Juliet, naked

I completely missed the fact that the fabulous Hornby had written another book! I loved About a boy, and especially A long way down. Wow. Who knew suicide was quite that hilarious? Juliet, naked is very Hornby, as in funny, weird and slightly unsettling.

The main character in this book is not Juliet, as you might expect, but Annie. She lives in a dull seaside town with the even duller Duncan.
They have drifted together and stuck together basically because nobody else seemed to want them. Now Annie is hitting forty and she is angry about unborn babies and throwing away her life on a guy who’s obsessed with another guy.
You see, dull Duncan is a hardcore fan of Tucker Crowe, a singer from the eighties.
And so holidays are spent visiting toilets where the great man has gone before and Duncan runs a website devoted to Tucker. Not a lot has happened in the past 20 years, but the eleven or so hard core fans from all over the world manage to spend hours and hours chatting about rumors etc. And then suddenly a new album appears…

I enjoyed it immensely, but I was rather disappointed by the last four chapters. Tucker has chucked his career for some dark secret and I must admit that it took me ten minutes (literally!) to vaguely remember what it was. It’s not that dark at all really.

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