The Music Shop

I'm often asked - who is your favourite author? Well, I just can't narrow it down to one, but Rachel Joyce is on the top ten list. Her books are so affecting - they resonate with me long after the last page has been turned.

And that is true again with her latest book, The Music Shop.

"There was once a music shop. From the outside it looked like any shop, in any backstreet. It had no name above the door" ...... "As long as it was on vinyl, there were no taboos. And if you told Frank the kind of thing you wanted, or simply how you felt that day, he had the right track in minutes. It was a knack he had. A gift. He knew what people needed even when they didn't know it themselves."

Joyce's characters are always a little left of center, show more eccentric in their own ways. Inherently good and kind, but a little lost. Frank is missing something in his life, but he doesn't know it until the mysterious woman in the green coat enters his shop. Her arrival is the catalyst for a change in Franks' life. And not just Frank, but the other inhabitants of Unity Street. Although Frank is the lead character, I found myself just as drawn to the supporting cast - especially Kit - the 'assistant manager' of the music shop.' His innocence, bouncing around, love of posters and unfailing good nature endeared him to me. Maud, the surly tattoo artist was another favourite. They're all a little out of step, but I would love to be a resident of this wee little back street and walk with them.

Joyce has such a way with words - her prose are thoughtful and worth savouring. "They spoke in the flat monotone they used these days in order to remain on open road where nothing would jump out and surprise them. One wrong word and it was like trees coming down."

Now, as I first started to read, I began writing down the musical references and referrals that Frank makes. I was fascinated by the explanations of the music, the background of the pieces and what to listen for. The list soon grew too long and I was too caught up in reading to stop and add to the list. But, I do want to go back and listen to some pieces recommended by Frank and catch his interpretation of the piece. The explanation of silence within music intrigued me, as did many more of the musical references. Joyce neatly ties those references to what is happening with the characters.

It'd be lovely if there was a Frank - who doesn't want to have the right music 'prescribed' for them. On reading the author's notes, I learned that the premise for The Music Shop sprang from events in Joyce's own life.

I loved The Music Shop - absolutely recommended! show less

Oh, I loved this book! I loved the writing style and the emotion and the way the story unfolded. This is one of the few novels I will read again.

Rachel Joyce takes us on a journey, back to a time before small businesses were toppled by Walmart and Amazon, and back to a time before music became a digitized and often impersonal experience. This is a story about music and people, and about how they intertwine. You don't have to know a lot about music to enjoy this story, though I do think you need to be the type of person who can be moved by sound.

I love the way Joyce, through her characters, addresses the way music feels. Frank's gift lies in his understanding of how the right sound, at the right time, reaches right to the core of a show more person. He shares this gift with his music shop customers, giving them solace through good and bad times.

But this story is about more than music. It's about personal growth, relationships, and the way the world evolves around us. This is a beautiful, poignant story, rich in atmosphere and emotion.

*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.* show less

I’ve read other novels that try to bring in music. Usually, these attempts just feel like name-dropping, and they leave me flat. This novel about music actually gets it right. Joyce doesn’t just have characters say that Aretha Franklin’s music is powerful—they listen to it and are moved by it; they make the readers feel it too. All of the musical descriptions resonated with me, and the stories of the composers’ private lives fit well with the narrative that Joyce is crafting. This is a story of music, of how it shapes us and moves us, of how we grow within it. It’s a story of a man who runs a music shop, who just has a way of knowing what record each customer needs, and who uses his music to reach out to others. It’s a show more story of giving, of despair, and of hope. It’s a love story. It’s sweet and sad and triumphant all at once. It’s a powerful story of music. It IS music. show less

This book made me really, really mad. I hate books that are described as "love stories" when the relationship between the two main characters doesn't even come close to resembling real love. I will admit that the sections devoted to music are well done, and while I might not agree with Frank's interpretations I appreciate the absolute joy he takes in each diverse piece.

The rest of this rant will be hidden due to spoilers.

So we're supposed to love Frank because he finds everyone the right music and tries to help perfect strangers. But when he meets Ilse he is in turn shy, rude, long-winded and finally cruel. This is supposed to demonstrate that he is IN LOVE and doesn't know how to handle it.

Why can't Frank handle love? Well, because he show more had an evil mother who taught him all about music but never did any maternal things like show him warmth and affection. But his mother's ultimate sin happened many years ago, when she encouraged his high school girlfriend to have an abortion instead of letting the teenagers get married. Never mind the fact that the couple were probably too young to have a baby or make decisions about their future, it was EVIL. And then his mother left all of her money to charity instead of to Frank, who as a grown man really should have been able to support his own damn self. Get over yourself, Frank.

And what are we to make of Frank's true love, Ilse? She faints when she first sees him. She's shy and does a lot of listening as he expounds on music. For some unknown reason she can fix mechanical things. But other than that one characteristic, she's basically a cipher who Frank loves because...well, because he just does. Every time he turned her down I wanted her to smack him around or stand up for herself, but what does she do? More than twenty years later, she drops everything and goes looking for him, spending all of her time and energy to find him and capture his attention. Does he finally come to his senses? Does it matter? The two never really had a real relationship, just a series of one-sided encounters in which he mansplained and admired, and she listened adoringly.

The secondary characters are quirky, as they usually are in this type of novel, but at least I was more invested in seeing them find some level of happiness than I was in Frank finally getting his head out of his butt. I realize I am in the minority here but I found this book more disturbing than charming. show less

This novel is not like music; this novel is music. It begins with an adagio. It’s gentle and calm, soft and sweet. Frank knows what his customers need, not what they want, and he steers them in the right direction, with a trust-me attitude, never over-bearing. But then, the exposition occurs. We’re exposed to scenes from Frank’s childhood, and little by little we discover who Peg was, and what she gave to Frank, and what she did not. Then, just when things seem peaceful, a new motif is introduced, one by the name of Ilse. We don’t know what to make this new theme. Like a two-part invention, we hear a phrase from Frank. It is reiterated by Ilse, but changed slightly. This back and forth dance goes on for a while. The Ilse theme show more is here, then gone. But the recapitulation is not the calm feeling that began the music. There is a sense of desire, of hastening, of foreboding, a clash. We return with the Ilse theme, but the frenzied pace of cadenza continues, until, disaster and then, a grand pause. Finally, a return again to calm serenity that began our piece, but changed it is, for to return to the beginning would be impossible. A brief coda ends the piece as it should, and as the tonality resolves to the tonic resting point, so do the people resolve their quests. Well thought out, well written, well done. show less

“Music is about silence…Music comes out of silence and at the end it goes back to it. It’s a Journey….the silence at the beginning of a piece is always different from the silence at the end…Because if you listen, the world changes. It’s like falling in love. Only no one gets hurt.”

In 1988, the world is changing rapidly in so many ways and nowhere more than on Unity Street. Although situated in a rundown part of London, the street is aptly named. It is more than just a bunch of individual shops; it’s more like a family – granted, a family of mostly eccentric and quirky shopkeepers and their customers but a family all the same and Frank is one of its most loved members. A big bear of a man, music is his passion and, not show more surprisingly, he runs a record shop but, at a time when CDs are taking over the music business, he refuses to carry anything but vinyl. He is a patient man who listens carefully to people and, as a result, he can tell his customers exactly what music they need whether it is Johann Sebastian Bach or James Brown.

But once a thriving local business area, Unity is now threatened not only by an economic downturn and by the fact that the street and shops are in dire need of repairs leading the city to threaten to close them but by a development corporation that is offering to buy up all the buildings so that it can tear them down and build luxury apartments. Then one day, among all these worries, a young German woman in a green coat faints outside Frank’s shop – a seemingly small incident that will have a huge impact not only on the street but most especially on Frank.

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce is a charming insightful story about average people facing a changing world but who are able to face it with the support and help of others. Most of all, this is a love story, love between friends, between two people, of music. The story is interspersed with tales of Frank’s childhood with his mom, Peg, the woman who taught him about music and the people who made it. And, as in music, it is about the silences between words, silences that lead to confusion, misread signals and lost opportunities for both speaker and listener but also hope and possibilities.

I have read other reviews that point out that the ending seems too much like an old ‘40s musical or perhaps a Frank Capra movie and there is certainly truth to this. But, for me, that was a plus– I love those old movies. In many ways, Joyce’s writing, although set in a much later time, suits that period and those movies with its deceptive simplicity and lyricism, its optimism, its hidden depths, and its rooting for the little guy against the odds.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

When it comes to offbeat love stories about and for grownups, British author Rachel Joyce may be the queen. She's the writer who gave us “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” and “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy,” actually one love story told from two perspectives. Now comes “The Music Shop” (2017), a different kind of story but with the same kind of appeal.

In 1988, when the tale opens, the compact disc is all the rage, but Frank insists he will sell nothing but vinyl records in his music shop. The few records he manages to sell are mostly due to his uncanny ability to spend a few minutes talking with customers and then lead them to exactly the record they need, whether they know it or not. When a customer comes in show more wanting Chopin, he gives them Aretha Franklin, for example, and somehow it always works. Joyce writes that he "heard the song inside people."

Then one day a beautiful German woman named Ilse shows up outside his shop and promptly faints. She has, we are told, skin "so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn't." So begins a love story, even though Frank is the last person to realize it. He is, we are told, "perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people."

Ilse, supposedly engaged to another man, has a habit of disappearing, then suddenly reappearing. Frank starts giving her music lessons, or more accurately music appreciation lessons. They meet each week at a restaurant where he gives her records and explains how to listen to them and what to listen for.

I won't spoil any of the surprises, and there are many. But this love story spans decades, resuming at a time when vinyl is making a comeback. Ilse, who has disappeared again, comes back, as well.

If you have dry eyes at the end of this one, you lack a heart. show less