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A review by kevinalbrecht
Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate
4.0
A story that spans centuries, continents, musical styles, and cultural experiences: I've never read a book quite like this before.
Have you ever heard the advice to writers of fiction from Hemingway to always write what is true? Though I thought I understood that when I first heard that advice, I really didn't. But if any book epitomizes this advice, it is this one.
Twelve Bar Blues has so much in it that is unbelievable, but feels so completely real that those unbelievable parts are made more believable than most nonfiction. Ecstatic musical experiences, explicit sex, racist slurs, inescapable poverty, gut turning smells-- everything feels so true that you can't help being utterly repulsed by what happens at the same time that you can't stop reading it.
Have you ever heard the advice to writers of fiction from Hemingway to always write what is true? Though I thought I understood that when I first heard that advice, I really didn't. But if any book epitomizes this advice, it is this one.
Twelve Bar Blues has so much in it that is unbelievable, but feels so completely real that those unbelievable parts are made more believable than most nonfiction. Ecstatic musical experiences, explicit sex, racist slurs, inescapable poverty, gut turning smells-- everything feels so true that you can't help being utterly repulsed by what happens at the same time that you can't stop reading it.