“Juliet, Naked” by Nick Hornby (2009) – 416 pages
Is there one music artist whose music you are obsessed with, some person or group that you own every one of their albums, even the throwaway ones? An artist or group whose music speaks directly to you?
Obsession with a music artist is the subject of the novel “Juliet, Naked” by Nick Hornby. I can’t say that I have one artist that I’m totally addicted to, but I can remember watching Alison Krauss and Union Station play “When You Say Nothing At All” over and over and over. But I was already addicted to that song when Keith Whitley performed it.
“They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.”
This is no ordinary toilet; this is the bathroom where singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe ducked out on his band in 1986 never to return. Duncan is totally obsessed with Tucker Crowe and the entire purpose of this trip to the US with his longtime girlfriend Annie is to visit sites that are meaningful in Tucker Crowe’s career.
When Duncan and Annie are back home in the English seaside town of Gooleness, Duncan spends most of his spare time on the Tucker Crowe message board on the web. Duncan is one of the world’s leading Crowologists, familiar with every little detail of Tucker Crowe’s recording career including all six of the albums. ‘Juliet’, an album written when Crowe broke up with his model girlfriend Juliet, is unquestionably Ticker Crowe’s masterpiece. Now after all these years, they are releasing an acoustic version of ‘Juliet’ which has the title ‘Juliet, Naked’.
Of course, Nick Hornby, being a popular music critic, is very familiar with this type of super-fandom, and he has a lot of fun with the music obsessive Duncan. When Tucker Crowe finally does enter the novel, his character is a bit of a letdown. Nick Hornby’s point seems to be that no matter how much these obsessive fans build up certain performers, the performers themselves are pretty much normal and nothing special, I found Tucker Crowe a somewhat boring and uninteresting character . I would have preferred an outrageous over-the-top Tucker Crowe. Much of the novel is about Crowe dealing with the five children he fathered with four different girlfriends.
‘Juliet, Naked’ is a humorous entertaining novel. What the novel does not have are a sharp edge or depth. Obsessive music fans are an easy target, I did not find it as clever as Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’, but ‘Juliet, Naked’ is diverting light fare, a pleasant way to pass the time.
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Posted by KevinfromCanada on June 23, 2011 at 6:28 PM
I have only read one Hornby (How to be Good) and it does not rank with my favorites. I’d say “diverting light fare, a pleasant way to pass the time” is an excellent summary. A great writer for the beach, if I could add my own cliche.
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Posted by anokatony on June 23, 2011 at 7:13 PM
Hi Kevin,
Yes, exactly, a beach read. But there’s always a shortage of humorous novelists, and Nick Hornby is very funny.
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Posted by Frisbee on June 24, 2011 at 2:48 PM
I’m a fan of Hornby’s and did enjoy Juliet Naked. This and A Long Way Down (hope I’ve got this title right) have more depth than the others–I think he’s evolving: of course I haven’t read the others in awhile. And I didn’t see his movie, which would also support (or not) my evolution theory. In A Long Way Down, a group of people intending to commit suicide run into one another on the roof of a building.
I very much like comedy, and always look forward to his books.
I wasn’t wild about How to Be Good, either. May I just say that’s his least effective comedy.
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Posted by anokatony on June 24, 2011 at 3:45 PM
Hi Frisbee,
Oh I did read that ‘meeting on the roof for suicide’ book too, that was quite humorous. There are so few writers doing whimsical humor, so I do appreciate Nick Hornby’s writing. Also his humor is not mean or biting or sarcastic, just sort of laughing at ourselves.
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Posted by whisperinggums on June 25, 2011 at 12:16 AM
Hi Tony … I’ve been lying quite a bit low lately with many trips away the first half of the year. I’ve barely managed my own blog let alone read others. I am now getting back into things, I hope. Anyhow you and Kevin have hit the nail on the head I think. I’ve read a couple of Hornby’s – How to be good, and About a boy – and seen a couple of films (including High fidelity, though I understand it’s quite different). Hornby’s subject matter tends always to be interesting but he’s a light, fun writer as you say. The sort of book perfect for a plane or the beach.
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Posted by anokatony on June 25, 2011 at 1:52 AM
Hi WhisperingGums.
I know how being busy goes. I just want to say that no matter how long you’ve been away, you will always be most Welcome when you come back! I hope you’ve been enjoying the summer.
Everyone, including you, seems to agree that Nick Hornby writes great light novels. It might be fun if he tried something a little deeper, even a little crueler. But even if he keeps writing these light humorous novels, I’ll keep reading him.
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Posted by Tom C on June 25, 2011 at 6:49 AM
I read this some time ago and didn’t think much of it. The book seemed to be a real decline from his usual style and I was left feeling that it was a pretty pointless read.
I managed to order the Garden of Beasts from the library – it looks really good from your review.
Thanks for pointing out my author name change in my latest review. How does that happen? Carelessness must be my middle name
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Posted by anokatony on June 25, 2011 at 1:02 PM
Hi Tom,
When I was preparing my ‘In the Garden of Beasts’ piece, I must have hit the wrong key or something, because WordPress decided to take out the spaces whenever there was a place name, so ‘visited Berlin and’ became ”visitedBerlinand’.. For some reason it did this only for place names. I caught a couple of these errors before I published thinking they were my keying errors, but after I published,I would look and find a couple more instances where it had occurred. Even a couple of days after I published I was still seeing instances of this run-on error in the entry. I guess this is another example of how easy errors creep in.
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