ❣️ Stunning
❣️ Beautiful
❣️ Heartfelt 
❣️ Soulful
❣️ Musical 
❣️ Criminal 
❣️ Breathtaking

💖 SUBLIME... The Songbook of Benny Lament is a rare male only (in a MF romance) narration that had me so full of every emotion from the outset. It's the story of so many different aspects of life;

Friends and Rivals I handed her the picture of my father with [...]. She gaped at it.

“You said they knew each other . . . but they look like . . . friends.”

“They fought each other, but yeah . . . they were friends,” I said.
Love and Loss “Nah. I’ll stay awake with you,” she said. “My worries are too loud to sleep.”

“You want to tell me?”

She sighed, stewing it over, and when she finally relented, her voice was small and plaintive, like the woman had dissolved into the darkness and left the child behind.

“How can I be sad about people I never knew?” she asked. “I never knew [...] or [...]. But I . . . miss them. I . . . ache . . . for them.
Parents and Children “I never knew my father,” she continued. ...

“Most of the time I didn’t know mine either. Or maybe I just felt like he didn’t know me.” I cleared my throat and rubbed at my prickly face. The bristles against my hand distracted me from the emotion behind my words.

“What does that mean?” Esther asked. “He raised you, didn’t he? He was a good father. So why didn’t you know him?” She sounded so confrontational that I got defensive.

“He taught me how to part my hair and fasten a tie, how to throw a punch and when I needed to turn the other cheek. I knew his tread, his smell, his voice. I knew his love for boxing and Borgatti’s noodles on 187th Street. He loved the Yankees. He loved to hear me play. But no, Esther. I didn’t really know him.”
Caring and Sharing “We gonna pray?” Lee Otis said, swallowing his last mouthful.

“I’ll say it,” Alvin offered. “Circle up.”

I frowned, uncomfortable, but everyone closed in around me, ... I didn’t bow my head. I didn’t close my eyes. Instead, I studied the earnest faces of the four people around me, and emotion rose in my throat and swelled in my chest.

“Lord God, lift us up,” Alvin pleaded. “Give us courage and protection. Bless our voices and our hands. Take away our fear and give us faith. Comfort Benny. He is [...] He needs you, Lord God, and we need him. We thank you for your goodness and mercy in bringing us together, and we pray over the journey ahead. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
...
I couldn’t speak. My mouth moved around an amen, but my heart was too full. In a few lines, Alvin had given me more family than I’d ever had in my life.
Good Guys and Bad Guys “But there’s no such thing as good guys and bad guys. There’s just people. And everybody’s rotten inside. Some are more rotten than others, and some just aren’t rotten yet. But eventually, we all get a little ripe, ya know what I’m sayin’? We all have dark spots.”
Race and Politics “But I understand it,” Esther continued. “Because sometimes I forget too.”

“Forget what?”

“I forget . . . that you’re white.”

“Is that something you need to forget?” I asked.

“It’s something I want to forget.”

Of all the things she’d ever said, of all the thorny words and glances we’d shared. Of all the heat and the tumult we’d experienced in the time we’d spent together, those words bothered me the most. They echoed a history I could not change and a reality I could not fix.

“I can change my hair and wear a different suit. I can avoid garlic and stop smoking. There’s all kinds of things I can do to be a better man. But I can’t do a whole lot about that, Baby Ruth.”

“It’s not about being a better man.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know if it’s something you can understand. It’s something you would have to experience, every day of your life. It’s . . . easier . . . for you to look past it.”

“Look past what?”

“Color.”

“Do you think it should be hard?” I asked, incredulous. “Do you want me to look at you and see Esther or just the color of your skin?”

“I’m telling you, Benny, that looking past color is not so easy for me. ...”

... “I know you won’t believe it, seeing how forward I’ve been. But, besides asking Ralph who you were, I’ve never had a conversation with a white man before you. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Thank you,’ and ‘You’re welcome.’ That’s been the extent of my interactions.”
Obligation and Free Will (view spoiler)[
  “I can’t protect you if you don’t listen to me.”

“I don’t want protection. Not for me.”

“For the girl?”

I nodded. “For the girl. And if that means being a Vitale, then so be it.”

His eyes widened in sudden understanding.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” he marveled. He laughed suddenly, the sound grating. Mocking. “Son of a bitch. Benito Vitale Lomento wants to join the family.”

“My whole life, I wanted nothing to do with this mess Pop called family,” I said, keeping my voice even, but my blood raged. ... I know you don’t think this family owes me anything, and maybe it doesn’t. I swore I’d never ask. But the mob takes care of its own. Wives and kids are off limits. I’m not going to do what ... I’d be no good at it anyway. But I’ll give a percentage of my earnings every month to the boss. It’ll be clean money—no drugs, no girls, no rackets. I’ll earn it, and I’ll turn a percentage over. That percentage will grow exponentially if I can keep my wife alive. You said you’d make me a star, like Sinatra. I don’t need you to do that. I’ll make myself a star. I’ll make her a star. And you’ll get your cut.”
 (hide spoiler)]

But also of Family and Identity. Music and Crime. Murder and Sacrifice. Secrets and Lies... and because of the multiple music scenes, including tons of gorgeous lyrics throughout, this book is also competence porn at it's finest.

The story is simultaneously so much and yet so little; it's just about two people falling in love - with both the music they make together as well as each other. But this love has a domino effect of uncovering many long dead secrets that they manage, unwittingly at first and then willfully, to unfold.

Benny Lament and Esther Mine were a love story of the Epic, Written in the Stars variety. And Amy Harmon worked a miracle with not just their journey towards love, but their journey through the music of the time. This story also felt so much more expansive than it was; a saga that is not a saga in scope but IS in terms of how it is written. Both Ugly and Beautiful in equal measure, “You’re ugly beautiful. The prettiest ugly man I’ve ever seen.” ...

“You just rattled off a big list of ugly. What about the beautiful?”

“It all works together. Like our music. It shouldn’t make sense. But it does.”

“... Ugly beautiful. I knew exactly what she meant, and I was pleased. I knew I wasn’t pretty, but I’d take ugly beautiful any day. Ugly beautiful was a hell of a lot more intriguing.

She nodded. “That’s what you are. Big, ugly... and beautiful.” So ugly beautiful really is the perfect description of their story.

It is one of those types of novel that leaves you scratching your head and wondering if these characters are actual real musicians from the time. Both Benny and Esther are such strong characters to read about, and that includes the parts of them that we perhaps would not particularly enjoy if we were to ever meet them in person because you know, 'good' but flawed characters make for so much more interesting and relatable subjects than those that just nice or horrible ALL the time - and make no mistakes I think both have them have some not so great but inherently relatable traits to them, traits that are based in the reality of humanity and that is why I love them so much. 

I'm not big into celebrity culture, and even though this is a story of musicians and their climb to the top, unlike so many others in genre romance, I'm so happy that this book is not about their celebrity. It's about the different aspects of their humanity, and their music is very much a major part of who they both are, inside and out. I can see a smidgen of what many of our contemporary celebrities and their public lives are like in these characters... especially with the addition of social media that we have these days. Sex is not the only thing that gains traction “It sells,” Benny says.

“What does?”

“Controversy. Trouble. People can be ugly, no doubt. But newspapers and television and magazines don’t always expose the truth. I think the truth is that most people don’t care that [ ... ] But the magazines claim everyone is all upset about it. One person in a hundred or a thousand might be upset about it. The upset gets all the attention because it sells.” and this has become even more so for us in the 21st century.

I'm not keen in general in doing comparisons between books but I have to say that although The Songbook of Benny Lament as I mentioned above is very much NOT about celebrity culture, it left me feeling very much like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid did which very much IS about CC. It just so happens that Benny and Esther's story left me feeling a lot happier because the outcome here is very definitely a romance HEA whereas Evelyn Hugo's story includes (many different types of) love but is not an actual romance. The other similarity between the two is the incredibly cinematic feel to the story, I would jump for joy at the prospect of seeing Benny and Ester brought to life in a big-budget mini-series on screen. If my sole opinion would sway anyone to make this, I would literally beg and plead on my hands and knees to get it done and I'm a very proud woman so I don't say that lightly.

It is very much a story of race in America in a bygone era, both within and outside of the confines of a growing romantic relationship, but one that doesn't focus on race as the only conflict which is something that I absolutely adored about it. I think it's really hard to straddle that line when race is part of the narrative but is not the entirety of it, and when a White author does it, it can come across as inauthentic or even White Saviourist. I have to say that as much as I thought of that being a possibility here, I don't think that it's either of those things; far from it in fact. The Black characters in this book are just as 3D and nuanced as the White characters with their own mini-stories, warts and all, to tell. 

This is also the second book I've read this week alone that was written by a White author, set in a previous time, that has major elements of race commentary within the text - but doesn't rely solely on that to form the only conflicts AND doesn't revert to many of the same tired and infuriating tokens and stereotypes that so many others fall into. It just goes to show that if an author wants to, they can do justice to writing 'outside of their lived experience' because at the end of the day, we are all human and are far more alike than we are different no matter what our background may be. 

Anyway, after months of being teased by one of my buddies in the TPAM group who had read an ARC back last year, it's pretty obvious how I felt about the 'ugly beauty' of this tale once I finally got my beady eyes on it. Now go out and read it.

The Songbook of Benny Lament A Novel

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