I have read
almost all the books by Nick Hornby. I find him somewhat ingenious. He is able
of taking some (almost) normal characters in ordinary settings and pull out
some stories that you would not have thought in any way. His is a fantasy that
moves outside the box. The situations he tells are unusual but plausible. His
characters are alive in our minds. And they all make us laugh, sometimes to
tears, for the things they do or say.
Again in “Juliet,
Naked” Hornby brings out the best of himself. He tells the story of a forgotten
rock star and of the companion of one of his few remaining fans (bordering on
obsession). Two distant characters, not only geographically, that thanks to the
internet come into contact.
The
character of the former rocker Tucker is so well built, complete with a page of
Wikipedia, that you almost have the doubt that a famous musician by that name
really existed in the 80s. Despite the objective absurdity of the story, due to
an excess of unusual events and characters, the suspension of disbelief is
total.
Yet even
this novel by Hornby, as almost all of them, seems to get lost in the end.
After having exceeded without scruples throughout the book, he cannot dare in
closing it. Unlike other novels in which he fell into a feel-good ending, where
the characters return to normal, after the madness of the story, here the
author indulges in an open ending. This in itself would not be bad at all. I
love open endings, the problem with this though is that Hornby did not even try
to give a true indication of the direction to which, probably, the situation
will evolve. Except maybe once again a foregone conclusion, as what happened
during the novel doesn’t matter at all. And this is again the question that
comes up every time: isn’t it maybe the case that the author did not know how
to finish this story?
Juliet, Naked
on Amazon.com.
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