To celebrate the paperback release of The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, author Sam Taylor shares some of the music that influenced – and features in – his novel.

The Two Loves of Sophie Strom was written over a period of twelve years, so I listened to a lot of music in that time.

This playlist is a mix of music that is mentioned in the book (Debussy, Telemann, Jelly Roll Morton, Glenn Miller, etc) and music that, in my imagination, soundtracks certain scenes or feelings in the story. ‘Raining Pleasure’, for instance, I see as the backdrop to the scene in the rowing boat, while ‘Darkest Dreaming’ could accompany Max’s dark thoughts in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1938.

I do have music on when I write, because I find silence too distracting, but it is probably an exaggeration to say that I actually listen to it. I used to be able to ‘listen’ to anything while writing, but as I’ve gotten older, I find words distracting too, so for this book I ended up discovering a lot of contemporary classical music. Most of the book was composed to the songs of Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi and Ólafur Arnalds.