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BOOK REVIEW: Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

The Rolling Stone writer recalls his life through the medium of mix tapes

By Cortney Harding
Published: January 29th, 2007 | 9:18am

In this book, which could easily be subtitled "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Hipness," Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield uses mix tapes to tell the story of his life with his late wife, Renée. Be prepared to feel a roller-coaster of emotions as you glide through this quick read; you'll be nostalgic for the more innocent '90s as you scan the cassette covers, and shattered as you read the details of Renée's unexpected death and the fallout that follows. The book is like a "Year of Magical Thinking" or "About Alice" for a younger generation, and although Sheffield writes about Renée's actual death with an almost Nabokovian brevity, you can tell that he's still deeply affected by it almost ten years later.

He has good reason to be, too. According to the author, Renée was the girl of his dreams, a brash, outspoken, musically aware Southern punk girl. They married young, shortly after they met, and Sheffield is honest about the problems they faced as a young couple trying to make it as music writers. Still, it is clear that he worshipped this woman, and that he was planning to stay with her for long haul, until a sudden pulmonary embolism felled her at 31. After this, the book becomes an examination of what happens when every song you hear on the radio is infused with a tragic meaning, and how one copes with being a widower when most of his friends haven't even married yet.

Sheffield is an extremely readable writer, and the book never falls prey to indie speak or name-dropping. While the mix tapes serve as the vehicle, the real story is a classic as old as the ages: boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl and is left with nothing more than a pile of cassettes.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time (Crown)
By Rob Sheffield
288 pages
List Price: $17.95