Juliet, Naked [Paperback]

Obviously there's deep irony in posting a review of a new book by one of my favorite authors when one of the key elements of the book's plot is an adoring fan's online review of a new album...but oh well. I have to admit, I was a little leery when I cracked the spine of Hornby's latest novel. After setting the bar ridiculously high with his first two books, Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, Hornby has continued on to produce a series of engaging, but not quite as brilliant successors. And it had to be said that his last adult novel, A Long Way Down, was distinctly underwhelming. Fortunately, this new book represents a return to form, as well as being a work that speaks to an older (though probably not wiser) audience than his previous work.

The mechanics of the story are relatively simple: Annie and Duncan are a cohabitating couple approaching 40 as they eke out moderate existences as a small museum director and college instructor, respectively. They've been together for 15 years, and about the only thing keeping them together is inertia and the lack of prospects in the seaside cultural wasteland they live in (a fictional town on England's eastern coast, somewhere near Hull -- roughly the American equivalent of a small, tacky, Jersey shore town). Duncan is obsessed with an obscure American singer-songwriter from the '80s who inexplicably walked away from music one day, and spends a great deal of his time and energy running a website devoted to the mysterious Tucker Crowe. One day, a "new" Tucker Crowe album is released (it's actually the demos from a concept album beloved by his fans), and Duncan and Annie's differing reactions to it trigger a chain of events which brings the reclusive ex-musician into their lives in the flesh.

Here, we have three main characters who are middle-aged (as Hornby himself is) in a story whose dominant theme is mortality and regret. The book revolves around the question of what to do when you suspect you might have wasted a good portion of your life. Yes, it's all about the good old-fashioned mid-life crisis, only here, the characters don't have any particular attachments that will prevent them from repositioning themselves. If this doesn't sound promising, don't worry, it's engaging, funny, and refuses to submit to expectations. As in all his books, Hornby is honest enough to make his characters face the consequences of their poor decisions, while remaining a compassionate enough writer to make them real, multidimensional people.

Another of the main themes is parenthood, and I wonder whether I would have connected to this book as much ten years ago, before I had children of my own. Hornby --himself a father of three -- seems to be suggesting that while conventional redemption is not simple to come by, a more complex kind may be achieved through parenthood. It'll be interesting to see if there's a generation gap in reactions to the book. All that said, there's still plenty of pop culture geekery to revel in. For example, one minor subplot involves Annie stumbling into a Northern Soul night at a local club, allowing Hornby to write about that odd little British subculture (see books like Nightshift, Northern Soul, and Too Darn Soulful). And as I mentioned before, it's quite funny -- full of sharp wit and laugh-out-loud lines which help to even out the tone. A good, quick read for people of a certain age.

I really like Nick Hornby. I think he's an astute commentator and critic, I think he has a great take on the modern condition, and for what it's worth I'm pretty sure he's one of the good guys too.

Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that, notwithstanding the decent fist he made of `High Fidelity' (not exactly a great novel, but a damned good read all the same) and most particularly 'About a Boy' (his best fiction to date, and, my guess is, the best he will ever write) he's actually not much of a novelist. Having ploughed my way through `How to be Good' (which worked well in parts and was at least philosophically intriguing), `A Long Way Down', which was just plain awful, and now this, I'm thinking that maybe it's time to give it up and stick to what he's good at - writing funny and perceptive stuff about music, the arts and modern life (which he does better than just about anyone I know). I mean, really - go read `A Long Way Down' and then read `31 Songs' or `The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' and tell me I'm not right.

So here's what I think about `Juliet, Naked `: it's not a bad book and if you picked it up before a flight (assuming the horrible chick-lit-style cover didn`t put you off) it would probably distract you adequately for a few hours. It`s not especially funny, or sad, or emotional, or exciting or really especially anything but it moves along at an adequate pace from page to page, eventually reaching a not especially satisfying conclusion. And, you know, it's only 245 pages, so it's not like a great investment is required from the reader.

It's about music, which Nick knows a lot about - specifically, about Tucker Crowe, former musician and newest addition to Hornby's lengthening gallery of feckless wasters - and the nature of art, creativity and fandom. It addresses unsatisfactory, dysfunctional modern family relationships too, about which perhaps he knows a bit. Quite a lot of it (though not nearly enough, in my opinion) concerns how the internet has changed the way we engage with the world. So far so promising - these are interesting themes - but as a novel it just don't work. The main stories - Tucker vegetating in the US, Annie and Duncan likewise in Gooleness - are kind of flat and dispiriting, the way they're entwined is unconvincing, the characters don't really get off the page more than once or twice, the dialogue is all a bit heightened and artificial, in the end, the multiple threads are tied up and dispatched with indecent haste... you know, in the end it's just not that good (a horrible thought crosses my mind at this point - Dickens is mentioned more than once or twice, for no apparent reason - is it all meant to be Dickensian in style? I really hope not).

It's more than this though. All through 'Juliet, Naked', I couldn't shake my sense of Nick Hornby making it all up. Only a few fleeting pages managed to suspend my disbelief and banish the picture in my mind of the author at his desk, chewing his pencil. I know how stupid that sounds - I know a novel is, by definition, invented - but a good novelist, and a good novel, will quickly let you forget that.

I tried to figure out why this was so, and I in the end I think it's to do with the voice which dominates this book as it does so many other Hornby novels. `Juliet, Naked' has a wide range of characters - too wide, maybe - and his dialogue isn`t so bad, but a great deal of the book is taken up with the internalized thoughts of the characters, and here's the thing - they all think in exactly the same way and in exactly the same voice, and I'm guessing that they all think exactly like Nick Hornby, in that elliptical, analytical, self-effacing and in the end more than mildly irritating way. So what I end up thinking is "you've clearly got interesting things to say in these areas, Nick - why do you feel you need to wrap them up in this stupid story?

Nick Hornby has legions of fans and I'll probably get flamed to death for this review, but to reiterate - I like the guy, his ideas and his writing - I just don't think the novel is the right vehicle for any of them. Maybe it's time to let the form go, and focus on crit.

My daughter bought this for my birthday last year, to add to the shelf containing all of Nick Hornby's books that I've been reading and re-reading over the years. So I'm a fan (which fits in with the subject of this tale), but not - I think - an uncritical one. The story has a promising start as we're introduced to Duncan - the latest in a long line of Hornby's feckless middle-aged male heroes, with too much money and time on their hands to prevent them from developing slightly obsessive relationships with music, films and books, whilst paying less attention to the people around them (in this case, Annie, for whom the adjective 'long-suffering' seems to have been specifically coined). The original version of this character was High Fidelity's Rob, but Hornby still knows enough about him (and his readers) to provide little shocks of recognition: in particular on p21, when Duncan comes back from his holiday with Annie and only picks out his Amazon parcels, leaving the rest of the mail for Annie to deal with, I started to wonder if Hornby had installed a webcam in my own house.

In spite (or maybe because) of being able to relate uncomfortably to Duncan, I didn't feel the book maintained its hold on me. The main story is promising: Duncan's obsession with Tucker Crowe, an obscure, retired American singer-songwriter and Annie's attempts to find meaning in her relationship with him, in her life, and in the town they inhabit ("the North's answer to a question nobody asked"). This is promising stuff, and there are interesting digressions on the nature of art, fandom, relationships, parenthood and the influence of the Internet on communications along the way. But I felt the thrust of the story was diluted by the addition of too many other characters whose contributions had doubtful value, even as caricatures: Malcolm the therapist, Barnsey the dancer, Ros the lesbian - not to mention the parade of Tucker's ex-wives and children that are only crudely sketched in. I found it a fairly enjoyable read, but finished the book thinking that there was a more interesting, better focussed story buried within that would have been more rewarding for Hornby to have produced.