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Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Signal to Noise MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, Feb. 14 2017

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Author), Ana Bayat (Reader)

262 ratings

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Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mix tape.

Meche, awkward and 15, has two equally unhip friends - Sebastian and Daniela - and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. The three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love.

Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns alone for her estranged father's funeral.

It's hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, reviving memories from a childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? Is there any magic left?

Language

English
Publisher

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
Publication date

Feb. 14 2017
Dimensions

17.15 x 13.97 x 1.27 cm
ISBN-10

1536669733
ISBN-13

978-1536669732
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Product description

About the Author

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia lives in British Columbia with her family and two cats. Her speculative fiction has been collected in This Strange Way of Dying and has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She is the winner of the Carter V. Cooper/Exile Short Fiction Competition and a finalist for the Manchester Fiction Prize.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (Feb. 14 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1536669733
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1536669732
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 99 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.15 x 13.97 x 1.27 cm

Customer Reviews:
262 ratings

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of the novels The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Velvet Was the Night, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu's Daughters).

Customer reviews

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3 star		15%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Canada

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R.B.

that I love reading.

Reviewed in Canada on November 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

Reminded me, in the midst of my doctoral exam prep Hell, that I love reading.

3 people found this helpful

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stan

Three Stars

Reviewed in Canada on October 3, 2015

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about teenagers for teenagers

One person found this helpful

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JW Schnarr

and the words feel like the heavy breeze before rain

Reviewed in Canada on June 27, 2015

Signal to Noise shows the magic in music
By J.W. Schnarr
Taber Times
Vauxhall Advance
jwschnarr@tabertimes.com

There is a scene in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s debut novel Signal to Noise (Solaris) where the two main characters, Meche and Sebastian, are standing across the street from each other and seeing each other for the first time in many years.

Then without saying anything, they turn and walk away. The scene says almost nothing in terms of action, but it says everything in terms of who these people are and who they have been.

For me, the scene was a pivot for every thing that happened before that moment and everything that happened after.

Signal to Noise could have been called “The Book of Sighs” and I think it would have been just as fitting.
The novel is filled with wishes and regret, and magic, and the words feel like the heavy breeze before rain.

There are two stories braided together in this novel, though in all honesty it seems less like a braid and more like one thread wrapped around the other. The story of Meche discovering magic with her friends Sebastian and Daniela in Mexico during the 1980s is by far the anchor here, while another side of the story involves Meche returning to Mexico for her estranged father’s funeral years later and seemed to be the “wraparound” portion of the tale.

It makes sense, as that story as Meche as an adult deals with the fallout and repercussions of the things that happened decades earlier.

In the 1980s, Meche is obsessed with music and discovers it has power – she is able to channel spells by harnessing the energy built in to her father’s vinyl albums. The system of magic in the story is simple and quite effective. Meche has spell casters in her lineage (her grandmother), while the vehicle for that magic comes from her father, who instilled in her a love of music and allows her to discover the power of it on the human soul.

Moreno-Garcia’s characters are people you probably knew in your life when you were young.

Meche is a defensive, brooding soul, easily offended and hurt by the world around her.

She is every teen who was ever outraged by their lot in life, reacting before thinking at times, and strong enough to speak her mind regardless of consequence.
Alternatively, Sebastian is manipulative and single-minded in pursuing a relationship as the source of his happiness, traits which are often negatively attributed to women in a lot of fiction.

The two characters follow their own paths but orbit each other through story – a decaying orbit – with a stability in the early chapters that quickly gives way to an impending sense that they will have no choice but to smash together as the story progresses.

In the course of this journey, they tackle the things that hurt us all as young people, from unrequited love to broken marriages and problems at home, to feeling like an outcast and not fitting in, to the pain we cause to those we love most when we’re too blinded by our emotions to see around us.

Their ability to glean magic from music and bend it to their wills begins as a shared secret binding the three friends together. Later, it becomes a survival tool as they use it to fend off the darkest parts of their lives.

But things really begin to unravel when a sense of entitlement grows out of their successes, and their own individual goals threaten to destroy the safety they have as a group.

Signal to Noise is a strong first effort by Moreno-Garcia, and by stepping into the lives of these people I get a sense of great things from her in the future.
She has a concise, understated writing style I found a pleasure to read.

If you are looking for a book this summer, you could do much worse than pick up a copy of Signal to Noise, which is perfectly paced for hot summer nights.

For more information on Silvia Moreno-Garcia, please visit her website at http://www.silviamoreno-garcia.com.

2 people found this helpful

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Michael Dudley

touching tale told with a beautiful lyricism and rich with a love of music

Reviewed in Canada on March 16, 2015

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has written a real gem here, one that will stay with you for a long while after you finish reading it. Signal to Noise is a poignant, touching tale told with a beautiful lyricism and rich with a love of music. The setting of Mexico city is grittily wonderful (especially for a reader unfamiliar with the city’s past and present realities), and the story perfectly captures those horrible/wonderful heart-wrenching teen years, while exploring the deeper, darker grief of an adult attempting to comprehend the death of a parent. That Moreno-Garcia can pull off both the 1988 and the 2009 stories with equal aplomb is testament to her superior storytelling skills. I was so entranced by the story (despite my frequent dislike of Meche’s cruelty to her friends) I stayed up FAR too late finishing the book. Highly recommended!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Greatgreenbird

Looking forward to more from this author...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2020

Verified Purchase

I picked up Signal to Noise when it was on sale, as I'd enjoyed a previous book by this author and wanted to check out her earlier work. It was entertaining enough but lacked a certain something for my liking, as I'm discovering I much prefer genre books which are actually genre books - this was contemporary with a bit of magic sprinkled over, closer to magical realism than works for me.

The basic premise is that our protagonist has come back to Mexico City after the death of her father, having lived for a number of years in Oslo where she works as a computer software designer. Meche is estranged from her father, a man whose slow descent into alcoholism she had witnessed, but who had instilled in her a love of music and especially music on vinyl. Meche lives her life with a constant soundtrack, whether that's from a battered walkman in the scenes from her childhood or an iPod playlist in the current ones.

Where Signal to Noise crosses into genre is about how music works here as a way of making magic. Meche and her friends discover that they are able to make wishes when they can find the right music to accompany them, starting small with a wish for money that's answered by the finding of a lost wallet. Things soon spiral out of control though, as both Meche and her friend Sebastian want to use this new-found power to cement a relationship with their respective objects of desire (both of whom are basically shallow but pretty). At least, that's Meche's plan originally, till she discovers something about her family and changes her mind.

Signal to Noise is well written and there's a very strong sense of place and time, especially with the flashback scenes, but it didn't 100% work for me. I didn't find myself caring that much about any of the characters and that's always an issue. Another contender for that category of 'books I'm glad I've read but won't be re-reading' and I look forward to seeing if something else by Silvia Moreno-Garcia completely does it for me.

One person found this helpful

Thomas Joyce

A great combination of thoughtful speculative elements and real relationship drama. I love this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

I loved this book. Wonderful depiction of the relationships between the main characters and Moreno-Garcia really captures the voices of the main characters, both as teenagers and young adults. The system of magic that she creates, its relationship to music and the power that special, personal items can contain is all wonderfully done. Combine these speculative elements with the very real familial drama and friendship dynamics and we have a wonderful, wonderful book. I'd love to see this adapted for the big screen. I think it would be a fantastic movie in the right hands.

Amazon Customer

Music as Magic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2017

Verified Purchase

I did enjoy this book, as it contains one of my favourite ideas, music as magic as well as picking up on the thread of Latin American Magical realism in a more modern day concept.

I love Meche and Sebos as characters, sharp edges and all. It's interesting seeing Meche as an adult but without having grown up that much. Sebos seems less defined as an adult but we only see him through Meche's eyes. The book travels that thin line between having a female character who is difficult to like and does the wrong or unpleasant thing, while still making you care about her and the outcome.

Music to me has always been magic so it was good to read a book based around this. It does seem consistent and some of the most clearest descriptions are of the magic generated by the music and how it's visible in the air.

This book definitely falls into the magical realism category even though the magic is a bit more explicit than usual. The magic is merely a driver for the characters actions and resolutions, which in other books would have been achieved by direct action.

3 people found this helpful

G. D. Thompson

Mercedes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is the fourth book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia I have read this month and like the other three I loved it.
What is basically a love story twists in a way I could not have expected.
Good to know teenagers are idiots the world over

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

SF/Fantasy based in Mexico City

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

An OK story involving music, magic within it and within ourselves.

Entertaining, brief and different. The book is set in Mexico city, though being a teenager is beyond borders, which most people will identify with. Interesting seeing names of songs and musicians I heard when I was growing up.

Entertaining read

3 people found this helpful

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Buy new: $14.99

Follow the Author

Signal to Noise MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, Feb. 14 2017

Enhance your purchase

Product description

About the Author

Product details

About the author

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Customer reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

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