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A review by rosemarieshort
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
4.0
If you have ever read an article, watched a documentary or heard a story about Fleetwood Mac, you will recognise tones of their story in Daisy Jones and the Six - and will probably be more likely to enjoy the book. A story about a band in the seventies who made an iconic album whilst at the height of interpersonal drama within the members is familiar. As a Fleetwood Mac fan and watcher of aforementioned documentaries, I was really interested in the concept of this book.
The interview transcript style is going to be a love it or hate it thing I think - personally I enjoyed the briskness it gave to the story and the originality of the format. It read to me as a play without stage directions, it’s very light on the descriptive, it’s all “this happened and then this and then this...” - why that doesn’t flounder, I think, is because of the core narrative Jenkins Reid is writing about.
This isn’t a love story - it’s a story of wanting. From characters wanting fame, to wanting creative control over their work, wanting drugs and booze or similarly wanting to battle their addictions...and yes, wanting love, although I really felt that was only one part of the whole. Each character faces their own journey of “want” and the outcomes are predictably human. There is no fairytale as this isn’t told as such - it’s a fictional version of what a real life account would be. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham didn’t drive off into the sunset, they wrote Dreams and Go Your Own Way. But the journey to that album, those songs, its iconic.
Overall I found this a great read, unique enough in style and content to keep me going until the end and leaving me curious about other works from Jenkins Reid.
The interview transcript style is going to be a love it or hate it thing I think - personally I enjoyed the briskness it gave to the story and the originality of the format. It read to me as a play without stage directions, it’s very light on the descriptive, it’s all “this happened and then this and then this...” - why that doesn’t flounder, I think, is because of the core narrative Jenkins Reid is writing about.
This isn’t a love story - it’s a story of wanting. From characters wanting fame, to wanting creative control over their work, wanting drugs and booze or similarly wanting to battle their addictions...and yes, wanting love, although I really felt that was only one part of the whole. Each character faces their own journey of “want” and the outcomes are predictably human. There is no fairytale as this isn’t told as such - it’s a fictional version of what a real life account would be. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham didn’t drive off into the sunset, they wrote Dreams and Go Your Own Way. But the journey to that album, those songs, its iconic.
Overall I found this a great read, unique enough in style and content to keep me going until the end and leaving me curious about other works from Jenkins Reid.