Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s novel The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford is one of the year’s most striking debuts, a book both wholly transportive and masterfully told. Kirkus wrote of the book: “Droll characterization, wry humor, and storytelling chops [are] displayed by the talented Thompson-Spires in this debut novel, …Reminiscent of T.C. Boyle, another master of the darkly whimsical short story, Thompson-Spires packs a sharp, caustic wit that yields plenty of compassion for even someone as mean and misbegotten as her title character. Is this a whodunit, or a ‘how-they-did-it’? However you define Thompson-Spires’ novel, it’s shrewd, audacious, and funny.” In her own…