Dawnie Walton knows how to make a literary entrance. The first sentence of the Editor’s Note that launches The Final Revival of Opal & Nev starts with a disclosure – that the writer’s father was a drummer named Jimmy Curtis who had an affair (while his wife was pregnant with said writer) and then was killed in a race riot only to have his mistress (singer Opal Jewel) become a star following his death. Whew! The first person writing is so convincing that I immediately Googled whether Jimmy Curtis was a real person (he’s not).
I thought I had picked up a novel about a music duo and all of the sudden I was wondering if these people were real – but that’s how I knew the book was going to be good. It’s like hearing a new song and thinking you’ve heard it before because it’s so catchy and well-written. Two paragraphs later, I learn that the “I” is actually Sunny Shelton (a pen name) and then two pages later her real name, SarahLena, is revealed. And it just gets more complex – in the best way possible.
After years of keeping what she knows of her father and Opal in her back pocket, Shelton is ready to conduct interviews, get the real story, and write a book about what really happened to Curtis that fateful night. Written as an oral history – similar to Daisy Jones & The Six – Shelton starts with Opal’s family and upbringing, as well as Nev’s, and all the players involved with the Rivington record label at the time. Taking place over the course of four decades, the interviews exemplify how there can be many sides to every story.
I can always tell when a book author is also a journalist – takes one to know one I guess! Between the interview chapters are Editor’s Notes that are my favorite parts because Shelton (like Walton) is a journalist turned book author and I always appreciate that shared background. “To my mind, serious research required diligent reading.” Amen.
While reading Opal & Nev, it became clear that there is a lot of Walton in Shelton which exemplifies why I’ve been drawn to historical fiction lately. For example, real musicians (Alanis Morissette, Questlove, Merry Clayton, Sly & the Family Stone, The Who, Toots & the Maytals, Sam Cooke, The Rolling Stones, etc.) are name-checked and quoted demonstrating how truth sometimes can be more enticing than fiction. One stylistic aspect I was surprised to enjoy were the footnotes. Usually I find footnotes to be distracting and annoying, but Walton makes them not only important details, but also fun to read.
In terms of content, a huge theme is racial discrimination and discrimination against women. This book is another reminder that, so many decades later, racism is still everywhere. It’s infuriating and sad that people still haven’t learned that human beings deserve to be treated equally. Thankfully, in most cases, music brings our characters together which is a nice reprieve from some of the bigots Opal and Jimmy come in contact with – especially the Bond Brothers. [Lead singer] “Chet Bond thought he was some kind of gallant…[but] he was still, after all these years, either oblivious to the terror he was capable of conjuring or reveling in it.” I could visualize this redneck asshole and wanted to reach inside the book and strangle him – a testament to Walton’s excellent descriptive abilities. Additionally, her descriptions of Rivington executive Howie Kelly’s sliminess (“like a ball of offensiveness barreling through every single venue”) versus Bob Hize’s patient but also doormat personality are spot-on.
But the most interesting (and flawed) relationship of the narrative is between Opal and Shelton. Their dynamic is interesting for many reasons that I don’t want to give away, but the biggest one is that because of what happened to Shelton’s father (a tragedy Opal witnessed), Shelton was born into chaos. “How dare she be so cavalier, knowing the familial wreckage into which I’d been born?” It’s awful that she never got to meet her father and it’s tragic (but understandable) that his death informs so much of who Shelton is – and who she becomes.
In terms of the plot, the two most significant moments are the Rivington Showcase, which takes place about halfway through the book, and the musical festival at the end as they are both chaotic in their own ways and depict history (kind of) repeating itself. There is so much going on and hearing the details from multiple peoples’ memories is fascinating. Walton is clearly a visual writer – I can picture the characters she describes (quite a feat as there are a lot) – but thankfully she avoids going overboard with the portrayals.
Although defining where Sunny Shelton ends and Dawnie Walton begins is hard, that obscurity makes for excellent storytelling. For example, towards the end of the book there is a scene where Shelton is talking to a concertgoer and says, “I told her I was trying to finish a book about Opal & Nev. I asked: Did she want to be in it?” Even though the concertgoer isn’t a real person, in the narrative Shelton is writing a book about Opal & Nev as I’m reading a book called Opal & Nev making the distinction between Shelton and Walton a bit blurry. In a lot of cases, blurry lines make books harder to read but in Walton’s case everything is in sharp focus.
Stray notes:
I obviously love Daisy Jones but it was nice that the musical duo weren’t the ones in love in this particular narrative.
On page 59, Walton mentions Merry Clayton and Mick Jagger singing together on “Gimme Shelter” which is funny because that’s exactly who I had been envisioning after reading about Opal and Nev in the initial five chapters.
Virgil LaFleur is the definition of a charismatic character and is very easy to visualize: “I can admit that I lacked the finer tuning to detect the line between provocation and recklessness.”
I wonder if Walton actually met these famous people and asked to quote them: Janelle Monae, Henry Rollins, Questlove, Jane Fonda, Quentin Tarantino, Tom Morello, and Gloria Steinem.
Quotes:
“I had my gut and my hustle.”
“The sun is coming strong through the curtains – a million specks of dust exposed and floating in the light, telling stories.”
“He saw me as I was, and still seemed to be choosing me. It’s a basic thing, but I had never in my life been chosen before.”
When a telephone rings at 3 a.m.: “That’s the time of the morning when you find out somebody’s dead or needs some bail money.”
“I dropped the needle on the vinyl with my heart in my throat.”
“My excitement kicked my nerves right on out the room.”
“When I heard the rage and wildness pouring out of the record, Opal & Nev sounded exactly like a little piece of me that lived on the inside.”
“If you size up a group of people based on the best of them instead of the worst, your guard does tend to ease down.”
“throw a fence around her heart at the moments I needed her to give me new insight”
“My armor was me, my best asset. It kept me protected in a world…that either hated me or just didn’t know what to do with me.”
On Opal & Nev’s Things We’ve Seen album: “a give-zero-fucks freak-flag bravado that felt, in some ways, like a tribute.”
“I didn’t know back then that she was my benefactor on this road to self-discovery.”
“It’s dangerous to make art that has people stepping back and thinking critically about the world…Someone’s always going to be upset; someone’s always going to feel implicated.”
“Many things can be true at once.”
“It seemed like a good time to evolve, to leave old triggers in the past.”
“I caught a storminess in her face.”
“She’d preserved the version of him that existed in her fondest, most hopeful memory.”
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