Juliet, Naked

Nick Hornby

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Nick Hornby returns to his roots - music and messy relationships - in this funny and touching novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption.

Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan's case, an obsession rather than an interest) is not enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker's 'new release', a terrible demo of his most famous album, it's the last straw - Duncan cheats on her and she promptly throws him out. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie's harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn't agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time. Nick Hornby's compelling new novel, four years after A Long Way Down, is about the nature of creativity and obsession, and how two lonely people can gradually find each other.?

'Subtle and insightful, and really quite touching.'

'It’s good to have him back. Nick Hornby’s first adult novel in four years is a comic delight. Hornby’s writing has an easy, fluent tone, as if he is right inside his characters’ heads.'

Review by Ben Macnair (050910) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Rating 8/10
Returning to the theme of musical obsession amongst men of a certain age, as he did in High Fidelity Nick Hornby’s latest book, Juliet, Naked looks at the extended adolescence of Duncan, who has a life long passion for the music of the reclusive Country Singer Tucker Crowe.

Crowe’s fame, such as it is, is confined to the obsessive ranting posted on web-forums by fans eager to spread the gospel of his music, but when the record company releases a stripped down version of his most widely known album ‘Juliet’ Duncan finds his hero may not be what he hoped he was.

The new release lays bare every wrong note of songs that were covered by drums or bass, or sweetening instruments, whilst the fans on the forum hold a different view to Duncan. Duncan’s long term girlfriend, Annie posts her own less than complimentary comments on the forum, and is surprised to find an answer from Tucker Crowe himself.

And from this small correspondence grows a tentative relationship. Annie and Tucker meet, and find they share in common a knowledge of wasting the best years doing the wrong thing, or with the wrong people.

Like Hornby’s other books, such as High Fidelity, or Fever Pitch, the characters are realistically drawn, with their flaws and problems, and rounding them out as fully realised people, and although the ending is relatively happy, it is also realistic, for although Tucker has found a new found happiness, he has lost whatever he had before, according to the fans on the Forum.
Ben Macnair (5th September 2010)