I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: Spotify playlist: The Music Shop–Songs from and Inspired by the Rachel Joyce Novel (2017).

Penguin books has created a Spotify playlist based on the music mentioned in the story.

 There’s music by:

• Aretha Franklin
• David Bowie
• Shalamar
• Duke Ellington
• Sex Pistols
• Miles Davis
• Led Zeppelin
• Van Morrison
• James Brown
• Isaac Hayes
• The Troggs
• The Beach Boys
• Billie Holiday
• Nick Drake

and classical composers like

• Bach
• Chopin
• Perotin
• Beethoven
• Verdi
• Barber
• Handel

[READ: August 2021] The Music Shop

I don’t remember how I heard about this book, but it was a fun fast read.

Set in 1988 It’s about a curmudgeon who owns a music shop (vinyl only) and how he falls in love.

Frank has a special gift: he can talk with you for a few minutes and figure out exactly what music you need to hear right now (on vinyl of course).  It’s not a lucrative gift, but the people who take advantage of it are beyond thrilled.

The first chapter is about a man who only listed to Chopin and how Frank turned him on to Aretha Franklin exactly when he needed her music.

Frank’s shop is in a cul de sac with a few other businesses.  None of them are thriving; most of them are doing almost okay.  Maud owns the tattoo shop and sort of has a thing for Frank (he is way too oblivious to realize it).   She is tough (a tattoo parlor owner after all) and has some of the best lines in the book (I love her).  There’s also Father Anthony, a priest who owns a religious icons shop.  He is cool and chill and likes to hang out in the record shop.  And there’s a mortician (actually twins) who share space in the cul de sac.

Frank has one employee, Kit, an excitable teenaged boy who is clumsy in many ways and provides for most of the honesty in the book.

Frank’s shop is, as one might expect, a messy heaven of vinyl.  The details are pretty great.  So it’s a surprise one day when a beautiful mysterious woman walks in and passes out in the middle of the stacks.  The women is roused and flees in embarrassment.  She comes back a few days later with an apology gift and then tell Frank that she never listens to music.

Her name is Ilsa and she is from Germany. She tells Frank that she has a fiancé.

And so begins a game of romance in which she is not interested in Frank because she has a fiancé and Frank is not interested in her because she has a fiancé.  But they are clearly very interested in each other.  They are mean to each other and kind to each other.  And then, since she never listened to music, she asks if he can give her music lessons–teach her about all of the most important music that he is willing to share.

One reviewer complained that the book was basically a white man mansplaining music to a woman who falls in love with him.  And while that is all true, it doesn’t really play out that way.  And, come on now, you wouldn’t have any stories if you didn’t have people who were more knowledgeable at things than other people.  But whatever.  I really enjoyed Frank’s recommendations and his passion about music.  And whether Frank was a black man or an LGBTQ+ person, the story would have worked just as well.

Plus I rather enjoyed Frank’s backstory about his mother, Peg, who taught him to love and appreciate music.  (So she mansplained music to him first).  It was a very sad relationship but it impacted his life tremendously.  Especially when she died and gave all of her money to charity instead of him.

Frank is also a deeply flawed character which makes him more interesting too–frustrating, annoying, but empathetic to everyone.

As the books hits the middle point there is an external crisis–a planning board intends to turn their entire area (run down and kind of seedy) into fancy new condos (or something).  They start buying people out and our main characters decide to stick together.  Until some of the more peripheral characters start selling off.

But Frank decides to double down.  He gets money from the bank and invests in his shop.  He spruces it up and modernizes it.  But still no CDS.

And people are interested,

And then Ilsa reveals a couple of secrets.  But because Frank is a flawed idiot, she ends up going back to Germany.

Side four (each section is a side, nice touch) has Ilsa as the protagonist.  And the book has jumped to 2009.  Because this book is a romance, she decides she needs to see Frank again.  It’s very important.

So this is where the book kind of lost it for me. The 21 years later revelation? Her sudden goal of needing this guy who was, frankly, not that great.  It just seemed too much.  I mean, sure I think about people I knew back in college, but I don’t need to cross the ocean to see them.

Which doesn’t mean I didn’t root for her and her crazy flash mob idea (actually Kit’s crazy flash mob idea of course).  And it doesn’t mean I didn’t want things to turn out perfectly.

Incidentally, Kit turns into a great character.  He’s kind of a doofus at first-the kind of doofus who accidentally moves the plot along.  But in side four he has developed into a fantastic character in his own right.  I’d like to read about book about him.