Novel will have you ‘in floods’
FICTION
British author Rachel Joyce’s bestsellers — “Perfect,” “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy” — share in common a sparkling compassion, as lives lived on the margins, overlooked lives, are unveiled in all their extraordinary depth. And so “The Music Shop” opens on an ordinary English city, in January 1988, where Frank, a “gentle bear of a man,” runs his shop on falling-apart Unity Street.
Frank’s fellow shopkeepers — quirky characters all — include “Tatooista” Maud; Father Anthony, purveyor of Articles of Faith; the two Williams brothers, pathologically shy funeral directors; a gentle Polish baker who still imagines his dead wife at his side — and finally Kit, an enchanting klutz of a boy, who helps Frank in the shop.
With its Victorian-wardrobes-turned-listening-booths, Frank’s shop is, to say the least, singular. Customers get not what they ask for, but what they need. And only on vinyl. Clouds, however, are looming, as CDs and property developers are on the march, targeting not only Frank’s shop but also the whole crumbling street.
For 14 years, Frank has worked his special magic on his customers. To wit: for the “man who only loved Chopin,” Frank plays Aretha, her voice “a little boat and the music a Japanese wave” — and has his broken heart mended.
A Def Leppard fan gets Barber’s Adagio for Strings, hearing in the unfamiliar sounds assurances that “the human adventure is worth it.”
A shrewd observer of the forces that both nurture and destroy, Rachel Joyce is also very funny. In a typical music shop moment, Kit shepherds Chopin Man to a listening booth as if “parts of the man were in danger in dropping off.”
Structurally, the novel playfully mimics the “concept albums” that Frank loves — Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust,” Johnny Cash’s “At Folsom Prison” — discs that tell stories.
The Book’s “Side A” sings of Frank’s shop, spliced with childhood memories of “the white house by the sea” and his mother, Peg, whose passions are records, music history, sketchy men — her son is further down the list.
The mood brightens the day a mysterious woman faints outside the shop. Gazing into “eyes like vinyl,” Frank falls in love.
“Side B” highlights Frank and Ilse, the woman who fainted. She asks for music lessons and receives Beethoven, moonlight and Frank’s heart. With Ilse’s secrets tumbling out and Frank’s mission to save vinyl looking very grim, “Side C” leaves us longing for Frank’s playlist from happier days: Van Morrison, Nick Drake, the Stones, Schubert, Steely Dan.
From 1988, Joyce skips ahead to 2009, “international year of astronomy, natural fibres, reconciliation, and the gorilla.” Could a Unity Street reunion be in the works? A whole lot rides on “Side D.” To borrow Frank’s own vernacular, anyone not “in floods” (tears) during Joyce’s epic musical closer is scarcely worth bothering about.