Rating: 3/5
Review
Very odd
This is a very odd book indeed. I hadn't read any Magnus Mills before and was
looking forward to it, but in the end I was left bemused.
The story is narrated by an unnamed man who, with his friend
James starts up a society in the back room of a pub, in which they simply
listen "forensically" to records, with "no judgements and no
comments." Internal tensions and
rival societies arise, and the exercise of power and fanatical purism are (I
think) satirised.
It's readable enough, but I really couldn't make out what
the point of it was. Also, be aware that
there are a huge number of musical references; some are to songs by name (but
the artist is never given) and some just by lines like "what's all that
about leaving a cake out in the rain?"
(That's MacArthur Park,
written by Jimmy Webb, just in case you didn't know.) I'm by no means an encyclopaedic geek, but I
do know quite a lot about the music of the last 60 years and a significant
proportion of the songs were unknown to me.
If you're not musically knowledgeable, this might be a real problem when
reading.
Things happen, but in an almost dreamlike detachment (we
learn nothing whatever about any of the characters other than their approach to
music and the Society), there are lots of slight weirdnesses, only some of
which I could see the point of, and the ending is so bizarre that I wondered
whether I'd received a faulty download.
(I don't think I had.) I find it
hard to rate the book; it's well written but very odd and, to me anyway,
ultimately rather inconsequential.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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