BOOK: ‘I’m Glad I Did’ by Cynthia Weil
Cynthia Weil’s debut young adult novel, I’m Glad I Did, should be a sure thing. The author is an award-winning songwriter, responsible (along with her husband and writing partner, Barry Mann) for countless Brill Building hits from “Blame It On The Bossa Nova” to “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.” The novel is a high-concept tale about a teenage girl who takes a job at the Brill Building in the summer of 1963 and uncovers mysteries, family secrets, romance, and her own songwriting talent. It should be a fast-paced, engrossing read, full of authentic period details and behind-the-scenes peeks into the music business world. That’s what I wanted from this book, at least — and unfortunately, it didn’t deliver.
Justice “JJ” Green has dreamed of being a songwriter since she was nine years old, but her parents want her to follow in their footsteps and study law — and they definitely don’t want her anywhere near “that cesspool, the music business,” or her Uncle Bernie, a manager and music publisher whose shady business and personal dealings have made him persona non grata in the Green household for years. When JJ applies for a job as an assistant and songwriter at Good Music, her parents agree to it on one condition: that if she can’t get one of her songs published by the end of her three-month contract, she’ll give up her songwriting dreams forever.
Of course, we know she’ll be fine — the book’s called I’m Glad I Did, after all, and not I’ve Made A Huge Mistake — so the real point of the story is how JJ gets her hit song. First, there’s her collaborator, Luke: a handsome, green-eyed mystery boy straight out of YA Tropes Central Casting, who happens to be the son of Uncle Bernie’s late business partner. Then there’s the building’s cleaning lady, who turns out to be a famous soul singer, “Sweet” Dulcie Brown, who’s fallen on hard times since the days when (surprise!) Uncle Bernie and Luke’s father used to manage her. JJ falls immediately for Luke, and finds in Brown the accepting, encouraging mother figure her real mother could never be for her, and she and Luke plan that their new song (titled — wait for it — “I’m Glad I Did”) will be Brown’s chance at a musical comeback. But the night after they record the demo, tragedy strikes, and JJ and Luke put on their teen sleuth caps to solve a tangled mystery.
Weil certainly knows how to write teen angst — listen to any of her 1960s hits for proof — but I’m Glad I Did is written from the perspective of an older JJ, looking back on the summer of 1963 from some unknown point in the future. Because of this removed point of view, the story loses immediacy and energy. When I wanted to be engaged by an authentic teen voice, and furiously turning pages to find out what happens next in her story, I was lulled into complacency by older JJ’s placid voice, and most of my rapid page-turning happened when faced with two chapters of information-dumping right in the middle of the book. Weil mentions the occasional newspaper headline to ground the story in its setting, but it feels less like an integrated part of the plot and more like a passing history lesson. She also misses plenty of opportunities to examine the racial tensions and gender barriers of the time period; JJ thinks about these ideas in the abstract, but never really experiences them, even as a young woman in a male-dominated workplace, building close relationships with people of different racial backgrounds. A paragraph near the end of the book reveals that later that summer, JJ and Luke attended the historic March on Washington, but it’s a throwaway detail rather than what could have been a powerful, fully realized scene.
For me, the most compelling parts of the book were the glimpses into the everyday world of the Brill Building: descriptions of recording sessions, the frenzied atmosphere as songwriters raced to churn out the next big hits, and JJ’s own songwriting process, including the way she learns to meld her folk and Broadway influences with the pop sound that her boss is looking for. Combined with the decision to narrate the book from an adult’s perspective, this makes me wish that, instead of hopping onto the YA bandwagon, Weil had opted to write a memoir of her real experiences in the Brill Building and beyond, similar to Carole King’s A Natural Woman, but without as many scenes of small-town Idaho property disputes. I may not have enjoyed her first foray into YA literature, but I’d love someday to read her personal story, told in her own voice.
(Cover photo by Paula Schwartz.)
