Book Review: Juliet, Naked

Would it really have been so much worse to spend those years alone?  Why did there have to be someone else in the room while she was eating, watching TV, sleeping?  A partner was supposed to be some mark of success:  anyone who shared a bed with someone on a nightly basis had proved herself capable in some way, no? Of something?  But her relationship now seemed to her to betoken failure, not success.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby is about, well, a lot of different things actually.  But mostly it’s about a man named Duncan who is obsessed with the music of a man named Tucker and what happens when Duncan’s longtime girlfriend Annie starts emailing Tucker.

What I Liked

– What didn’t I like?  The book is honestly a little slice of perfection.  The characters are all just perfectly hopeless living in their own little pockets of despair.  There’s just a real sense of how stuck they all are in the patterns of their lives and either want or don’t want more.  And the setting, plot, and everything else all just add to the understanding of the characters, the lives they lead, and how they get to where they are.

It was hopeless, life, really.  It was set up all wrong.

I keep trying to think of more things to say about the book, but I can’t think of anything except:  amazing.