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The Song Is You
The Song Is You
The Song Is You
Audiobook10 hours

The Song Is You

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Each song on Julian's iPod, "that greatest of all human inventions," is a touchstone. There are songs for the girls from when he was single, there's the one for the day he met his wife-to-be, there's one for the day his son was born. But when Julian's family falls apart, even music loses its hold on him. Until one snowy night in Brooklyn, when his life's soundtrack-and life itself-start to play again. Julian stumbles into a bar and sees Cait O'Dwyer, a flame-haired Irish rock singer, performing with her band, and a strange and unlikely love affair is ignited. Over the next few months, Julian and Cait's passion plays out, though they never meet. What follows is a heartbreaking dark comedy, the tenderest of love stories, and a perfectly observed tale of the way we live now.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 3, 2009
ISBN9781440718199
The Song Is You

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Rating: 3.774193548387097 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Hot Irish singer chick falls in love with a self absorbed commercial director who's grieving over the death of his son. Here's the twist (spoiler alert)-they never meet.
    Love, loss, the importance of the Ipod playlist. Nick Hornby on steroids and too clever by half.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Music is the most important thing in Julian's life. His ipod is his lifeline. Stopping at a local bar, he is drawn to a young Irish singer, Cait. There is an elusive dance between them as they connect yet fail to connect. Flashbacks take you through different parts of Julian's life. His failed marriage with its personal tragedy. His peculiar bother, with his personal tragedy. His father, wounded in the war yet married to the woman he met at a Billie Holiday concert, whose music weaves through the story. Julian's brief encounter with an aged, fine musician.If songs thread through your life and often seem to define it, you will particularly appreciate this novel. Often humorous and heart-wrenching in the same breath, the writing is intricate yet very contemporary.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this is Arthur Phillips best novel (although I haven't read Prague). It is a perfectly written and plotted story about middle-aged man obsessed with a younger singer, who also appears obsessed with him. But they keep passing it in the most glancing of manners. Reading it through the lens of the unreliable narrators in Phillips' earlier books made it more interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    [!! SPOILERS !!]This is not a love story. There is a book-length flirtation at the heart of the action, but by the time we're halfway through it's clear that the protagonist and the object of his affection are a ridiculous pairing, the kind that only ends happily in the fantasies of middle-aged men.But what is also obvious by then is that the author is not going to indulge in this cliche; and since he likes his bad-but-not-evil characters, the question that begins to occupy the reader is: how is he going to get them out of this safely?I did enjoy watching Phillips play variations on the theme of elision, which he does with skill and humor. If this doesn't sound like your idea of fun, you might find the book trouble. Then again, there are other ways in, as some reviewers have reported.[obtained via Early Reviewers]
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received this from the Early Reviewer program here on LibraryThing.I wanted to like this book more than I did. I tried. When I found out it was a love story that included music and I-pod addiction - it grabbed my interest. I wanted to get into the love story and feel what the characters did, but I couldn't. I liked the idea (at first) that they didn't want to meet. Playing this little game. I did connect with them through their music addiction, but that is about it. At first, I liked the idea of the mysterious love affair and how it started. Then it ended up getting to the point where it was downright creepy! (and honestly, it takes a lot to creep me out.) I couldn't figure out why she didn't call the cops on the guy with most of the stuff he did. (that she found endearing somehow) Sorry, can't connect with that. I am horribly afraid of giving away spoilers in books - I don't want to give away too much. I will say though, if someone was sneaking in your house while you weren't home - would that be okay with you? Or would you call the cops?It is a rather short book, but it felt so much longer. I don't know why.We were introduced to characters and then we never found out what happened to them - why? To me, it just sort of ended. The lovers got to a certain point in their "relationship" and then it was over.I think I liked the *idea* of the book more than the actual book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This novel was an Earlier Reviewer book for me, even though it took me months to get around to reading it and and more months to get to reviewing it, so it’s not exactly “early” anymore. I liked this book – it has characters to care about, music allusions that are “on the inside” but don’t feel alienating, high-level emotions that feel experiential and real – but not enough that it really stuck with me after I finished reading it. At times it did feel like someone’s personal therapy sessions; of course, that’s part and parcel with having a “real” quality to written emotion – things can get carried away, even to the point that the reader gets frustrated with the people he or she is reading about, and there was more than once that I wanted to tap the main character a smart one on the top of his head. Still, even for those readers who aren’t personally familiar with the extraordinary grief that is the subtle center of this novel, the strange journey that we travel with Julian feels familiar, which is part of the magic of a solidly written novel. Not magnificent, but not bad.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I probably would have enjoyed this more if I were a music fan. That at least would be something to relate to. The characters weren't particularly likable nor realistic, and I need at least one of the two. I did really like all of the stories of his parents, even the music parts. Both parts of the ending were disappointing -- how his relationship with each woman is resolved. Not disappointing as in I wished for something better so much as just "what a horrible decision; who would really do that?" The figurative language tended to pile up into these logjammed multi-metaphor paragraphs, and a couple sentences were confusing enough to be editing errors, but most of the writing was vivid. I just couldn't care for what he was writing about.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I tried really hard to like this book. But wading through all the wordy prose just wasn't worth the payoff. It was difficult to read and didn't hold my attention at all. I was glad to finally put this one down.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    this book either caught me in a bad mood, or it was just bad. I started it with the best of intentions like i do any other book,... but it quickly found a way to irritate me like a handfull of books can. I am not sure if the book was too wordy, the mood too dark.. or maybe it was over my head, because i just did not like this book at all. in fact i was so agitated by it that it sat on my shelf for a very long time before i was able to make a second atempt to finish it.the only thing i can say about it, was that it gave me lots of reasons to look things up on youtube.. things i never would have thought of looking up before. seeing that im one of the very few that didn't like this book, im thinking that its me, and not the book, so to be fair, i gave it 2 stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Arthur Phillips has for a while now been one of those writers I hadn't read anything from but I wanted to, when I'd gotten through a small percentage of the ocean of books I wanted to read. Without reading them, I already knew and was surprised at how diverse a writer Phillips is:Prague: Western expatriates living in BudapestThe Egyptologist: a 1920's explorer seeking the tomb of an Egyptian kingAngelica: a Victorian ghost story told through four different perspectivesNow add to these The Song Is You: a 2009 tale about the power of music, the power music has over people, and the power people have over other people. On an October New York City day, Julian is listening to a favorite old song, trying to figure out what this feeling of longing is for. Years later, he still feels the same. He becomes a muse for Cait, an Irish singer on the rise. Julian's knowledge of music influences Cait, just as Cait's music itself influences Julian, though they are always just barely out of each others orbit. There is no quicker way for a book to make its way into my heart than to involve my other love -- music. Knowing there will be musical references is enough to get me interested. I love that when Julian is trying to guess Cait's favorite musicians and bands, he lists a lot of MY favorites. However, the musical references started to taper off towards the second half of the book because of Julian's obsession with Cait and only Cait, which starts to get a little creepy. I realized at times that I hadn't taken a breath in a while due to the high tension of the characters, maybe I was expecting the worst in the end. This would not be a fairy tale ending. Julian and Cait would not find complete happiness. I started to think maybe the final page would reveal I was reading a book about a completely insane stalker/murderer of famous singers and I was only seeing it from Julian's point of view. But Cait is in on it too! I hardly think that some of the things that happened between Julian and Cait would really happen, but Phillips makes up for it by alluding to what an almost famous singer might be thinking (and maybe she is also a tinsy bit insane). Phillips writing style is very clever. I must mention though --it is not okay to use a character to invent the stunning word "psychopharmacoddling" and have no other existence for that character in the book otherwise! Also, who can compete with "mustered relish"?!?! Possibly two of my all time favorite phrases. I would have also liked to see Julian's brother, Aidan and Julian's father be more than minor characters. I can think of no better fictional read for a music lover. Phillips writes so well on the minute details of the relationships between people and music, that any other novel with an emphasis on music may not be necessary. On top of that, Phillips can describe bits of human nature that is spot on, just little things that I've never seen another novelist write about so accurately, or even notice in a human being at all. "That is exactly right" is what I was thinking a lot. Julian's father's "belief in joy" is restored by hearing his own voice request a song on a Billie Holiday recording, while lying in the hospital as an almost-victim of the Korean War. Sometimes when times are tough, joy may only be found in music (and books). The Song Is You is the essential book on music, human nature, memory, loss, and nostalgia. I will be looking forward to Phillips' next book. Now it's time for me to catch up on the other novels by Phillips!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this is Arthur Phillips best novel (although I haven't read Prague). It is a perfectly written and plotted story about middle-aged man obsessed with a younger singer, who also appears obsessed with him. But they keep passing it in the most glancing of manners. Reading it through the lens of the unreliable narrators in Phillips' earlier books made it more interesting. 
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The central concept of a person experiencing personal grief in middle age and turning to art, in this case music, in some ways functions as a set piece, there to provide Phillips a forum for commenting on love, loss, and expectation. His prose and the way he captures interpersonal dynamics, emotion and sensation, lend the novel heft, not the action or past histories revealed as the plot unfolds. At the same time, The Song Is You is not a character piece, in that the point does not seem to be understanding any character's personality or motives, or even to focus on the character's interpersonal relationships, so much as it is to examine the pragmatic influence of ideals on the protagonist's everyday life. The novel explores this theme by relating the challenge of relating directly to music, rather than to the musician or various other people involved in making that music. Not that one can't relate to the musicians, too, if the musicians are interesting to you, but the challenge is whether it's possible to relate to the music in itself, to interact with it, and if so, what that would be like. It seems to me that Phillips observes that it's strangely difficult to bring music as an abstraction into one's life without somehow damaging the music or your experience of it. This theme is for me the heart of the novel.Phillips's protagonist, Julian Donahue, shares my general musical appreciation, both specific artists and the influences shaping his overall taste (1970s and 1980s popular music, 1940s jazz standards, and all that flows from those twin tributaries). I also recognise the connection Julian has to music, how specific songs connect and even narrate experiences, without this link being constrained to just one event or experience, necessarily. In this way, the leitmotif of music is more effective here than it is in Hornsby's High Fidelity, though I enjoyed that, too.Phillips also has an understated way of weaving musical allusion and lyrical quotations into descriptions, and it is this talent that resonated with me. He does not resort to lists or name-dropping but integrates the story or character at hand to the music, to the extent there were several occasions I could not identify the reference but felt confident there was one. In one instance, Julian's father weaves a quote from a jazz standard into his dialogue [205], and Phillips doesn't call attention to it at all, just as it's likely Julian (at the time no older than 12) doesn't recognise it as a lyric. But we know his Dad would know it, and would use it in conversation in just that way.I had hopes that Julian and the musician Cait would never meet, even as I enjoyed their distant communications: the novel unfolded in part as a modified epistolary narrative. My wish that the two would never meet was fed largely in recognition of Julian's thrill at discovering a musician, and then fantasizing about successfully influencing that musician in their work. Here is that romantic notion again, not boy-girl romanticism but the notion of ideals and how a person might concretely uphold and become involved in, even contribute to those ideals. The thrill of being recognised / acknowledged by the artist, and in not being a groupie but authentically contributing to those aspects of the artistry which were so impressive to the fan in the first place. The invasive stalker relationship between Julian and Cait is creepy, but it also came across as perhaps inevitable given a premise of (a) exploring the idea of a fan appreciating and also influencing an artist, while (b) delaying as long as possible if not outright preventing the artist and fan from ever actually meeting. For me, this was the core of the story as well as the musical leitmotif, and it led to some disturbing places between the characters in order for that theme to be explored. The resolution is a bit overwrought and almost anticlimactic from the standpoint of plot, then. From the standpoint of Julian trying to connect to music beyond merely sitting in his head and hearing or thinking of it, though, the resolution seems reasonable. Julian and Cait interact on several levels: as musician-fan, artist-patron, celebrity-groupie, producer-consumer, artist-mentor, artist-colleague. It was apparent to me that Phillips was aware of the dual nature of Julian and Cait as a fairly standard romantic couple, on the one hand, and as an example of an artist (Cait) linked to someone appreciating her art (Julian), and then set out to address how the two perspectives would fit together. On one level, the results are disturbing: the obsession on the part of both characters for each other, and how they reach out to one another. On another level, the developments follow necessarily from one character's intent to to pursue the romantic notion of ideals being taken seriously, rather than merely as wishes or distractions. After reading the novel, Phillips seems to comment that romanticism is always a bit twisted, perhaps perverted when brought out from the realm of internal experience. The price of admission.Phillips references the better part of an entire album, (Cait's fictional album Servicing All The Blue Suits) plus her demo and various performances portrayed in the book, including song titles and track sequencing. He quotes liberally the lyrics of several songs, and if anything, the lyrics read better than many lyrics do when divorced from their musical accompaniment. I'm left wondering if the songs wholly exist. Not necessarily recorded, but as more than just the scraps needed to quote in the novel. Did Phillips write or co-write a full album of material? Did he commission someone else to do it? Did he borrow existing lyrics or poetry to create the album? If there literally is nothing more than what is quoted in the book, it's impressive that he leaves the impression there's an actual album he's describing, that he's not merely using stray bits of verse and adjectives in place of actual songs.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Are you in the mood for a mournful romance? Are you in one of those people who connect the definitive moments of your life with a song? Then The Song is You by Arthur Phillips is for you. In spite of supposed fulltime employment as a video director, Julian Donahue has too much time of his hands -- time to mourn the fairly recent loss of his toddler son, the even more recent demise of his marriage, and parental losses from bygone years. He is tethered to his Ipod and has such deep connections to his playlists that one suspects he’s retreated not only from pain but also all the way to a second adolescence. Enter Cait O’Dwyer – up-and-coming twenty-something Irish rock star whose songs Julian keeps shuffling to the head of the pack. Julian catches her performance in a local club and leaves notes and cartoons filled with muse-like advice on the back of bar coasters. They catch her attention and they play an ultimately cloying game of cat and mouse for the rest of the novel. While I prefer Nick Hornby’s Hi-Fidelity take on the boy-in-love with music, playlists and women, Julian’s damaged soul has a certain appeal. Phillips adds a goofball, Jeopardy-loving brother and a has-been rock star to the cast to lighten the book’s heavy dramatic load, but in the end, it’s Phillips Rushdie-like prose pirouettes, which makes The Song is You a book you won’t be sorry you read. Good writing goes a long way towards improving a mediocre story and overwrought characters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I must say, I was rather pleased with The Song Is You. It's not that I didn't expect to enjoy this, because I did, but I also expected to feel like it was missing a small something. That's how I felt about Prague and The Egyptologist, both works that I enjoyed, but ultimately finished feeling a teensy bit dissatisfied (and also feeling like they went on just a touch too long). No matter what, though, I still really enjoy Phillips' writing style -- which is why I keep reading his stuff. When LibraryThing listed The Song Is You as an early reviewer's option for the monthly books they offer for free, I threw my hat into the ring and snagged a copy. (Oddly enough, the day I received it in the mail, my friend who gets free books via a literary site that he runs, also offered me a copy, which I passed along to another friend.)I began reading this without the faintest idea of the plot, beyond a vague knowledge that it must have something to do with music and a relationship. The title supplied me with the music idea and the cover (featuring a young man and a young woman) suggested the relationship bit. That's it. So perhaps I shouldn't summarize the plot, but suggest that you, too, should take a chance on this and just read and fall into it. Perhaps, but I won't. Instead, I'll provide a hazy sketch, because really, the plot is a bit hazy, too -- in a good way. Our main character is named Julian and the book focuses on his relationship to music in his life, and his relationships with two other women. To a great degree, the novel portrays people whose relationship to music can often be seen as a means of pushing back on actual human interactions and how music can be more than just the background soundtrack. The novel starts with a scene involving Julian's father at a Billie Holiday concert. Sure, this was the concert where his future wife and mother of his children was seated beside him, but above all, the siren and her music meant so much that it seems to overpower even the events set into motion on that night. Julian is instilled with a great respect for music, raised by a widowed father alongside an older and antisocial brother. He marries, he has a child, that child tragically dies, and his marriage essentially ends, though the final divorce decree has not yet come down. And then Julian is introduced to a new siren, an Irish redhead whose fame is growing, and they become involved in an intricate dance of longing for connection.The book jacket calls one's attention to the fact that Phillips is a writer for people who both think and feel. And we all know that "think" can often mean "overthink." This particular book is a beautiful portrayal of characters who perhaps aren't looking for romance and meaning, but once it becomes an option, they are hungry to have it, but constantly overthinking in their attempts to create something perfect and potentially lasting.I shall certainly be recommending this novel to those who have previously enjoyed Phillips' work... and to those who were not perhaps won over, I shall urge them to give it another shot with this, because I think Phillips has really done something remarkable here. The novel shows incredible growth, away from the somewhat arrogant youth of Prague, and while there is a certain indulgence to the melancholy of romance here, the emotions feel real and true. An excellent work, and I shall continue reading whatever Phillips puts out next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The first half of this new novel about a sad but still-pretty-hip middle-aged New Yorker who falls in love with a young Irish rocker (or her songs?) was so damn good I had to force myself to slow down to savor it. Phillips' descriptions of popular music, and "the longing for longing" it inspires, is a revelation. His sentences are wise and stylish, his characters (save for one or two) richly drawn. Perhaps inevitably, the falling action is a relative let-down--despite the author's obvious talent, he can't sustain the bursting energy through to the end. Nevertheless, a work of great promise that I'll happily recommend to all music fanboys/girls.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautiful, joyful (yet terribly sad), haunting, frustrating. That's how I'd describe The Song is You in ten words or less.Now for more words.Reading it, I often found myself in an intense state of panic. The action itself crawls, and yet the future of the story constantly feels frighteningly urgent. Arthur Phillips completely ignores the rule of "show, don't tell" by filling the vast majority of his story with exposition over action and dialogue, and yet it seems okay. Even necessary. Through so much rambling description and explanation, he is able to craft perhaps the most vivid characters I've ever read. Even the most minor of characters feel like real people. You can imagine what they smell like, how they walk and move, the sound of their voice (even the non-accented ones). And boy, can this guy craft some powerful suspense from the simplest situations.BUT. I wanted more. That's my major gripe. It feels incomplete. And not cleverly or intentionally so. Rather, it feels slightly stunted and wanting. In a story about two hungry people circling each other, fantasizing about each other, building each other up to impossible heights doomed for mutual disappointment, perhaps it's only appropriate that the story does the same to the reader. Right?If that is truly the feeling that Phillips is trying to evoke, crafting an emotion to match the flow of the narrative, forcing the reader into submission of the characters' sufferings, then I must say bravo. He succeeds. Still, what an awful feeling to evoke. How cruel to cause such a constant intake of breath and never give the reader a chance to exhale, choosing instead to let them linger in the discomfort of a held breath.The writing is wonderful. The story feels so unique, fresh, and creative while focusing on such classical themes that could very well be cliches in the hands of a lesser author. Definitely one of the most intriguing books I've read in a very, very long time. And yet (without revealing any particular details) I sincerely will never forgive him for tying things up with -- figuratively as well as quite literally in the case of the protagonist's father -- a fart. I would've rather preferred to exhale my 250-page deep breath, and instead I was coughing. Great book though, truly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was surprised at how much I liked this book given that I found the two main characters to be just a little distasteful. Julian, the protagonist, was partially redeemed for me through his great taste in music, and of course - his grief over his loss made it hard to really dislike him. Cait, however, was the portrait of the artist as a young snot. The relationship between Julian and Cait is intriguing enough, especially before they actually meet; and the minor characters are well drawn and interesting. Julian's brother ends up being oddly loveable, and his ex-wife is portrayed as a real human being and not a shrill harpy as so often happens.There is some lovely writing here, and I definitely recognize a lot of middle aged men in Julian. The use of music as a trigger for emotions and memories helped to tie together the different threads of the story. Overall, the book was interesting and enjoyable, but it didn't really move me deeply. I recommend it to music lovers and to fans of Mr. Phillips' other work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Song is You is Arthur Phillips' third novel (previous novels: Prague and The Egyptologist - one of the funniest novels I have ever read) and it is his best I think. If you like your love stories quirky, if you like well-drawn characters and intelligent, funny but intricate prose, The Song is You just might be for you. The other reviews here go into more of the plot...One snarky bit: I hate the cover. This isn't an angsty hipster novel - can you imagine a photograph more unlike Julian and Cait or even Julian and Rachel?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book is a story about love, but not the conventional one. The author weaves his tale in and out of relationships to illustrate how music holds us, heals us and has the power to transform our being. Phillips opens the novel with the character's father's recollection of a Billie Holliday concert he attended. It really sets the mood - bittersweet, melancholy, sometimes heartbreaking, but in the end, leaves you feeling that everything happened the way it was meant to.A small aside: Best cover of a book I've seen in a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very well written tale of a man's obsession with an up and coming singer following the death of his son and split from his wife. Julian is a talented guy - directing commercials - but he suffers from an inability to remain faithful to his wife Rachel, even though he loves her. He changes when his son is born and then falls apart when he dies unexpectedly. Cait O'Dwyer is a compelling young singer/songrwriter on the cusp of fame when he sees her in a bar. She is as enigmatic as Julian and before a long a very complicated game of cat and mouse ensues. Luckily for both of them, that is all it is. Beautifully written exploration of the complexity of human emotions.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I felt like I could really love or hate this book...and the pendulum swung to the former, at least for the first half. I loved the characters and I loved how music was a fundamental character of its own. However, I wanted more "meat" in the second half. I felt as though I had to work to believe the ending and it got a bit cliche during the last half, otherwise it would have warranted more stars. I think with another 50-75 pages of development, it could have been excellent, but it was pretty good the way it was presented. [Early Reviewers Copy]
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Intricate, Nuanced, BrilliantThis is the kind of book that you almost have to read more than once to appreciate its beauty. Like a poem, Arthur Phillips writes ironically and romatically, with allusion and precise diction. After all, it is not a coincidence that the major subject matter of the book is music.Phillips makes some very interesting observations about how technology and modernity have complicated the relationships we have. Still, within this contemporary context, Phillips is able to weave a complex narrative through simple themes of identity, love, and prosperity. The characters are flawed, but fundamentally human. I really enjoyed how Phillips bookended the novel with the story of the main character's father and his connection to Billie Holiday.This is a great book, by a great writer. It is a little complex, so a careful reading is required. Definitely recommend, a must read for sure.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Music has always been an important part of Julian Donahue's life. Carrying an iPod filled with thousands of songs, each with special significance, Julian is aware of the ways a song can capture a listener and become an important player in relationships and experiences unconnected to music itself. Although the middle-aged advertisement director's life hasn't gone as planned, and he is separated from his wife, songs offer some consolation to Julian, who feels that "music lasted longer than anything it inspired." One night in a Brooklyn bar, he hears the performance of Cait O'Dwyer, a young rock singer on the verge of stardom, and becomes infatuated with both the musician and her songs. Julian reaches out to her anonymously in the form of career advice, and the two continue to communicate with enigmatic messages. Through Julian's own history with music and his unusual relationship with Cait, Phillips explores music's ability reawaken moments and emotions from the past. The characters' longing from a distance adds suspense to the story, but with time, it's clear that Julian desires something greater than Cait herself. Of course, with music playing such an important role in the novel, her songs are an impetus for Julian to sort out his life, and ultimately, the story is a testament to the ways music captures the past and affect the future. (Edited because I started to ramble. I'll sort it out and add more to the review later, so it's more review and less summary.)
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I won this book from Early Reviewers and I was so very excited to read it. I certainly was disappointed. I will be honest, the only reason I finished this book was because I was obligated to write a review. I did not enjoy it. Not one bit. Finishing it was a chore. The main characters were completely unlikable. The only character I cared about, the brother Aiden, made only brief appearances. As I read the rambling prose, I wondered if Mr. Phillips even had an editor. Julian’s actions were creepy at best and unlawful. And the fact that Cait not only tolerated, but WELCOMED his actions sends a frightening message to women. To call this a love story is an insult to love stories. Julian did not LOVE Cait. He was obsessed with her…her beauty, her youth, her talent, and the memories her music evoked. The only moment I did not dislike Cait was when she said good bye to her music student at the start of the novel. In all other moments she appeared to be…no she was, selfish, cruel and egomaniacal. The Song Is You is not worth your time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Music, like poetry, captures and magnifies emotions in a way that descriptive, neutral prose cannot. Nor can “real life” provide the background lyrics and sound that turn a mundane existence into a tale worthy of the silver screen. Enter the IPod. In this intelligent and poignant novel by multi-talented Arthur Phillips, the protagonist - 44-year-old Julian Donahue, turns a mid-life crisis into a rock concert movie not only by giving his life a constant soundtrack, but by pursuing one of the most affecting artists on his playlist of singers, a local Irish beauty (age 22) who fronts a rock band that often plays at a club near his home in Brooklyn.Julian has had a painful existence of late. He and his wife have separated after a year of struggling, unsuccessfully, to survive the death of their two year old son Carlton. His libido is gone, his passion for life is waning, and he can’t imagine how he can get his life back on a positive track. And so he turns to the old familiar tracks he knows: he sets his IPod to shuffle, and taps into the longing expressed by the songs. Julian aches for a return to emotion in his own life, but doesn’t know where to find it, until he hears Cait O’Dwyer sing. He is convinced her songs speak only to him; that the lines she writes have gained “access to the criss-crossed wiring of [his] interior life.” The more he hears her and becomes affected by her music, the more he becomes obsessed by her:"The dense terrine of feeling in Julian – regret, hope, sorrow, faltering ambition, longing – startles him. It could not be produced in such concentration and quantity without the voice, and so… he comes to crave the voice because it reveals the feelings he could not find in silence."Cait’s guitarist Ian was also smitten with Cait from the moment he began to play music with her, but is afraid to tell her so. But he remembers that moment vividly: "That very first song ended, and they both knew: the sound had been a multiple of them both. And they knew. They sat in a long silence as the sound they had made traveled down the street, out to sea, up to distant stars. Only the low hum of his amp persisted, and he was afraid (as she looked at him and he considered leaping at her) that the pickup from his guitar would pick up his heartbeat and play it for her.”Later, Ian comes to see Julian as a rival, even though Julian and Cait have never actually met. But that doesn’t mean they don’t communicate, and it is this communication and its poignant outcome that makes up the bulk of the story.Discussion: There’s a lot to think about at the end: what makes attraction viable? How can you separate need from love, or should you even try? To what extent should we resign ourselves to our perceived fates, or should we “rage, rage, against the dying of the light”? And then there was my own personal reaction to the ending: was the reason I was so profoundly affected (sorry, can’t tell you in what way or it might spoil it for you!) because of my own personal history? I.e., was the reader in the text or would the text have that impact regardless of the reader?Evaluation: I rarely get the reading experience I had here of a love story being a page-turning edge-of-my-seat kind of experience. And part of the love story was mine, as I fell for the author’s beautifully engineered phrases (e.g., in addition to the quotes given above, referring to face-to-face encounters as “archaic forms of human interaction” and testing the waters of a relationship as taking an “escargotically slow approach”). This is a wonderful book for reading and discussing in the company of a book club, or for reading alone in a room full of flickering candles, with a soundtrack from the moments of your life you most want to relive, when your life was full of passion, and hunger, and loving and loss.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Arthur Phillips' latest novel follows middle-aged Julian Donahue, a semi-successful commercial director who just goes through the motions of life after losing his young son and divorcing his wife. But when he sees up-and-coming singer Cait O'Dwyer at a nightclub, his obsession with her consumes and invigorates him. Their bizarre courtship drives the book, but we also get glimpses of others in the pair's lives, whose actions all contribute to the book's eventual conclusion. Phillips has crafted some compelling characters and beautifully captured the songwriting and performing world. Some of the story threads seemed a bit undeveloped, though. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, but not as epic and memorable as his other works.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Music is a curious thing. Songs seep into the collective where lyrics are known by virtually everyone, but the interpretation - well, that's rather up in the air, isn't it? There's the songwriter, the mood of the band the day it was recorded, the listener, the circumstances in which the song was heard...all of this gets wrapped up and bundled and becomes the story of the song. No one story is the same - let's not even get into the original intent...And this is The Song is You.Julian Donahue is many things. Director, brother, son, estranged husband, lover of music, muse to Cait O'Dwyer via a set of coasters he barely recalls drawing. But Cait O'Dwyer will become his obsession through a year and she will allow him to become her distant anchor to be met at a later date. The book rips around the two of them like an iPod playlist - sometimes pausing for awhile in one set of thoughts and actions, other times skipping through memories and actions quickly. At the same time, the interpretation of events is assigned much like so many lyrics we felt we always knew until we read the liner notes more carefully. . .Lovely writing, with characters just drawn out enough to make you want to know just a little bit more of their song.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Arthur Phillips does a marvelous job with this book. I had enjoyed his previous work, but this is certainly his best novel to date. I've been having a hard time getting into things lately, but I sped through this one in 3 to 4 days. The story is enthralling, and Phillips has a poetic sixth sense that seems to arrive at just the right points.Overall, a great read. Highly recommended!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had read Prague and The Egyptologist (but not Angelica) heading into this book, so I knew exactly what to expect from Phillips: something totally different from his other books. More than most authors, each Phillips book is a world unto itself and the world of The Song is You is small, a rather simple story focusing on just a few individuals. Within that space, Phillips is able to make these characters (even the smaller ones) sympathetic. This is good book about getting older as well as one about the relationship of music (importantly, both live and recorded) to life. I don't want to talk in to much detail about the story, since following it is one of the enjoyable parts of the book. Don't assume that this is a straight-up love story, starting with boy-meets-girl. Phillips undercuts your expectations without seeming either too clever or patronizing. I'd recommend it to a wide variety of readers.On a side note, "Who are the Jews?" caught me unexpectedly, much like "Rock You Like a Hurricane" from Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity. The phrase rattled around in my head for a few days, giving me the same surprised amusement every time. Don't let the cover convince you this is a dreary book. There is a lot of humor in there as well, presented usually through the eyes of the characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This fourth novel by Arthur Phillips (2009) is more introspective than his other very good novels I have read: Prague (2002) and The Egyptologist (2004). Beginning in New York in the 1950s, the prologue (the overture) describes a performance by Billie Holiday and a soldier's infatuation with her magical stage presence and voice. The transcendent effects of music are pursued in the novel through the life of the soldier's son in New York. Julian is drawn to the performance of an Irish rock singer who, in his mind, produces the same experience his father had with the famous jazz singer. The novel is organized by seasons that progress from winter through spring, summer, and fall and are written like the movements of a symphony. Julian has fantasies of being a facilitator of the art inherent in Cait's voice. But, in his mid 40s, Julian is also a realist and wants his appreciation of her talent to be free of his personal desires. He communicates with Cait cryptically and from afar giving tentative advice about the expression of her talent. Cait begins to view Julian has her muse rather than as another fan seeking something from her. This illusion tempts her to separate from her personal muse and divert her attention, energy, and finally love from her music to Julian. For Julian, Cait is the embodiment of artistic talent, the creator of magic, the muse revealed. He is inspired by her, desires her, and is willing to sever his ties with his work and family to possess her. He hesitates at first but becomes willing to ruin himself and Cait's art to fulfill his fantasy. This interesting novel is difficult to read in the winter section. But like a symphony, the novel unfolds in structure, content, and theme. The theme, transcendent experiences becoming illusions that are pursued obsessively to their premature ends, is explored with great talent by Phillips. He shows readers that our desire to capture our fantasies destroys their future, and we can retrieve lost illusions only fleetingly and with regret. I recommend this novel and give it a four star rating.