Serious Music

by Percival Everett

It turned out that my music had never left me. It had been stolen, yes, but not stolen away. I had simply never been free to play it . . .

When Arthur Champion, a gifted young music scholar, is sent away to war, he experiences the unimaginable hellscape of the Somme trenches. Surviving the slaughter, he begins to forge a new life for himself, discovering the profound, subversive power of his own musical voice.
His odyssey takes him from playing in the jazz clubs of Paris to performing for President Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and back again, his only constant companions his humour, his abiding love for music, and the appalling racism of the age. This is a profoundly moving novel about trauma, survival, and the weaponization of art.

Serious Music is the outstanding story of a young Black man's struggle to find his place in a world that resents his very existence. It is sure to cement Percival Everett's reputation as one of America's greatest writers

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Music, Literary Fiction, Historical, Race, War

Kindle Edition

Expected publication March 2, 2027

About the author

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classical, jazz, ragtime , “ white music” , “black music” but for Arthur Champion it’s all beautiful and serious - the music that he feels in his soul which knows no boundaries. Like the boundaries reflected in the ugliness of racism, the horrors WWI with blood and guts , lost limbs, and death in the trenches in France . For Arthur it’s the music as he carries his violin with him trudging through the mud over dead bodies to safety in France , to the piano in rag time bars and violence of Harlem to Washington DC , the White House in the company of the blatantly racist President Wilson to yet more violence.

You don’t need to know a lot about music to appreciate what Everett has done here in this beautifully written and creatively constructed novel . I don’t know much about music at all and I found myself looking up the musical terms that title each chapter hoping to get the connection . I’m not sure if I did, but it didn’t make the reading experience any less impactful for me . The anger, fear, grief sometimes tempered with love, friendship, courage and brief spurts of humor touched me, made me cry and laugh . The depiction of the racism, still present today is chilling. Percival Everett is a virtuoso of the written word. This is only the second book I’ve read by him and I’m thrilled that I have many more to discover.


I received a copy of this book from Doubleday Books through NetGalley.

[lark benobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell into this novel, into a complete world, into a story told to me in a completely different voice from any previous book written by Percival Everett, a voice more educated, and less manic, but just as absurd, and just as true as the narrators of his other works, but also...softer, I suppose, is the word I’m looking for. Serious Music reads like a magnicent encore, in a way. Smaller in scope than James, and that’s appropriate, it gives us time to breathe and recover and be carried along, because it’s not one of those flashy encores, where the tenor comes back on stage with a flourish and belts out VESTI LA GIUBBA and makes everyone leap out of their seats and stamp their feet and cry BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO...it’s more like one of those encores that makes you settle, and grow thoughtful, and feel completely satisfied. and happy to be literate, to be alive, to be carried along by this story, knowing you’re in the hands of a master.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious Music is a masterful, at times comic, novel that confronts the painful truth of our racist history. In a way, it is a continuation of what Everett exposed in James. From Oberlin College to the trenches of WWI to the gardens of the White House, Arthur Champion must maneuver through the treacherous racism of the white people around him. His music - classical, ragtime, blues, jazz - sustains him.

There are several scenes that are indelible, in particular Arthur's piano accompaniment to "The Birth of a Nation." This is a novel about music, a thriller, a war novel, and a love story, but mostly, it is about the survival of one man. I won't forget it.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for the advance galley.

[DianaRose]

beyond honored to have received an early copy of everett's latest novel... i absolutely loved james (i HIGHLY recommend the audiobook if you have not listened to it yet) and cannot wait to dive into serious music.

[Margo Laurie]

Currently reading

Excited to read this! Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC 💖💖💖

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt a 2027 top read!

“Yeah, well. That's what life is, isn't it? One day you're lying in a field of corpses and the next you're playing a piano in Paris. Next day you're lying in a street of corpses like nothing happened."

This is the story of Arthur Champion; an American musician and composer who finds himself rejected from his college of music and forced to fight in the trenches in the battle of the Somme. A man who uses his musical skill to entertain and connect but also to open doors and even influence the mood and atmosphere of all around.

From the horror of the battlefield in World War I, he finds himself in the clubland of Paris World War I where he meets James Europe, the Ragtime and early jazz bandleader and composer, a man who recognises Arthur's talents.

They return to the divided and racist society of the United States and Arthur's life takes on a powerful journey of traumatic twists and turns; an existence which culminates in working at the White House within the realm of President Woodrow Wilson and a life of oppression and violence; a battle for life that feels no different to the one he fought for in the war

This is a story of survival in a time of horrendous racism and tragedy( despite having fought for his country) but at the heart of the book is also a recognition of the power of music - how it can unite, motivate, inspire and also be used as a weapon.

Following The Trees and James, Percival Everett has written a gripping and powerful story. In a world of so many uncertainties and the rise (and return) of right wing /extreme attitudes, we all need to be consistently reminded of the fights and struggles of the past and how we can never ever allow thoughts and actions that divide humanity return (or many cases still continue and worsen).

Following the recent novels of Jonathan Coe, Elif Shafak, and John Boyne, there is obviously a desire from writers to explore the influence and power of artists of the past and the world of Arthur Champion- albeit fiction with factual links- highlights how the strength and influence of the world of arts should never be underestimated and all that has and can achieve.

Serous Music is a highly readable novel that grabs from page one and unceasingly holds attention until the final page as you want Arthur to survive, succeed and have his talents recognised . This is a novel that demands attention weaving fact and fiction in a powerful way and further cements Percival Everett alone of the best authors today . This is a story that will stay with me now long after reading

Superb - a top book of 2027 without any question Booker List 2027 prediction

Thank you to Pan Macmillan/Mantle and NetGalley for the advance copy for an honest and unbiased review

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious Music, my twenty-third Percival Everett book since "discovering" his work in 2017, reconfirms my belief that this man, this writer has no bounds. He is not bound by his body, his personality, or his subject matter, yet it is tempting to reference earlier works with similar themes about that very thing. I won't. Serious Music is and deserves to be treated as a discrete work.

Everett has written out-of-body mathematics, serious wordplay, art and color, geology, philosophy, philology, zany comedies, zombies, agonized fathers, Westerns full of cowboys, ranchers, horse trainers, rascals, and thieves, college students and small-town bigots, and on and on. He has written about being a human being who fits in no existing box in a world full of box makers and labelers. It seems inevitable that he would finally write music—yes, the writing itself is music about a musician, and ultimately, in my opinion, music is the best way to convey the whole messy mess . . . and maybe even to finally realize that nobody can steal what is our music alone.

Protagonist and first-person narrator Arthur Champion, a wholly fictional character, is one of three Black Oberlin students in 1918; he is a violinist who is forced into the army and combat in World War I. From there he ends up in Paris playing piano in the band of real-life ragtime musician James Reese Europe. Arthur writes:

We played ragtime the rest of the evening, well into the morning. I listened with new ears while we played. Our rhythms, our intervals, the sliding, the bending, and all the while I composed my own music. None of what we were playing could be composed, but it, in fact, was, by all of us. In my mind, that first night, I realized that I could write what was being played and create a new space for improvisation, a space for a new language. Even then, in that free and soulful and brilliant music I could hear the chains of eighteenth-century harmonies clanking on my ankles. (from a chapter titled "L’Istesso Tempo")

And having truly found his musical chops, for a short time, Arthur Champion becomes one of the most subversively hilarious protagonists imaginable. I laughed, I guffawed, I roared at what followed, which I will not disclose. Suffice it to say: What Navajo background actors did in American Westerns by making up dialogue in their native language which was then heard by their own people in audiences, Arthur Champion does for Black audiences through music.

However, this release is followed by a quick dark dramatic series of movements that fictionalize real history and people during racist President Woodrow Wilson's administration. It's tense and moves like lightning—with each chapter throughout the book titled with a musical descriptive, e..g., Ostinato, Sforzando, Étude, etc.

And then—stop short! ("staccatissimo"?)—in a chapter titled Rallentando ("slow down") there was a foreboding that made me want to scream: No words, just a combination of visceral joy and rage that is hard to explain—and it is at the root of my obsession with Everett's work. I don't know if I would have felt this way at this particular point if I hadn't read the transcendent ending of Everett's life-changing hilarious and moving 1994 novel God's Country—and I realize I'm breaking my promise to review Serious Music as a discrete book. The trouble is it's not discrete. It's a piece of a symphony of history and humanity that Everett has been unspooling, probably unconsciously (he has said he never remembers his work after he's written it and counts on readers to interpret it), throughout his amazing writing life. So I cannot divorce God's Country as well as the various zombie stories (American Desert and Trees) from a quote suddenly inserted in the "Rallentando" chapter from a Black man named Walter Ford who, in this fictionalized version, had been lynched in Washington, DC, in 1909:

"You can only kill me once, so I might as well enjoy it." Then he laughed.

I cannot give any more context without spoilers, so I won't. Suffice it to say, my whole body went into alert when I read this line, and it was a joyful, hopeful feeling. It was what I wrote about in my Oh Reader essay about Whole Body Reading and it is why I read—to experience change and all the unnameable concurrent movements in my soul; to experience the "serious music" Percival Everett offers in this book—which fittingly I finished with primal sobbing. There are no words.

* * *
Thank you, Doubleday, for providing me with an advance reading copy. The book will be published in March 2027. Available for pre-order now at Reparations Club or Bookshop.org.
* * *
Coda
And just to test my reaction, a day after finishing, I reread the ending. It left me heaving, breathless, wasted . . . but ready for anything.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Thanks and such to Doubleday. There's no author I am more eager for new work from, and this was a blessing.]

What to say? It's so far out from release that talking details would be shitty of me. As much as I am eager to share in wild excitement with another person, I respect you all too much to do whatever the literary equivalent is of slipping out before you wake up, leaving only a cigarette burn and loose change on the side table; no note, no number, no nothing. So I won't...

I'll be here (watching you creepily) as you wake from the wreckage of your slumber; staring intently as the mortification of the previous night's misadventures reifies behind your suddenly focused gaze; hovering over you just enough to blot out any denying the profundity of your (very serious) lapse in judgment.

And then I'll suggest making some eggs.

[This is everything I would have dared hope it could be, a sort of amalgam of previous Percivals forming a new hybrid. While the promotional materials may center the comedy in it, make no mistake: this is tragedy, writ large. And, oh, it's all so goddamn beautiful. We are witnesses to the imperial phase.]

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. It feels like James only just came out, but I was horrified to see that it was published in 2024. Either way, Everett seems readily capable of churning books out. And yet, one could not claim, as Capote did of Kerouac: 'That’s not writing, that’s typing.' Since 2020 he has published Telephone, The Trees (2021), Dr. No (2022), James (2024), and now Serious Music (2027). With just the four novels before this one, not even counting the rest of his career, he has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, been shortlisted for the Man Booker more than once, and been finalist for numerous other prizes and awards.

Naturally, I had high hopes for Serious Music. I will readily admit that it is possibly my high hopes that led to my slight disappointment. This novel is being described as 'breakneck'. This is true. By page 28 or something we are in the trenches of the First World War with Arthur Champion. He was plucked from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and sent there. Surprisingly, Everett does not shy from writing combat. There is a little trench life, then the boys go over the top. Champion survives, returns home and somehow ends up being a gardener at the White House. The plot never slows for a single page. Sometimes I was tempted to think, 'This must be typing!', but only because Everett makes it look so easy. I think it was Stephen King who once said easy reading is hard writing. Your eyes barely touch the pages of this book. If life had paused in longer intervals, I could have easily read the whole thing in one sitting, despite being 300-odd pages.

There are hidden passageways, plenty of violence, strange musical performances (with strange musical... powers?), a war against Woodrow Wilson... It rushes headlong to the end. Maybe because I got there so quickly, and with so little time for breath, I was surprised to find it over. I don't know. I guess I wanted to feel or think a little bit more. Since finishing it earlier this week it hasn't popped into my head much, but, then again, I thoroughly enjoyed the wild ride whilst I was on it. A forgettable rollercoaster?

A big thanks to Pan Macmillan for the advance copy for review, otherwise I would have to wait till March next year.

[Chloe]

New Percival Everett, thank you god!!!!!

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the ARC. I couldn’t wait to read Serious Music and I wasn’t disappointed.

It’s the story of a young black musician, Arthur Champion, who is cast out of music college, enlists and is sent to the front line in the battle of the Somme in WW1. His journey takes him from there to the White House at the time of the racist President Woodrow Wilson and on to the jazz clubs of Paris.

It is trade mark Everett at his absolute best. The novel confronts the systemic racism and violence of this period head on, but is shot through with dark humour. It’s a pacy and masterful piece of storytelling and the battlefield scenes in particular were extraordinarily vivid.

It’s a fascinating read from a historical perspective as Everett looks at the role of black American soldiers in WW1, the regiment known as the Harlem Hellfighters and its military band, the racist film The Birth of A Nation by DW Griffith and the birth of the civil rights movement. I couldn’t stop Googling to find out more and the way in which Everett mixes historical events and people with fiction is effortless

The book is infused with music right down to the chapter headings, many of which are musical terms (glissando, bellicoso). The book raises important questions about music and cultural identity and its power both to unite and to segregate.

Serious Music brought to my mind novels by other writers which also intertwine themes of music and racial prejudice and which I think are great companion reads to Everett’s book, covering the periods before and after the time in which Serious Music is set:
-Sebastian Barry’s The Newer World, a similarly picaresque story about Tennyson Bouguereau, a freed slave who joins a touring gospel choir set in the aftermath of the Civil War;
- James Baldwin’s Just Above My Head, a deeply moving novel about a pair of brothers, one of whom is a famous gospel singer set from the 1940s to the 1960s through the height of the civil rights movement; and
-The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers, an epic story about a mixed race family of musicians set in the period from 1939 to the late 20th century.

[Miruna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serious Music by Percival Everett is a clever, thought-provoking, and wonderfully unusual read. I really enjoyed Everett’s writing, his sharp humour, and the way he plays with ideas, relationships, and human behaviour. There’s something quite unpredictable about the story, and I liked that it made me stop and think without taking itself too seriously.

It may not be a book for everyone, but I appreciated its originality, wit, and the little details that make it stand out. A very enjoyable read and 4 stars from me.

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arthur Champion is a character I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

Reading Serious Music by Percival Everett, I kept thinking about what it costs to know who you are while living in a world determined to tell you otherwise. Arthur survives war, racism, and dehumanization but music is always the place he can return to himself.

When a Black fireman tells Arthur he plays “white music,” I understood why it hurt. Music is the one place Arthur can simply be without having to explain or defend his Blackness.

And after experiencing France, watching him return to an America that still insists on seeing him through such a narrow lens was gut wrenching. His story made me think about the particular weight of Black malehood and what it means to be exceptionally talented while also learning when it is—and isn’t—safe to let people see the fullness of you.

Serious Music is soulful, painful, and deeply human. Arthur (and all the friends he makes along the way) reminded me that sometimes the things we love become more than passions. They become places where we can remember ourselves.

[KC · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1918, a gifted young black man lands a spot at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music but after an unfortunate turn of events, he finds himself deep in the trenches of France. After returning home, he eventually ends up working for a historic racist president. From a period in time where systemic racism was out in the open and the shameless abuses towards anyone black was deadly, Everett is able to masterfully blend horror and beauty simultaneously.

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Percival Everett writes beautifully and impactfully no matter the subject, but certainly in this, his new novel, where he tells of the arts and social standings of Black musicians in the years surrounding WWI. Serious Music is the story of Arthur Champion, Black violinist and pianist, who finds himself and his best friend drafted to serve in France in WWI after running afoul of a racist teacher at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Arthur and Will are sent to entertain the troops at the front, but cannot avoid involvement in the fighting. When only Arthur returns home, he encounters challenges in finding work and eventually ends up a gardener at the White House, within which lives the blatantly racist President Woodrow Wilson.

“Serious Music” is what drives Arthur and feeds his soul, as he lugs his violin across the world and through the mud, and composes work to the backdrop of the brutal war and its aftermath in America. One piece in particular haunts him, a piece that was stolen amidst the chaos of the war, and Arthur never ceases searching for what he considers his opus. There are cameos by historical names like W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White and, as always, Everett blends seriousness and humor in telling his tale.

This is a beautiful, transformative novel and I enjoyed every bit of it. Percival Everett is a national treasure who never fails to hit the right notes with his written work. I recently read a book by Everett’s wife, Danzy Senna, and found her work also to be a moving and compelling as she tells a contemporary story of mixed race existence in America (“Colored Television”). Two thumbs up for both authors’ works and 5 solid stars for Serious Music.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for allowing me to read this e-ARC prior to publishing. Serious Music will hit stores on March 2, 2027.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Percival Everett truly is the great American writer of our time

[Creed Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

With percival Everett books, there is frequently a crisis, but that’s combatted by the levity brought to you by the main characters inner monologue or quick tongue.

This book strips a lot of that away and just conveys raw emotion and feels. He is perhaps my number 1 must buy author.

Thanks to edelweiss for letting me read this early.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very pleased to receive an ARC of Percival Everett’s new novel, Serious Music, after really enjoying James.

Arthur Champion, a Black student at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1918, finds himself forced into the US Army by a spiteful professor. The novel follows Arthur through his experiences of racism during the war and later, when he returns to the US and becomes an unskilled garden worker at Woodrow Wilson’s White House.

I really appreciated the dark humour, historical context, and exploration of racism, human behaviour, and the role of music. Arthur is a strong and likeable character, and although the book is darkly comic, it is also tragic and, at times, disturbing.

For me, however, the pace was a little slow in places, and I wasn’t always consistently engaged with the story. There are also many musical themes, and while I appreciated the strong emphasis on music, I didn’t always understand all of the musical references.

Overall, this was an interesting and thought-provoking novel, but unfortunately, it didn’t have quite the same impact on me as James.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another absolute banger from Percival Everett. I loved this beautiful book, and if you are a fan of James or I Am Not Sidney Poitier, you'll likely love this one, too.

What struck me most was how viscerally Everett captures the oppressive, violent racism of the era surrounding World War I. Woodrow Wilson’s deeply entrenched racism and the shadow of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation both loom large. But interwoven with that dark reality is a beautiful, affectionate tribute to music. Several classical and early jazz composers figure prominently, and the book is packed with fascinating details about classical compositions, jazz, ragtime, blues, and stride piano.

At its core, it was an enriching educational experience. Through the eyes of the fictional Arthur Champion, a gifted young Black musician and composer returning from the war in France, I learned a lot about the early civil rights movement in the United States, sparked by Black veterans returning home from WWI in 1919 and the years that followed. Giants of history like W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Walter White, and Denmark Vesey are prominent figures throughout the story. Everett brings real historical events of the day to life in a way that makes you realize just how much we should have been taught in school, but weren't.

It is a powerful read that balances heavy history with just the right touches of levity, all delivered with Everett's signature brilliance.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Percival Everett is a seriously good writer, and with his latest Serious Music, he continues a great streak of novels, which includes the Pulitzer Prize winning novel from 2024, James. This is his first work of fiction since that novel, and so expectation will undeniably be high.

Serious Music sees musician Arthur Champion become involved in the First World War as a soldier, whose life is changed when he loses the sheet music of a compesition he was working on, and is hired to play accompaniment to the film Birth of a Nation. These two subjects - the war and the worlds reaction to one of the most divise and racist movies ever made - show that Everett is again taking on and discussing some major themes - race, it's place in America, and how it changes the world. But by keeping the focus on Arthur Champion, his relationship with librarian Alpha, he creates a very human tale.

Serious Music is fast-paced, and there are twists and turns here that wouldn't be out of place in a thriller - but it is written in Everett's inimitable style - and it is easy to see him becomes lauded as one of America's great novelists. I really enjoyed this one and can highly recommend it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

[Mona Sami · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of *Serious Music* before publication. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

I really enjoyed *Serious Music*. It is ambitious without feeling overwhelmingly long, and I loved the way Percival Everett uses one man’s relationship with music to explore war, racism, identity and the question of who gets to decide what kind of art belongs to whom.

Arthur Champion is a gifted young musician studying at Oberlin Conservatory when his life is completely derailed and he is sent into the army during the First World War. He survives the horrors of the Somme carrying both the trauma of what he has seen and his love of music with him.

What I liked most was Arthur himself. He is intelligent, observant and often very funny, even when the situations around him are horrific. Music is the one place where he seems most completely himself, yet even there he is constantly confronted by other people trying to define what a Black musician should or should not play.

The historical journey is fascinating too. Arthur moves from the trenches of France to jazz clubs in Paris and Harlem and eventually into the orbit of Woodrow Wilson. I particularly liked the contrast between his experiences abroad and his return to an America still determined to restrict him because of his race.

The book also does something really interesting with the idea of ownership in art. Classical music, jazz and ragtime are repeatedly treated as though they belong to particular races or classes, while Arthur experiences them simply as music. That tension becomes one of the strongest parts of the novel for me.

There are moments where the book feels more interested in ideas and history than in conventional plot, and a few sections made me slow down rather than race through them. But Arthur’s voice, the dark humour and the sheer range of his experiences kept me invested.

Overall, *Serious Music* was intelligent, moving and beautifully written. I loved Arthur as a character and the way music became the thread connecting war, survival, racism and identity throughout his life. A powerful historical novel that gave me a lot to think about after finishing it.

[Jeffrey W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another phenomenal satire from one of my favorite writers. This one looks at the intersection of music and race during the Woodrow Wilson administration and a war. The ugly side of America is one that can be easily found through this lens. Everett still finds ways to sneak humor into the narrative (including his signature naming conventions), but this story leans more heavily on the message that music can be a powerful force even in the face of incredible hatred. It also left me wondering, is race inherently a part of music? Incredible book. Highly recommend.

[Shana WMS · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

I read Serious Music in less than 24 hours because I couldn’t put it down. Percival Everett’s writing is brilliant, and his storytelling kept me hooked. I rooted for Arthur Champion the whole time, and his love of music was one of my favorite parts. The history and racism felt familiar, but I still learned a few things. This was an intriguing read that reminded me why I appreciate his books.

Thank you to the Publisher and Net Galley for the ARC.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is so exciting about Percival Everett is that his worlds are slightly off and slightly absurdist (while being also exactly correct) and so anything can happen. He builds tension just by setting a scene because at any moment something insane might happen. And it usually does.

[Patrick Strickland · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

I unabashedly like Percival Everett's work. Set against the backdrop of World War I, Black soldiers returning to the US only to be attacked by white mobs, and Woodrow Wilson's intensely racist presidency, the plot is pretty risk. It's perhaps not entirely cohesive, but I think Everett mostly pulls it off. He also does a good job of working in the politics of the book's world without giving the reader any lectures. Thanks to the publisher/NetGalley for the ARC, and I'm excited to see this one out in the world.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Serious Music, we meet Arthur Champion, a gifted Black musician whose talent carries him through the travails of early twentieth-century America. In 1918, Arthur is studying violin and piano at the Oberlin Conservatory when a confrontation with a racist professor leads to his conscription into the U.S. Army. Sent to France as World War I is winding down, he performs in a military string quartet while also confronting the horrors of the trenches, where mustard gas damages his hands and threatens his musical ability. After the war, Arthur returns to an America in which racism is even more oppressive than what he experienced overseas. At home, he reconnects with a fellow soldier, becomes involved in a romantic relationship, and works his way into the emerging musical world of the era, moving between classical (i.e., serious) music and the increasingly vibrant jazz scene. Eventually, life takes him to Washington, D.C., where he works as a White House gardener for Woodrow Wilson—a notoriously segregationist president—and finds himself drawn into events that turn increasingly strange and violent. Through it all, music remains Arthur's refuge, his means of understanding the world, and his most effective weapon against a society determined to define him.

It would be easy to regard Serious Music as a straightforward character study of a talented artist of color trying to find his way in a world where the deck is stacked against him. However, a far better reading of the novel sees it as creative historical fiction in the tradition of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, where a fictional protagonist moves through recognizable historical events while exposing contradictions embedded in the national experience. Indeed, this story ranges across an extraordinarily fertile period historically: World War I, segregation in the armed forces, the beginnings of the Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance, the “Red Summer” riots and postwar racial violence, and the Wilson administration's segregation of the federal government. But the closest comparison may be with Percival Everett’s own transcendent work James. Both books reinterpret a portion of American history by giving intellectual and artistic agency to a Black character whom the surrounding White society persistently misunderstands; where James uses language as an instrument of resistance and self-definition, Arthur uses music.

I learned a lot from Serious Music and I certainly enjoyed reading it, although perhaps not as much as some of Everett’s previous efforts. Certainly, the author’s prose is razor-sharp throughout and his ability to add darkly humorous notes to what is essentially a very sad story was well executed. Also, his command of both music theory and the history of the period was impressive; the recurring episode involving The Birth of a Nation is especially clever as Griffith's film—one of the most consequential pieces of racist propaganda in American history—is turned against itself by suggesting that Arthur can manipulate its meaning with his music. On the hand, I found the emphasis on the racial themes to be quite heavy-handed, bordering on being florid and over the top. In exploring the myriad ways in which Blacks are exploited, marginalized, and discriminated against in a predominantly White society, this book shows little of the creativity (James) or subtlety (Erasure) the author has employed elsewhere in his estimable catalog. Nevertheless, this is an easy book to recommend, even if Everett’s previous work is likely to remain more memorable.

[Nana · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

I had read and absolutely loved *James* and *Trees* by Percival Everett, so you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I received an email telling me I had been considered for an ARC via NetGalley. Naturally, my expectations were high.

Unfortunately, this book did not resonate with me on quite the same level as Everett’s previous works I’ve read.

Arthur Champion is a Black student at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1918. Along with his friend Will, he finds himself forcibly enlisted into the US Army after a white woman takes an interest in Will, much to the disgust of a spiteful, racist professor. We follow Arthur through his harrowing experiences of racism during the war before he somehow survives and returns to the United States.

Back home, Arthur reconnects with one of his former comrades, who helps him secure a job as an unskilled garden hand at the White House, where Woodrow Wilson resides. From there, Arthur finds himself placed directly within the orbit of one of the most consequential and deeply racist presidencies in American history.

This was where the book worked particularly well for me. I really enjoyed the way Everett weaves Arthur into the historical events of the period, and especially his portrayal of Wilson. Putting Arthur so close to the centre of Wilson’s administration allows Everett to expose the disturbing reality of racism when the people occupying the highest positions of power are themselves its perpetrators.

It also raises a question that feels painfully relevant even today **What hope is there for a Black person in America when racism is embedded at the very top?**

Where the novel lost me somewhat was the role of music. I’m not particularly musical, and I found myself struggling with some of the musical references and themes, especially his music to accompany Beasts of Nations. I had no idea what that was about. I don’t mind a book challenging me, but I also don’t enjoy feeling as though I need to do additional work to understand what I’m reading. This ultimately kept the book at around a 3.75-star read for me.

That said, Arthur is a strong and likeable protagonist, and as always, Everett demonstrates his ability to use historical fiction to question America's complicated relationship with race.

Will I remember Arthur years from now? yes.

Will I remember the themes Everett explores through him? Absolutely.

Overall, an interesting and thought-provoking novel that gave me plenty to think about, even if it didn't quite have the impact of *James* or *Trees* for me.

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you get the D.W. Griffith film, Birth Of A Nation to be palatable to Black folk, while simultaneously making it distasteful for White viewers? Well, you start with one of the best authors today, one who is creative, inventive, and cynically brilliant with his use of satire, then you craft a story that taps into the Black excellence of seemingly ordinary people and dash in some history, throw in a spice of thrills and you have the makings of another masterpiece from none other than Percival Everett, the GOTT! (Greatest Of This Time)

The story of Arthur Champion is a roller coaster ride. He is riding high as one of the few Black students “lucky” enough to be at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1918. By the year alone, you know how rare that is. However, due to the ugly disease of racism, which Percival Everett slyly catechizes throughout this novel, especially in the area of music, and who gets to play it, claim it, and be immersed in its power to move and transform, heal or harm.

See, Mr. Champion is a violinist and a pianist, undoubtedly headed for a great future in the music world before being sent off campus to join the Army and finds himself in the trenches of Somme, France. He brought his violin with him, and along with three others were selected as a ragtag sort of quartet to entertain the troops; “‘I have a plan for you men. I’m bringing you to France to play for the Frogs in the trenches. You’ll be ambassadors. At the same time we’ll be rubbing it in their faces that even our darkies can play their music.’”

Of course that was only when he and his cohorts weren’t deep in the trenches themselves trying to survive the war, not wanting to kill, but more importantly not wanting to die.

Arthur Champion does survive the war, though I use the word survive loosely, and is able to scrabble together a little musical life that is showing some promise as he gets in with the James Reese Europe band.(true historical figure, often credited as a pioneer in ragtime) The novel really takes flight after his stint with the JRE band and Arthur lands in Washington DC, in close proximity to the White House, oh so so close. The WH is currently occupied by Woodrow Wilson(one of the most anti-Black racist presidents ever, according to history)”Wilson doesn’t much like you, however. He’s from the South and they don’t much like colored folks down there. Odd, since they use them for just about everything.”

In classic Percival Everett style, Arthur Champion gets a chance to play piano in the WH for Woodrow Wilson, but not by invitation but infiltration, solidifying this novel as a modern day masterpiece. Awards will surely be coming in 2027. Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for an advanced DRC. Book is due March 2, 2027

[Paul Wagenbreth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll have to leave it to other more musically attuned readers of Percival Everett’s “Serious Music” to register all the novel’s musical themes, which I’m sure considerably enrich a book which to my mind was compelling enough just as straight narrative, with how it runs its principal character, pianist and violinist and would-be composer Arthur Champion, through the ringer of early 20th Century black history, starting with when he is pressed by racist officialdom at Oberlin Conservatory into leaving school and enlisting in the Army, which, with the First World War raging, installs him straightaway in the trenches at the Somme, where he must endure mud, rain, rats, and of course being shot at, and perhaps worst of all for the sheer ghastliness of it, the mustard gas, which does a number in particular on his hands to where they will bother him for the rest of his life, though they’re functional enough that he is able to continue to play the piano and violin once he's back in the States, where he hooks up with an old military buddy and for a time is content enough, even able to initiate a sweet romance, but soon enough the rampant racism of the day, which is even greater at home than abroad in the service, inserts itself strongly enough into his own life as to have a devastating effect on his romance and make itself glaringly evident in his eventual employment as a gardener at the virulently racist Wilson White House, where it ends up making for a death on the premises.
Compelling enough, as I say, the narrative on its own, which nevertheless I’m sure would have been considerably enriched for me had I been able to be more fully appreciative of the musical themes which inform the novel in the way of another novel I kept being put in mind of as I read, Thomas Mann’s similarly music-infused “Doctor Faustus,” which is also about a composer at a particularly dark time, in its case the rise of Nazism in World War II. Considerably less reader-friendly, though, Mann’s magisterial accomplishment, which twice I’ve tried to get through and twice had to abandon for its sheer intellectual density. No such reader intimidation for me, though, with Everett’s novel, which I sped through in a day and can unhesitatingly recommend to anyone who loves good narrative.

[Alfread · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC Review from Mantle

Percival Everett is on a legendary run this decade. Having only just won the Pulitzer for James, I was delighted to find that Serious Music takes all those same lessons about identity from James and compounds them with conversations about what art means to different cultures.

We travel at breakneck speed with Arthur Champion, our gifted musician turned WW1 soldier, turned Whitehouse gardener, turned Parisian pianist and through it all we’re witnessing the internal conflict of a man who wants to express himself creatively only to be stifled by a racist America that views a talented black man as a strange novelty.

This book is incredibly cinematic, there were multiple scenes that for me hauntingly pervade the rest of the story and even see their reprise at the end. At the Somme, Arthur makes the acquaintance of a blinded enemy German soldier and without knowing his race they have a conversation about their shared interest in music. The Great War only briefly features here but Arthur holds onto the trauma and loss, similar to the role of the Civil War in James.

There are even moments of pseudo-magical realism. President Woodrow Wilson repeatedly plays the anti-black early motion picture ‘The Birth of a Nation’ but Arthur uses his own discordant piano solo to completely recontextualise the storytelling and expose the ugly history of American racism.

Minstrelsy is an aspect of black history which Everett explored literally in James, whereas Serious Music takes a subtler approach by eluding to the idea that different genres of music represent different cultures and races. Arthur has only ever been taught the classical music of white Europeans and he spends the whole novel trying to seek out the sound that will tell the story of his own identity but knows that his white employers only want to hear ‘Serious Music’.

Arthur subverts the 19th century minstrel shows by being a black man performing ‘white music’ while understanding the technicalities of the music more than his white counterparts; we’re left with the message that culturally music is fluid and the same piece can mean different things to different people.

I love this book and think you will too.