Juliet, Naked

Juliet, Naked
by Nick Hornby
2009
406 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59448-887-0
Cincinnati Public Library

I requested this from the library as soon as I got home from the bookstore where I saw it on the shelf. Thinking about it, that was a kind of blind optimism based on the fact that I liked Hornby's earliest books, the movies-made-them-famous High Fidelity and About a Boy. Since then, I have found my affection somewhat waning. How To Be Good was really only good. My thoughts on A Long Way Down are there for your perusal if you so choose, but can sum it up with the fact that I didn't like it enough to keep track of it. I either donated or lent it away to the big library in the sky, because that once owned copy is not on the shelf here now. As for his 2007 YAish novel Slam, it's so forgettable that I actually forgot that I read it. As in, when I saw it on the list of Hornby's books, I thought "Oh, I'll have to find a copy of that one," only to realize upon closer inspection that I had read it already. I know that I read a lot, but that is not a compliment.

Juliet, Naked bucks the trend. It is a true return to the Nick Hornby that I loved so long ago. This book is sweet and sarcastic with characters that are delightfully real and lovable for all their dramatic and obvious flaws. The characters are what this book is all about, and while you wonder what is going to happen, what you are really wondering is what is going to happen to them. The events here gain most of their significance from their effect on the people involved. The relationships between the characters are the real charm of this novel, especially the relationship between Tucker and his adorable son Jackson, which is a real highlight.

In Juliet, Naked Hornby does to the obsessive website creating song analyzing fan what he did to the obsessive record collector in High Fidelity, shows them all their warts and insanity, and leaves them human none the less. He does this well I suppose, although I found myself feeling bad for them (and perhaps a little scornful) in a distant sort of way as I read the book. Long after I finished I realized that I actually wrote my big term paper in high school on Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows as an American poet. Perhaps I should have related to them more (although I would certainly not spend my vacation on a tour of significant places in Duriz's life).

This is a charming and delightful read, and would be a pretty good introduction to Hornby for the uninitiated. It reminds us all that sometimes the people around us can see us far more clearly than we see ourselves, and maybe, sometimes we should listen to what they tell us.