Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby. I will read anything by Nick Hornby. This, I must admit, is not my favorite of his novels. Luckily, even a mediocre Nick Hornby book is still pretty good.

Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, a singer-songwriter who turned his back on the world in the 80's, while on tour to publicize his biggest hit. Annie has been Duncan's default girlfriend ever since they both moved to a depressing seaside town where nothing much happens. When a new Tucker Crowe recording turns up, Duncan, Annie and Tucker all confront the limbo they've been trapped in for the past 15 years, with varying results.

Nick Hornby is really great at this kind of writing. He writes women sympathetically; his men are openly flawed. Music is generally the backdrop, and often a kid appears to keep everyone focused. This book has all of these elements, plus a couple of difficult girlfriends to keep the ball rolling.

One thing I missed in this novel was the soundtrack. Tucker Crowe is fictional, and while his genre of music is easy to classify, I couldn't hear his music in my head, since, well, it doesn't really exist. I'm used to a background of hits from my youth accompanying Hornby's novels, and I couldn't quite find it.

The basic idea of this book is a good one - Annie strikes up a relationship with her boyfriend's idol, unbalancing the staid balance of everyone's lives. We get to see how obsession taints its object, how losing your convictions leads to waste of all kinds, why regrets are useless. Really, all the elements of a very satisfying novel. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite come together the way I would have wished. It seems just a little contrived, a little too simple. This could be a summer movie; a romantic comedy, which I might be enticed to see if the stars were of the Cusak/Downey, Jr. variety. There's even a great role for Jack Black. Nick Hornby has had great luck in having his books made into really good movies; maybe we'll see this one on the big screen. It will gain a much bigger audience, have a really good soundtrack, and no one will be bothered by its predictability.

My next Hornby book: 31 Songs, a collections of essays about the songs that have changed his life.

Solar, by Ian McEwan

What a trifecta; Dan Chaon, Willy Vlautin and Ian McEwan! Every month should be filled with such great writers.

I have always maintained that success and happiness depend a lot on the personality traits one is born with. Luck of the genetic variety. The protagonist of Solar, Michael Beard, is blessed with both brilliance and confidence, and is unhampered by empathy. The combination is a fortunate one for him, if not for his professional associates and many ex-wives. A man of unappealing personal habits, and few physical charms, he nontheless seduces women at a rate that would make Wilt Chamberlain jealous. Twenty years after receiving the award, Beard is resting on his Nobel Laurels, collecting steep fees for describing the Beard-Einstein Conflation, the theory he piggybacked onto the more famous E=MC2. Unable, in his middle years, to come up with anything resembling his youthful brilliance, Beard falls back on the time-trusted method of stealing ideas. Which works pretty well for him.

I love this book, the way it makes a mockery of the idea that good deeds are rewarded, and that villains come to a bad end. McEwan builds the story with his usual skill, as his hero flees one mess only to land in another. Eventually his life is a tangle that will take a miracle to escape. I am not, of course, a spoiler, so you'll have to read it to see how it turns out.

Ian McEwan's books are different enough from one another to make me want to read them all. He certainly has a style, but it is more in the way he creates tension and drives a story to its climax than anything else. My favorites of his are On Chesil Beach, which is an incredible book, and Saturday, powerful in its own right.

Great fact about Ian McEwan: He wrote the libretto for the Opera For You. Although it is available in book form, why would one want to read an opera? I would, however, love to see it. Opera seems like the perfect venue for his talent.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

The silver lining to my hour and a half wait at the doctor's office (I never did manage to see him, but that's a managed care horror story for another time), is that I persevered through the slow beginning of this book. Once in, I enjoyed the careful combination of erudition and entertainment. The ending, unfortunately, was not terrific. I admit to being a pretty harsh judge of endings, but honestly, after the work that went into all of the palatable-for-the-public philosophical musings in this book, I think we could expect a little more subtlety. Here's a nice review from the Guardian; their reviewer is a little more enthusiastic and doubtless more thoughtful than I.

Where I heard about this book: Can't really remember - it was reviewed everywhere.

What I thought of this book: Pretty good - 3 1/2 stars.

What this book is about: Narrated alternately by its two main characters, this book consists of the musings of a middle-aged concierge and one of the residents of her building, a world-weary 12 year old. Both are unusually brilliant outsiders, with penchants for philosophy and Japanese culture. They are ultimately saved from their parallel states of solitude by the mysterious stranger who comes to live in their midst. And, of course, they're all French, so they easily sound much smarter and more interesting than the rest of us.