“The Music Shop is an unabashedly sentimental tribute to the healing power of great songs, and Joyce is hip to greatness in any key. Her novel’s catalogue stretches from Bach to the Beach Boys, from Vivaldi to the Sex Pistols. Crank up the turntable and let these pages sing ... you’ll want to file this book right between Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue ... Given the general melody of romantic comedy, you can probably guess how this tune develops, but there’s real delight in hearing variations on a classic form ... Joyce’s understated humor around these odd folks offers something like the pleasure of A.A. Milne for adults. She has a kind of sweetness that’s never saccharine, a kind of simplicity that’s never simplistic. Yes, the ending is wildly improbable and hilariously predictable, but I wouldn’t change a single note.
As their encounters multiply, the reader becomes impatient for the couple to acknowledge the inevitable. But, excruciatingly, Joyce keeps the suspense going; she strings out the romance/non-romance, piling on missed opportunities, misunderstandings, missed connections with Shakespearean brio ... In this instance, love, friendship, and especially the healing powers of music all rise together into a triumphant crescendo, which, like Frank’s gaze, makes the reader feel 'charged with a whoosh of light.' This lovely novel is as satisfying and enlightening as the music that suffuses its every page.
...it’s a classic rom-com structure. But Joyce makes it fresh. As with her earlier novels, it is the madcap ensemble cast that brings the book to wacky, poignant life. Like Anne Tyler, Joyce has a knack for quickly sketching characters in a way that makes them stick ... This is a touching, sometimes funny book about surviving change, the power of music and the importance of having a community — wacky or not. As with all of Joyce’s books, it will surprise you.
After Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, is there any other book written by any other Brit about the intersection of love and vinyl records that’s worth reading? Why, yes, there is. And Rachel Joyce’s magnificent The Music Shop is it ... it’s worth noting that Joyce’s novel is intellectually and emotionally satisfying on every possible level. If you love words, if you love music, if you love love, this is 2018’s first must-read, and it will be without question one of the year’s best.
The Music Shop is just as run down and full of eclectic lonely souls as any fan of High Fidelity or The Commitments could wish. It’s 1988, and business is slower than usual for the shabby shops of Unity Street. A development company is offering a buyout, but Frank smells a rat and urges the community to hold on to their quirky, neighborly way of life ... The Music Shop is less melancholy, but still tends to a minor key. Like that novel, it revels in resilience of ordinary people, and empathy and loyalty are prized above more material considerations ... The story is unabashedly heartwarming, and Joyce is skilled enough to avoid is false notes ...is one sentimental journey that will set a reader’s heart at ease.
British author Rachel Joyce’s bestsellers share in common a sparkling compassion, as lives lived on the margins, overlooked lives, are unveiled in all their extraordinary depth ... A shrewd observer of the forces that both nurture and destroy, Rachel Joyce is also very funny ... To borrow Frank’s own vernacular, anyone not 'in floods' (tears) during Joyce’s epic musical closer is scarcely worth bothering about.
The Music Shop is a novel about people on the cusp of change and about having the courage to undergo personal transformation. As with Joyce’s other books, community proves to be the catalyst – and the saviour – for these characters ... But what really elevates The Music Shop is Joyce’s detailed knowledge of – and passion for – music. There are stories here about composers and musicians ranging from Beethoven, Vivaldi and Purcell to Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin and the Sex Pistols. Joyce weaves these into Frank’s musical therapy and the flashbacks to his childhood with his bohemian, emotionally remote mother, Peg, who taught him how to listen... This could equally be a description of Joyce’s prose: here is a love story that’s as much about the silences between words as what is said – the spaces between people that can be filled with mystery, confusion and misunderstanding as well as hope.
Author Rachel Joyce has created the equivalent of the Cheers bar in a record store: The Music Shop is a warm, familiar place where everybody knows your name ... Unlike the famous TV-series bar, also from the 1980s, the novel’s shop is not in Boston but instead in a gritty corner of England. Yet the setting really could be any industrial city with its brightest manufacturing days behind it. Frank is the maestro bartender-type character who will listen and, more often than not, fix everyone else’s problems, but rarely looks inward at his own ... Music fans reading the book will hear in their heads an inspiring soundtrack that jumps from Aretha Franklin to Glenn Miller to Vivaldi.
Joyce sets up a charming cast of characters, and her spirals into the sonic landscapes of brilliant musicians are delightful, casting a vivid backdrop for the quietly desperate romance between Frank and Ilse. From nocturnes to punk, this musical romance is ripe for filming.
The magical trajectory of Frank and Ilse’s relationship is nicely balanced against the thread about a threatening real estate company that wants to destroy Frank’s tiny store. Joyce’s odes to music—from Aretha Franklin and J.S. Bach to Puccini and the Sex Pistols—and the notion that the perfect song can transform one’s life make this novel a triumph.
