Reading Freely

In a struggling neighborhood in 1988 London, owners and residents like to gather in Frank’s music shop to hear what he has for them. Frank has a gift of being able to hear the music anyone needs at any given moment, and he’s happy to share them — even with a thief who ran out of his store with a record, whom he chased down and told that he’d skip the police call if only the thief would come back and listen to that band’s earlier stuff, because it was a lot better. But then a woman walks in whom Frank can’t hear the music for, a woman from Germany with a penchant for wearing green and a past she doesn’t want to talk about. After she faints on her first visit to the shop, she claims she’s not “into music” — but a connection between them leads to Frank sharing his favorite music and the stories bound up within the pieces over the course of many Tuesday meetings, all the while the neighborhood struggles with economic decline and developers who want to raze the old buildings for some brand spanking new projects. Frank isn’t a fan of the new and shiny, not because he’s a curmudgeon, but because of the qualities of the old that he defends. Take vinyl, for instance: he loves its physicality, the way it needs to be taken care of, the way it manifests art in multiple mediums — its sleeves, the liner notes, and the music itself. His stubborn defense of vinyl — his refusal to stock cassette tapes or the increasingly popular CDs — makes him source of derision and frustration to the publishing companies, and one of curiosity even to his friends, but it’s what he believes in. The Music Shop comes with some pre-packaged appeal: a small but intimate circle of strong personalities and eccentrics who are being besieged by well-meaning men in gray suits using all kinds of pressure (from lawfare to encouraging hooliganism) to push them out. There’s a strong relationship that develops here, a connection made through music — but it’s the musical aspects that really drive the book to the heights for me. I’ve loved music of most kinds since I was a kid, and I delighted in learning the stories behind particular pieces — which run the gamut from classical to punk. Like many readers, I’ll warrant, I began listening to pieces as I read Frank’s stories about them, listening for the things he was so animatedly telling people about. (Other readers and listeners have made a playlist, should you be curious.) The genius of The Music Shop is the way it magnifies one winsome thing (human connection) via another (music). I’ve already started reading another Joyce book, so moving did I find this one.

Highlights:

So it was over. The thing was lost before it had begun. Frank paced the Persian runner, up and down, trying to shake her off. Because if he thought too hard about her, he might want other things, and after that it would be a house of cards. No one would be able to put him back together. He lumbered over to his turntable. Well, he would never see her again. GOOD. She was getting married. She was an extremely busy person. That was all GOOD too. It had been a close shave but he was unscathed. He had his shop, his customers; yes, life was exactly as he had always wanted. No risk of loss or pain. Really he should be grateful she had someone else—

But CD sound was clean, the reps argued. It had no surface noise. To which Frank replied, ‘Clean? What’s music got to do with clean? Where is the humanity in clean? Life has surface noise! Do you want to listen to furniture polish?”

“We are human beings. We need lovely things we can see and hold. Yes, vinyl can be a pain. It’s not convenient. It gets scratched. But that’s the point. We are acknowledging the importance of music and beauty in our lives. You don’t get that if you’re not prepared to make AN EFFORT.”

‘You saved my life, Frank.’
‘You saved your life. I just found you jazz.”

When the music started again, she was in tears. Like a switch had been flicked, and her eyes were spouts. Because life goes on, the music told her, even when you think it can’t. Yes, there is fear. There is real cruelty. Not knowing what the [—-]. Those things are there. But listen because there is this too – this beauty. The human adventure is worth it, after all. As she left that booth, the music was in her heart.

He thought of the tenderness with which this small warlike woman had moved from one plant pot to another, pulling out dead leaves and checking the soil. Normal people just want something to love and look after, he thought; that’s all they want.
‘You don’t want to get involved with me,’ he said. ‘We’re good like this, Maud.’
Breaking away, she snatched up their empty glasses. ‘You’re a tosser, Frank. Go home.’

Music should come with a health warning. Put the right words with the right music and you get dynamite.

He reached for his headphones, but no matter how hard he tried to lose himself to music, her voice still found him.

One hundred people sing in a shopping mall. Outside, the air will stink of cheese and onion, people are being mugged, others are starving, the sky is grey, but for one brief and irrational gap in time, there is this beautiful human madness. The world is not terrible after all.

Certain elements of this novel made me think of “Eleanor Rigby”, which played in my head most of the time I was reading it, so here you are.