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The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce


I really wanted to like The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce. Last year I read her The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and it became one of my favourite books for the year. So I was primed to love this book too. But I didn’t…

It’s not a bad book, and I’m sure lots of people loved it. It certainly got lots of good reviews if the back cover blurb is to believed. But I was just kind of disappointed.

The basic story is of Frank who is a vinyl record aficionado, owns a record store in a rundown part of town and is one of the last holdouts in the face of the encroaching age of CD’s. The street is occupied by a variety of quirky businesses and their owners who are hanging on by their toenails in the face of urban development and vandalism.  Into Frank’s world walks a mysterious woman who captures everyone’s attention and eventually asks Frank to teach her about music. And so a tentative relationship dance begins.

This is all very promising, and I have to say that the author knows how to engage you with her descriptions of music. Frank’s quirky method of teaching by choosing seemingly unrelated pieces of music and describing just why for example, Puccini, James Brown and Led Zep have things in common is wonderfully realised and all of these interludes are really terrific to read. Add into the mix Frank’s complicated back story with his bohemian mother and the ongoing battle for survival of the small businesses in the street and you have a lot of interesting ingredients.

I think the trouble for me was that I just didn’t engage with the characters. Frank’s mystery women had a secret in her past and once we discover what it is, it was okay, now we know, next… Likewise, while I sympathise with Frank, and with the rest of the cast, I felt as if they were like chess pieces being moved around the chess board, but I didn’t really care about them. The climax of the book is meant to lift your heart, but to be honest, I could see it coming and while it was well done, it didn’t move me the way I think it was meant to.

In my favourite stories, I can lie awake wondering what’s going to happen next, and in many cases, can’t put the book down when it’s time to go to sleep because I can’t wait to see what is going to happen. With this book, I happily closed the book at bedtime, knowing that it and its characters would be there in the morning and that was just fine. I certainly didn’t dream about them.

So, all it all, The Music Shop is a perfectly nice read, and if I was on a plane or a train, I’d find it a pleasant way to while away some time. But would I read it again? The answer to that is no, and that’s possibly as much something lacking in me as a reader, as in the book, but then that’s what makes reading and thinking about what you’ve read so interesting.

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce was published in 2017 and my copy was published by Anchor Canada.

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