Hardcover
Published by Transworld Digital, Transworld Publishers Ltd.
It's 1988. The CD has arrived. Sales of the shiny new disks are soaring on high streets in cities across the country. Meanwhile, down a dead-end street, Frank's music shop stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. It attracts the lonely, the sleepless, the adrift. There is room for everyone. Frank has a gift for finding his customers the music they need. Into this shop arrives Ilse Brauchmann - practical, brave, well-heeled. Frank falls for this curious woman who always dresses in green. But Ilse's reasons for visiting the shop are not what they seem. Frank's passion for Ilse seems as misguided as his determination to save vinyl. How can a man so in tune with other people's needs be so incapable of helping himself? And what will it take to show he loves her?
my mom gave this to me to read, which i did out of obligation. it's not terrible. not good, but not terrible.
frankly i was just happy to get through it so i could give it back to her and get it off my "to read" pile.
At best this is an excellent work of music appreciation masquerading as an aggressively uninteresting novel. The prose about specific works of music is engaging and transformative but the story feels so inconsequential it's hard to feel like anything much is at stake. A bunch of boys who seem to have nothing more serious to worry about than what their music is recorded on sit around and hope the owner of an errant handbag comes back for it. Then she does. It doesn't feel tedious exactly but I wonder if the tedious banality of the characters lives is being intentionally placed in counterpoint to the big ideas and tragic stories of the music. And the narrative payoff is an improbable tropey romance that I desperately hope no one takes seriously with regard to what to expect out of their relationships.
I loved this book. It made me laugh frequently and once it made me cry. It took me back to myself in the late 80s, hanging out in record stores, stubbornly refusing to buy CDs. (There are still things I won’t buy on CD.) The characters felt like old friends. I loved this book.
I feel like there’s now a genre I’ll describe as “uniquely charming woman expends unreasonable amounts of energy to break through to emotionally withholding man, for no apparent reason.” In these stories, a man is shy and antisocial to strangers, even rude and hostile, because of some past trauma. He may not even have any close friends. Into the novel walks the “special” woman who is singularly positioned with both the ability and desire to put in extreme efforts to draw him out of his shell. These stories bug the heck out of me. Why should the woman do all the emotional labor of turning this guy’s life around for him? Why doesn’t she focus on finding a guy who has done the work of going to therapy, doing things that make him anxious in order to overcome his anxiety, recognizing that we’ve all got problems, etc.? She deserves an …
I feel like there’s now a genre I’ll describe as “uniquely charming woman expends unreasonable amounts of energy to break through to emotionally withholding man, for no apparent reason.” In these stories, a man is shy and antisocial to strangers, even rude and hostile, because of some past trauma. He may not even have any close friends. Into the novel walks the “special” woman who is singularly positioned with both the ability and desire to put in extreme efforts to draw him out of his shell. These stories bug the heck out of me. Why should the woman do all the emotional labor of turning this guy’s life around for him? Why doesn’t she focus on finding a guy who has done the work of going to therapy, doing things that make him anxious in order to overcome his anxiety, recognizing that we’ve all got problems, etc.? She deserves an emotionally healthy partner, just as we all do. I have to assume the intended audience for these novels is similarly lazy and hapless men, who want to believe in the fantasy that amazing, beautiful, charming women will just happen along and rescue with them, without having to put any effort into the necessary steps to overcome their own issues. Anyway, this is one of those novels. For bonus points, the ending is just silly and dripping with unearned schmaltz. 2 stars was generous.
