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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
3.5 stars. Nick Hornby is definitely one of my favorite authors but this book disappointed me a bit. I love his writing style it was as amazing as always in this novel, but the story and the characters felt a bit flat for me. Especially in the second half of the book, the first one was quite promising.
The fact that I love the movie way more than the book says more about me than this delight of a novel.
What do you call it when you don't give a damn about any of the characters? The reason I like reading more than watching is that I want to feel. And that was all missing. The writing can be witty or ingenious or whatever the cover says but it has to reach somewhere. I would say the wittiness overpowered the intimacy between the characters (all of them) as well as between me and the book.
Still, this would have been a great rom-com screenplay. It has all the elements but when you can't put them together you bargain with meaning which I want to find in the books I read. Not that it has none but it shies away from confronting them - what with trying to be all witty and reaching for the top.
Still, this would have been a great rom-com screenplay. It has all the elements but when you can't put them together you bargain with meaning which I want to find in the books I read. Not that it has none but it shies away from confronting them - what with trying to be all witty and reaching for the top.
i think we've all had our duncan phase - mine was about live versions of kodaline's 'all i want' which i still think is a perfect song but i no longer religious seek out different live versions to find the perfect one.
dark
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Hm. Maybe I shouldn't read Nick Hornby's entire bibliography. I'm at four books this year (three of them fiction, of which Hornby's written nine), and two are the best (High Fidelity and About a Boy), and now there were two duds (31 Songs and Juliet, Naked). I think the story was fine, or could've been fine, but it did not work for me. A female character who at 40-ish is feeling she wasted 15 years on a bad relationship and should've had kids and feels it's too late: interesting. The aged, retired rockstar who has a handful of obsessive fans and yet is out of money and a relationship and estranged from his kids: sure. A nerdy guy who's just not very nice and also bored with his life? Yeah okay. However, all characters were kinda annoying and nothing much was happening, so reading this felt pointless. I guess Hornby writes good inner lives and complex men and women et cetera, and at least there's no super-schmaltzy ending. I didn't care for the smalltown bashing, I don't like the title, nor the cover. On to the next Hornby!
For a light, breezy book, Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby sure deals with some pretty heady questions: Can bad people create good art? (Sure!) If so, is that art lessened if it is disingenuously inspired? (Um, maybe?) And from the fan perspective, at what point does obsession so cannibalize appreciation, that the fan can no longer assess art objectively? (A good hint is the point you lose your 15-year relationship over your obsession...)
But as interesting as these questions are to think about, the plot that frames those questions in this novel sort of falls flat. The characters are real and fully developed (if not entirely likable) and the writing is excellent. So, what's the problem?
Let's look at the characters first: Tucker Crowe is a formerly famous American singer-songwriter who hasn't recorded since his masterpiece album Juliet more than 20 years ago. Now, as a 55-year-old do-nothing, he's slowly destroying his third marriage and beginning to regret the path his life has taken.
On the other side of the pond, in a small English seaside town, Annie and Duncan are immersed in a 15-year, childless, largely loveless relationship of convenience. Duncan loves Juliet, is obsessed with Tucker Crowe and spends all his free time moderating a Website dedicated to "Crowology." He's your typical Internet message board nerd — spending thousands of words discussing every word, phrase and note of Crowe's music, and spending hours speculating about where Crowe is now and whether he might make a comeback.
Annie also loves Juliet as a passionate, beautiful piece of music, but doesn't nearly share Duncan's obsession for the musician. She's also beginning to realize she may have wasted the last 15 years of her life with him. The spark for the novel is when a PR person sends Duncan a "new" Crowe record titled Juliet, Naked — a stripped down version of the classic Juliet. Duncan's and Annie's opinions vary widely on the new version, which creates more than a little strife in their already failing relationship. On the Website, Duncan posts a 3,000-word gush-fest while Annie posts a less-than-favorable review. Out of the blue, Tucker emails Annie to praise her for her honesty. This touches off a flirty and brutally honest e-mail conversation between the two, and lays the groundwork for the rest of the novel.
So, why doesn't the plotting succeed? Part of the reason is that the interesting meditations on music and regret are vastly overshadowed by the banal. The book spends entirely too much time following Tucker's day-to-day life as a stay-at-home dad and chronicling Annie's attempts to arrange a museum exhibit in her home town, among other things. These aside, there just seems to be a tinge of inevitability throughout the entire plot — like the characters were extensively developed, but then simply dropped into a pre-built plot structure so rigid there's no chance for the unexpected. It seems all the choices Hornby makes regarding the plot are the too-safe ones — that is until the ending, in which one character finally does something so OUT of character, it's laughable and totally silly. But, perhaps I've said too much...
This was my first foray into Hornby's work. I absolutely love the movie High Fidelity, based on a Hornby novel, and I love novels about music, so I had really high hopes for Juliet, Naked. But while I wasn't a fan of this one, I will say that Hornby's writing and characterization was definitely intriguing enough that I'll try one of his other, hopefully better-plotted, books.
But as interesting as these questions are to think about, the plot that frames those questions in this novel sort of falls flat. The characters are real and fully developed (if not entirely likable) and the writing is excellent. So, what's the problem?
Let's look at the characters first: Tucker Crowe is a formerly famous American singer-songwriter who hasn't recorded since his masterpiece album Juliet more than 20 years ago. Now, as a 55-year-old do-nothing, he's slowly destroying his third marriage and beginning to regret the path his life has taken.
On the other side of the pond, in a small English seaside town, Annie and Duncan are immersed in a 15-year, childless, largely loveless relationship of convenience. Duncan loves Juliet, is obsessed with Tucker Crowe and spends all his free time moderating a Website dedicated to "Crowology." He's your typical Internet message board nerd — spending thousands of words discussing every word, phrase and note of Crowe's music, and spending hours speculating about where Crowe is now and whether he might make a comeback.
Annie also loves Juliet as a passionate, beautiful piece of music, but doesn't nearly share Duncan's obsession for the musician. She's also beginning to realize she may have wasted the last 15 years of her life with him. The spark for the novel is when a PR person sends Duncan a "new" Crowe record titled Juliet, Naked — a stripped down version of the classic Juliet. Duncan's and Annie's opinions vary widely on the new version, which creates more than a little strife in their already failing relationship. On the Website, Duncan posts a 3,000-word gush-fest while Annie posts a less-than-favorable review. Out of the blue, Tucker emails Annie to praise her for her honesty. This touches off a flirty and brutally honest e-mail conversation between the two, and lays the groundwork for the rest of the novel.
So, why doesn't the plotting succeed? Part of the reason is that the interesting meditations on music and regret are vastly overshadowed by the banal. The book spends entirely too much time following Tucker's day-to-day life as a stay-at-home dad and chronicling Annie's attempts to arrange a museum exhibit in her home town, among other things. These aside, there just seems to be a tinge of inevitability throughout the entire plot — like the characters were extensively developed, but then simply dropped into a pre-built plot structure so rigid there's no chance for the unexpected. It seems all the choices Hornby makes regarding the plot are the too-safe ones — that is until the ending, in which one character finally does something so OUT of character, it's laughable and totally silly. But, perhaps I've said too much...
This was my first foray into Hornby's work. I absolutely love the movie High Fidelity, based on a Hornby novel, and I love novels about music, so I had really high hopes for Juliet, Naked. But while I wasn't a fan of this one, I will say that Hornby's writing and characterization was definitely intriguing enough that I'll try one of his other, hopefully better-plotted, books.
I always like Nick Hornby novels, especially the mixture of music and relationships. Hornby writes men so that women can see into their mind, learn something, and then walk away not completely disgusted. Juliet, Naked was a good novel, but not a great one. I liked how he switched back and forth between 3 main characters, digging into their general insanity and messed up views on relationships and obsessiveness. No one is perfect and no one is really perfect for each other but they all seem to find a way to make some things happen in their life. It's not as depressing as it sounds, trust me, and the book is worth picking up.
I’m gonna put a five even though it felt rushed towards the end, but i haven’t had fun reading a book in so long, and it was not a dumb book. It raises a lot of questions about our role in society, what we want in life and why the hell are we so intense about our taste in music, but really it was a really fun book to read for me.