The Proudfoot Review - Because Opinions Matter...
Nick Hornby has written about the seductive power of pop music in High Fidelity and how a hobby can become an obsession in Fever Pitch. His new novel marries those two themes so perfectly that it deserves one of those smashup names. High Pitch, anyone?
Juliet, Naked is the actual title, and it's just right, like so much of this book.
Tucker Crowe is a musician whose record Juliet was hailed as the greatest breakup album ever. Then, in the middle of a tour, he abruptly canceled all remaining shows and disappeared from public life.
Crowe's decades-long silence creates a community of fans who endlessly analyze his music and speculate about his disappearance.
Duncan is one of those fans. His job is teaching in an English seaside town, but his avocation is running a Crowe Web site. When the novel opens, he's on a pilgrimage with his girlfriend, Annie, visiting sites such as the Minneapolis bathroom where Crowologists, as they call themselves, believe the artist experienced an epiphany.
Annie regarded Duncan's passion as manageable when they first met. Then the Internet came along.
"Until then, the nearest fellow fan had lived in Manchester, sixty or seventy miles away, and Tucker met up with him once or twice a year; now the nearest fans lived in Duncan's laptop, and there were hundreds of them, from all around the world, and Duncan spoke to them all the time."
Anyone who has ever stumbled into an obsessive fan site will recognize immediately that Hornby has nailed the details, right down to the petty rivalries.
Duncan and Annie's arid relationship is due for a shake-up - she wants a baby but realizes "Duncan was nobody's idea of a father." The catalyst arrives in the form of a CD: acoustic sessions of Crowe's great work. It becomes known as Juliet, Naked.
Duncan posts a rhapsodic review. Annie shocks herself and her partner, first by disagreeing and then by writing a rebuttal that Duncan posts on his Web site.
Tucker Crowe reads Annie's review and begins an e-mail correspondence. She learns that nearly everything Duncan believes about him is false. His career fizzled for predictable reasons: addiction and disgust with his own artistic hypocrisy. Far from being a recluse, he's a middle-aged Little League dad in a failing marriage. Four of his five children barely know him. He needs a shake-up himself.
Songwriters have the option of repeating the chorus to the fade. Novelists are obliged to bring things to a resolution, and Hornby labors just a bit to wrap it all up. Or perhaps it only seems that way; perhaps the lyrics of the third verse seem slightly inelegant only when compared with the absolute perfection of the first two.
There are some gems in the final third of the book. The revelation of what really happened in Minneapolis is perfect. Duncan gets to strike a blow for obsessive fans everywhere with one plaintive remark to his hero.
Hornby takes a risk with the final few pages of the book. Some readers will find it brilliant; others will be disappointed. Perhaps they'll even debate it on the Internet.
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