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Break From Our Mental Pain
In Finley’s Song, readers meet a pianist who is battling grief and despair after her husband’s sudden death and struggling to raise her son through it all. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Finley’s Song was inspired by observing how grief can affect us in ways other than just making us sad or lonely. Guilt can often be an emotion we are grappling with in addition to grief. What could I have done to cause a different outcome or to have had a better relationship with this partner, parent, or child? This can be heightened by a sudden and premature death of that loved one. We always think time is on our side, until it isn’t. I also found it inspiring that Finley and Max never stop trying to find their way back to a healthy relationship while working through their grief in very different ways.
What are some things you find interesting about the human condition that make for great fiction?
Regarding Finley’s Song, I find it interesting how grief, coupled with guilt, can damage our ability to think in a rational or responsible manner. Why is this? I believe we can become overwhelmed with the starkness of reality. I can’t change or fix this outcome. I must live with the finality of it and decisions I made leading up to the end of my relationship with this partner, parent, or child. It can cause us to search for ways to escape… alcohol, drugs, sex…. and other distractions to give our mind the tiniest break from our mental pain. How this plays out in my characters’ lives becomes intriguing and insightful.
Was Finley’s backstory something you always had, or did it develop as you were writing?
Finley’s backstory was something that developed as I wrote. I always know the main plot and themes of the story before I begin. I acquaint myself with the major characters, and I know approximately how the story will end. The middle is a bit of a blur that constantly develops as I write. It is true that at some point the story begins to write itself as characters, settings, and behaviors fall into a pattern. Eventually, I clearly see how to resolve their issues.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
I am halfway through my next novel, called The Writer. It is a story about a woman who discovers she is pregnant and has terminal cancer at the same time. She decides to give her baby girl up for adoption, but then fate, as per usual, has its way with her. She must maneuver through the unforeseen twists and turns of what she had once thought was a well-planned resolution for herself and her daughter.
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Finley’s Song
From the first page, Finley’s Song drew me into a story that mixes music, grief, and the stubborn hope that follows loss. At its heart, the book tells the story of Finley, a pianist whose husband dies in a sudden accident, leaving her to raise their son, Max, while stumbling through her own guilt and despair. The novel moves between their shared silence at home, their escape to Paris, and the healing they cautiously piece together through new connections, old memories, and the enduring pull of music. I liked how much this is not just Finley’s story but Max’s too, a portrait of a mother and son mourning in parallel yet trying to keep each other afloat.
The writing had me hooked and sometimes unsettled in the best way. Kathryn Mattingly paints grief with raw strokes, never dressing it up, never trying to make it neat. Some passages felt like a gut punch, especially when Finley blames herself for Simon’s death. The guilt is heavy, almost suffocating, and I could feel the weight of it. But then there are these glimmers, moments with Max by the river, or Finley staring at the Eiffel Tower, that break through like sunlight. I found myself both aching and rooting for them, wanting them to reach those fragile pockets of beauty again. The language isn’t flowery for the sake of it. It’s direct yet tender, and it left me pausing more than once just to sit with the feeling it stirred.
Sometimes Finley’s voice frustrated me. Her self-blame circles back so often that I caught myself whispering “let yourself breathe.” Yet, that honesty made her real. People stuck in grief do repeat themselves, and the author didn’t shy away from that truth. I also found Max’s perspective refreshing and painfully accurate. His teenage awkwardness, his longing for his father, his quiet way of observing the world, they rang true. If anything, his sections gave the book a balance it needed, grounding Finley’s spiraling thoughts with the bluntness of youth. That duality is what made the story so enjoyable for me.
Finley’s Song is filled with small, luminous moments that feel earned. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to read about loss in a way that doesn’t smooth the edges but instead embraces the messiness of it. Fans of books like Little Fires Everywhere or Where the Crawdads Sing will find a similar mix of emotional depth and vivid sense of place, but Finley’s Song feels more personal and raw, like a private journal you’ve been allowed to read.
Pages: 226 | ISBN : 978-1952909344
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