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.
Comments
Post a Comment