Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Okay, I will have my review of Juliet, Naked posted soon...however, I really wanted to ask you what you thought of the ending. Maybe I'm just a bit thick, but I really felt like the ending was left a bit up in the air, or open to interpretation, if you will.

Personally, I got the feeling Annie was going to leave Gooleness and follow Tucker to America. This, of course, would be a disaster if it were true. The one thing I think I missed though is if Annie was pregnant or not. Clearly she wanted that to happen but Hornby didn't exactly come out an say her one-night-stand with Tucker was a success in the baby-making department. And if it was and Annie was going to America...YIKES! How on earth would that conversation go? I shudder at the thought. Yet this is what the ending of the book has led me to think about.

Please, did anyone have a different interpretation? Any other thoughts on this ending? I'd love to know what you think!!

First off, this is going to come out pretty rambling and vaguely stream-of-consciousness, so I apologize. I just finished the book ~10 minutes ago, so I've got quite a bit of thinking on it still left to do, but personally I quite liked the ending. I felt, while reading the book, that most of the conflict driving the novel was internal--these were people who felt that they'd wasted their lives, or at the least, large chunks of them. The true turning point, as I saw it, came when Annie spoke to the old woman with the photo and heard her confess that she felt she'd wasted her life making all the "right" decisions. I extrapolated that she then realized that there isn't a right way of doing things, that everyone will have regrets, but that she'd rather regret an action than an inaction (thus, the unprotected sex). Her presence in Gooleness was the same sort of inaction, really--the beginning-of-book narration, if I remember correctly, details how she just sort of ended up there and stayed because of Duncan.

So to me, the ending was a happy one, as at least from Annie's point of view, what she ended up doing wasn't the important thing--it's that she does something at all.

I thought the ending was hidden in plain sight. My take: In the last internet exchange my immediate assumption was that "uptown girl" was Annie. She intentionally misspells Crowe's name to conceal her identity, raves about the album that none of the hardcore fans like just to stir the pot, and her comment "my husband and I love the album" reveals the fact that she did indeed go to America and marry Tucker.

I like the way you think! I read this as an ebook and don't have the file anymore, but I'll definitely be paging to the back to reread that final exchange with your insight in mind once I buy a hard copy.

It makes sense if that's the case, though--as a wrap-up, that forum log was a nice outline of where Duncan and Tucker had ended up post-novel, but Annie seemed a conspicuously-absent loose end to me. "Uptown girl's" post would change that.

And of course her choice of screen name, "Uptown Girl", refers to the comment at the Museum opening party -- that Tucker Crowe wasn't anyone famous, but Billy Joel was.

That is an interesting though, jbvm. I'm going to have to go back and look at that last post again. I thought it was odd that Nick Hornby would end the novel that way. Not odd really but I guess, random? But now that you make that suggestion, it really has me rethinking it. I agree, I felt that Annie made the decision to go to America but that was based on what I knew of her and learned from her in the book. I didn't occur to me Hornby may be including a little nugget to confirm that suspicion.

Interview with author about the book:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113304812

He discusses the weird triangles in the story.

I just finished Juliet, Naked and loved every bit of it. =) Anyhow, I'm with jbvm (not that there are any sides or anything like that), but I immediately thought that "Uptown Girl" was Annie and that she did move to the states to marry Tucker. Also, Tucker mentioned that none of the previous women he had been with "inspired" him to write again...like they had hope...they wanted to be his muse and somehow, Annie, become his in the end because she forced him to think and look at like in a different way. Maybe I'm reading way too much into the ending because I wanted two lost souls to finally find happiness. Just my two cents. Anyhow, I'm going to listen to the NPR interview.

I finished this book last night, and although somewhat distracted by the Snooker, I could not see what Annie was supposed to do next. It mentioned a few weeks had passed so presumably she would have known if she were pregnant or not. I do hope "Uptown Girl" was supposed to be Annie, but wish it was made more clearer, as would have put my mind at rest and prevented me coming up with conspiracy theories into the small hours.

Nick, if you're out there, maybe you could enlighten us all :)

If you have any doubts, listen to the lyrics of "You're My Best Friend" by Don Williams - Tucker included it in his album. Sounds like Annie, pregnant, left for America where she and Tucker were raising green beans and kids together. Of course, this entire discussion, including my observations, sounds a bit like something from Duncan and the Crowe-ologists, which might be exactly what Hornby was tryping to accomplish with the ending. ;-)