In JULIET, NAKED, Nick Hornby has created a story about three lost individuals, and how they come to find themselves and each other. Annie and Duncan, a stagnant couple, have been together for 15 years. Annie loves Duncan — or at least thinks she does — but soon discovers she’s fallen out of love with him. Duncan loves Annie, but he cares about singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe more. I’m talking an obsessive, big-time man-crush.
Tucker, who’s compared to Bob Dylan, reached his peak in the 1980s, and promptly quit the business, walking away without a trace. It was hard for me to understand Tucker’s music since he’s a fictional character. It helped when I pictured a 50-year-old Kurt Cobain or Jeff Buckley, the only difference being that Tucker is still alive and kicking, albeit in self-imposed seclusion in Pennsylvania.
The book begins with Duncan and Annie traveling across the United States, visiting historical markers from Tucker’s life. They see his boyhood home, the restroom where he was last seen, and the house where the woman who inspired Tucker’s best album, JULIET, lives.
Tucker hasn’t released a new album in 22 years, but when Annie and Duncan return to their native England, they receive an unplugged version of JULIET in the mail (hence the title, JULIET, NAKED). Duncan thinks it’s the most powerful music he’s ever heard; Annie dislikes it. They both write reviews and post them on the Crowe fansite message board. That’s when their relationship begins to unravel.
Tucker comes out of hiding and e-mails Annie. They begin to correspond and a bond emerges. He’s an unemployed father of five – from four different mothers – who’s just become single again and doesn’t have much to account for the past two decades. She’s childless, works a thankless job, and wants to make up for wasting most of her adulthood.
JULIET, NAKED is a superb story about real people who struggle with regret, longing, loneliness and melancholy. The character development is gradual, and at the end of the book, I was able to feel their raw emotions. —Sean Taylor Simpson
