Escapism via music… via books
First things first, I know I said my next reads were going to be The Flatshare (done, loved it, next) and This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us. I remember saying it, ok?
But like, best laid plans, etc.
I did start This Body… but it turns out I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I love me a complicated, clever narrative structure and I am confident that’s what I’m going to get there, but honestly right now my poor, social-distanced head can’t stand it. I’ve put it back up on my TBR pile, waiting for a day I want fun, frenzy and challenge all in one.
In the meantime, I’m trying out a book that I’ve seen advertised on giant posters lining the walls of the tunnel to South Kensington tube station for weeks before Coronavirus knackered my commute - Daisy Jones & The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’m pretty excited - Caroline O’Donoghue (who I love for Promising Young Women) said on Twitter that she was a big fan, which is enough of an endorsement for me, frankly.
Also, just look at these pages.
…and don’t look too closely at my kitchen floor, ‘kay? We are sweeping, we’re just here a lot right now.
Not sure if I’ve mentioned, but I love me a beautiful book, and this qualifies. Like the red edging on my copy of The Quick by Lauren Owen, I’d have snatched this off the shelf in a heartbeat for this alone. I dunno man, I wish I could say I’m immune to marketing but that would be a lie.
Although honestly, in this case I don’t think I needed the ombré page edges, the six foot tube posters or even, really, ringing endorsements from writers I already love. I have high hopes for Daisy Jones and her outfit because this book is about a band. And I bloody love me a book about a band.
A fictional one, you understand.
l’ve read some music biographies that I enjoyed over the years. Anthony Kiedis’s Scar Tissue was memorable, if only because it made me crave watermelon (tbf that’s a pretty natural state for me anyway). I’ve got Debbie Harry’s book on my wish list too - but somehow it’s the fiction novels that have me tight in their grip.
This began when I was a teenager, and there are two books in specific I think of when I think of music in literature. There are others I’ve read since, but much like the bands you love when you’re that age, these two books were formative for me: This Lullaby, by Sarah Dessen, and Guitar Girl by Sarra Manning.
This Lullaby was one of two books by Sarah Dessen I got as part of a pack from the late, much-mourned The Book People. (The other, for reference and also one I’d recommend, is Last Chance.) The premise of This Lullaby is that a prickly, spiky female protagonist (Remy) finds herself swept against her better judgement into a romance with, of all terrible things, a musician. I mean, poor girl. Can you even imagine? Dexter (the musician), is sweet, affectionate, and deeply clumsy - a total foil to Remy’s orderly universe. It’s a very sweet story, and I think I liked it as much as I did because Remy was lots of things I also was: terrified of intimacy and closeness, out of a deep-seated fear of rejection. Sure, show me a fifteen year old girl who doesn’t feel that way, right?
And - much in the same way that fifteen-year-old Jess wasn’t perhaps as unique in her insecurities as she’d have had you think, I’m not pretending that This Lullaby isn’t a tiny bit formulaic and predictable - but those are also the reasons it’s comforting. Seriously, it’s one of my most re-read books because it’s like drinking a perfect-temperature hot chocolate and not even feeling guilty about all the cream and marshmallows - and a big part of its just-the-right-side-of-sickly sweet charm lies in the fact that Dexter is a musician, and so was Remy’s dad. He wrote a song for her that became his only hit - don’t you see? And then he abandoned her, so why wouldn’t she believe this clumsy, well-meaning musician would do exactly the same? Music threads its way through the pages of the book like a melody you almost recognise, so that the story sticks with you for years. At least, it did with me.
Oh, and that collection of books I ordered from The Book People? It also included a book with an image on the front of a pretty young woman with shocking pink hair, upside down holding a guitar. In bright pink letters above her raised feet it says, Guitar Girl. It’s a book about… a prickly, spiky female protagonist - but she’s British this time, and her name is Molly. Molly starts a band with two school friends, mainly because she likes to bunk off college, and they write silly three chord songs about magic markers and Hello Kitty until… well, a boy joins the band. (Two boys actually, but only one of them matters to our Moll.) He’s… a musician. Ugh, gross - his name is Dean Speed. Look, I haven’t read that book since 2007 but I am telling you without having to check that his name is Dean Speed, because of course it is. And of course he stuck with me - he’s the perfect foil for Molly’s childlike charm and wonder. He’s all moodiness and ‘taking music seriously’. He’s perfect! Except, of course, he isn’t.
Guitar Girl is a very different book to This Lullaby. In lots of ways it’s more bitter than sweet, some people argue it’s unrealistic that this band would have taken off like they did, and the ending has infuriated lots of people if GoodReads is any measure, but to me it’s perfect. It’s an encapsulation of the dreams of thousands of teenage girls across the planet. This book more than any band encouraged me to beg my dad for guitar lessons from the peripatetic music teacher at school (and then I gave up when I realised I’d have to practice like, all the time, but that’s another tale). The story of the rise and fall of a fictional band is fascinating, engrossing, and the fact I get it all from the point of view of the charismatic frontwoman who’s equally loved and loathed by the end…
Well. Let’s just say, I’m sincerely hoping Daisy Jones has the same effect on my psyche.
Music is powerful. So are stories. And right now, when we’re all stuck inside, that’s exactly the kind of escapism I think lots of us are looking for.