The Music Shop

By Rachel Joyce Doubleday, £14.99

Rachel Joyce’s new novel returns to some of the themes in her bestselling debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of

Harold Fry: loss, the pull of the past and the bonds that can be forged with strangers. This time the pilgrimage is through music. It’s 1988, and music shop owner Frank is one of a community of shopkeepers in a crumbling arcade threatened with demolition. Clinging to vinyl despite the arrival of CDS, he listens to people who come in search of music to recommend with uncanny ability the record they need. Then Ilse Brauchmann, a woman nursing a secret, faints outside his shop and Frank is tipped into a breathless, frightening world of love and music lessons. An uplifting read, simply written but nuanced, full of humour and authentic characters.