Found Another One!

Juliet, Naked, is Nick Hornby’s newest novel. I loved High Fidelity, so in a minor fit of extravagance, I bought Juliet in hard cover because it isn’t out in paperback yet. Hard cover lasts longer passed around among friends, and I certainly want to pass this one around. As a lesbian trapped in a redneck ex-jock’s body, I just can’t resist a good romantic comedy, and Hornby is an insightful investigator of the unending permutations of one heart’s attraction to another.

A common motif in Hornby’s writing is the influence of and obsession with music. In this case, we have a man obsessed with a reclusive rock star who hasn’t recorded in twenty years, the fixated but formal stalker’s long suffering girlfriend, and a bitter, retired musician with too many ex-wives, children he doesn’t know, no money and a creative well run dry.

I read the 406 pages in two days. I just don’t do that. Not since Lonesome Dove, anyway. Hornby manages to explore the role of artifice in art, the question of whether obsession can be benign, and the possibility of romance anchored in the messy real world, all while making me laugh out loud nearly every other page.

Buy it now. Hornby deserves to be rich for helping renew my faith in fiction. If this isn’t in production as the third Hornby screenplay adaptation (About a Boy, High Fidelity) then it will be soon.