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Entertaining US indie rock clique-lit, 26 Sep 2003
"The Exes" tells the story of an indie rock band from Boston. This is probably one of the most interesting things about it; had it been about, say, a firm of solicitors from Ipswich in the same scenario, it would have stayed on the shelf.
The scenario, as you might have gathered from the blurb, is this: Hank is a music store clerk who used to be the lover of Lily, a budding songwriter. After they break up (amicably, it seems), Lily decides that Hank and she should form a band, and furthermore, that every member of the band should be an ex-lover of another band member. They then recruit bisexual bassist Shaz and her erstwhile boyfriend Walt (a nervous science genius who plays the drums). The novel charts the band's trials and tribulations as they rise to the heights of indie obscurity.Though the style is straight-forward and unspectacular, the narrative technique is actually rather neat and enjoyable. The book is split into four sections. Each consecutive section advances the story a little further, but from the point of view of each different band member. And so we see how people experience the same events differently, and how the forces in their personal lives push and pull them away from, and towards, the central gravity of The Band. On reflection, I think more might have been done with this concept, though perhaps the book's modest length and subject matter do place natural limits on its possibilities.
"The Exes" is an entertaining sort of novel, with nice flow to it, plenty of in-references to the 90's American indie scene, and it will be probably be read in no more than a couple of sittings. It is interesting, but in rather a shallow sort of a way; you probably won't be bewitched by the atmosphere or seduced (or wholly convinced) by the characters, and while the book is a nice quick read, I'd be surprised if you thought about it much afterwards. Probably of greatest appeal to fans of American indie.
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