This is a beautiful collection of stories following the residents of a small town in Indiana as they experience one day. Float up, Sing down seamlessly integrates a sense of both isolation and community, love and loss, beginnings and endings and above all else of place. The reader feels at once part of the small town, sharing a lift or strolling amongst the townsfolk despite the reality being alien to the majority of British readers.

Cinematic in scope this is a story to be savoured.

I loved this collection of linked short stories, or vignettes, about a small rural community in Indiana in the 1980s, a beautifully written and tender description of the various characters who live and work there, ordinary people leading ordinary lives. Well, ordinary on the surface maybe, as no life is ordinary to the person living it. One woman worries that she’s forgotten the paprika for her signature dish and her guests are on their way, someone else worries about his zinnias, someone else is facing the demons of PTSD, young people are learning about their sexuality. All of life is here, the minutiae, the tragedies, the losses, the secrets, the joys. Gentle and understated, the writing takes us not the heart of the community and I was very happy to visit.

I read Zorrie by this author a couple of months ago and I was so pleased to see her again in this collection of short stories . I loved Zorrie and this is a very warm compilation of stories about the people who live in a rural town in Indiana. Each story is about a particular character but all are set on the same summer day. The stories are full of life and like most rural communities everyone is connected in some way. Everyone knows each other’s business . You get the feeling of such warmth and love .There are happy stories and there are sad times. The older ones reminisce about days gone by, and the younger ones learn by their mistakes . I loved Myrtle and Hank ,and of course Zorrie . I loved the gossip and the descriptions of food. I would definitely read more of this author.

When I first started reading Float Up, Sing Down, I didn't think it was a worthwhile book, therefore I was disappointed. After reading a few short pieces, I saw subtle motifs that were expertly hidden.
With love, growing older, dementia, passing away, memories, friendships, communities and wisdom.
When the Japanese War veteran saw a Datsun automobile there was a poignant moment realizing time had moved on.
An independent review for NetGalley / Bloomsbury Publishing

Short stories about a day in the life of common people. They tell a choral story but I was waiting for a chapter that bring them all together and I felt as something was missing.
Good storytelling and character development
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

"God’s country. Or God’s cousin’s country anyway. Maybe God’s nephew. No need to get grandiose."

I picked this one up as I remember the author having a critically acclaimed novel a couple of years previously, a National Book Award finalist. But it was only when a peripheral character called Zorrie popped up in the first chapter than I remembered I had actually read that 2021 work... and wasn't a huge fan.

Float Up, Sing Down consists of a series of stories centred around several characters in the Indiana town Hillisburg where the eponymous Zorrie settled, set in one day in 1982. One of my favourite Twitter literary critics subjects books to the page 1 test, and this sets out its modest stall on with one of the least interesting first pages I can recall:

Candy Wilson had forgotten to buy the paprika. She had thought about it more than once that morning in town as she pushed her cart down shiny aisle after shiny aisle at the Marsh. Now it was clear to her that this thinking—this seeing of her hand scooping up the little red and white paprika tin, the way it actually scooped up eggs and orange Jell-O and pineapple and carrots and real butter and a fresh jar of Hellmann’s and every single other thing on her list—had taken the place of getting it done. Meaning she had a problem. Club was set to start in just a few hours. Some of the members liked her pigs in a blanket, some her caramel corn, and Alma Dunn and Lois Burton always took seconds and sometimes even thirds of her sunshine salad, but to a rosy-red carapace every member of the Bright Creek Girls Gaming Club loved her deviled eggs. Paprika was the recipe’s sine qua non, and Candy, whose turn it was, couldn’t host the monthly meeting without it.

The stories are connected in the sense that the same characters reoccur as background to other stories, indeed at times the narrative baton is passed as one character passes another and then we see their perspective. But in practice, and rather artificially, each story, told from a close third-person perspective, gives us larger elements of the character's life history as they seemingly all reflect existentially on their lives while shopping for Jell-O.

My review of Zorrie concluded:

"This is fishing in similarly territory to the (re-issued) Stoner and Marilynne Robinson's novels, of purposeful lives lived quietly, but doesn't really live up to the comparison. And I was left a little bemused at the critical success it enjoyed in 2021 when there is so much more interesting, and diverse, writing to choose from and so many more interesting and timely topics to discuss. To be blunter, in 2021, I find it almost unfathomable (being polite) that a book can be promoted as being about an “ordinary” life when that life is white, English-speaking, heterosexual, Christian, cis-gender, mid-west American, albeit that is largely the fault of the publisher and not the author."

Similar criticisms could be made here, although this is more an (inferior) version of a novel like Reservoir 13 or David Mitchell's Black Swan Green than a Williams/Robinson detailed character study due to the multiple characters and picture of a community.

There are hints at diversity - a former schoolteacher who concealed her homosexuality, but the locals had her as a wrong'un anyway as she teaches French, and another who speaks Spanish (and doesn't for some reason warrant her own chapter):

"He stopped along the way to admire the cleome and to measure the snapdragons, which were already up to his waist. People who bought their plants at Emerald’s joked that either she put radium in her products or she was casting spells on them.

Jodi said it was easy to make jokes like that when the person you were looking for laughs about had an accent, even as incidental a one as Emerald—who had been born Esmeralda Sylvestro in Guadalajara, Mexico—had."

But this is very much a picture of quaint small-town early-1980s isolated homogeneous "Morning in-"America, and I had to check the copyright pages as to whether this was a re-issue from that time, but no, it's been first published in the UK, as well as he US, 2024. Why I'm less clear. Not for me I'm afraid

3.5

I think after I'd read the blurb on this novel that the stories might coalesce in some way bit apart from the odd intersection here and there they don't really.

The writing is okay and the stories are okay but mainly they just tell small town stories of small town people. There are love affairs, deaths, the odd mystery, young love, old love etc. I guess it would be the same if you stopped in any roadside diner anywhere in the world and could see into the lives of all the people who sat there with you.

There's nothing particularly thrilling. This is a very gentle book where there are a few surprises and could really be a collection of short stories.

It wasn't really to my taste as I kept expecting some event to bring the stories together. But if you like a slice of life in small town America then this is a book for you.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the advance review copy.

Charming selection of short stories, some stronger than others as is typical. Struggled to keep track of all the characters. Reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout and her Amgash series but not quite as strong.

Set over a single day in 1982, Float Up, Sing Down tells the stories of fourteen inhabitants of the Indiana town where the star of Laird Hunt’s last novel, Zorrie, finally settled.
It's the day of the monthly Bright Creek Girls Gaming Club meeting. Candy is cursing herself for forgetting the paprika for her famous devilled eggs, popping out to get some then taking a detour to visit the grave of her good friend Irma. Candy had hoped Irma would join the club but her one appearance only served to underline her difference, a constant source of gossip in the town. The meeting goes well; Gladys left early as ever, Lois is pleased with her winnings, recording it in her diary and noting that Zorrie was characteristically quiet. Meanwhile fifteen-year-old Della and Sugar have been caught kissing in a barn, earning the attention of Della’s grandfather. As the day draws to a close, his daughter tries to escape a baroque dream, unaware of the news that awaits her.
I’m a little sceptical of comparisons made with bestselling authors but in this case the Elizabeth Strout reference in the blurb is spot on. Hunt’s characters are people who know each other well, many have grown up together, loved each other and shared each other griefs. Hunt slips in small details as each of his characters remembers, speculates, and reflects, illuminating the stories that have come before. Some are bit players, others are at the heart of the story, sharing a secret that will never be divulged. I loved this beautifully expressed, cleverly constructed, empathetic and insightful book. I’d be surprised if Elizabeth Strout’s many fans didn’t love it, too.

An enjoyable read, that doesn't feel like a series of short stories, due to the connections amongst the gharactersvand location.
As always there were some stories I preferred, some charmed me, some I was indifferent to, some raised a smile.
An interesting idea though, what a lot can happen in one day!
I enjoyed the style of writing, which at times just felt so laid back.