The Music of Women

There is a moment in this book where you realize Charlie Forte is not just telling you about the women in his life. He is telling you about himself. Every single one of them.

Charlie is a successful novelist living in Los Angeles. He has the career, the house, the recognition. And on the day he receives the largest book advance of his career he makes a quiet decision that has nothing to do with any of it. He is going to kill himself.

What stops him is not a revelation or a moment of grace. It is a stone garden wall, a darkly comic twist of fate and the sudden unstoppable return of twenty four women. Each one tied to a song he has never been able to silence. Each one a version of himself he has never fully made peace with.

Vincent Panettiere writes Charlie the way great writers write their best characters. Without mercy and without apology. Charlie is difficult, self aware, darkly funny and maddeningly human. He is the kind of man you want to shake by the shoulders and yet cannot stop listening to.

If you have ever wondered how you became who you are and whether the people who passed through your life had more to do with it than you ever admitted, this book will sit with you long after the last page.

Some men spend a lifetime collecting regrets without ever realizing they were
building a playlist all along.