Juliet, Naked
Encyclopedia
Juliet, Naked is a novel by the British
author Nick Hornby
, released on 29 September 2009 by Riverhead Books
. It tells the story of Annie, the long-suffering girlfriend of obsessed music fan Duncan, and the object of his obsession, fictional singer-songwriter
Tucker Crowe. The plot revolves around the release of Juliet, Naked, the first new Tucker Crowe release in over two decades. The novel has been compared with Hornby's debut novel, High Fidelity
.
Hornby has identified parenting, love, and relationships as themes in Juliet, Naked.
Tucker Crowe is in Pennsylvania
preparing for a visit from his daughter Lizzie, whom he has never met. He has five children from four relationships, and his youngest son Jackson and Jackson's mother Cat are the only ones he lives with. Lizzie reveals that she is visiting because she is pregnant.
Duncan meets a new colleague called Gina, whom he sleeps with. He tells Annie of his affair and she insists he move out. The next day Annie talks to her judgmental therapist Malcolm. Duncan regrets leaving Annie but she refuses to take him back.
Cat breaks up with Tucker but Tucker remains looking after Jackson. Annie places a photo of Tucker and Jackson on her fridge and invites Duncan round to make him see it, gleeful that he doesn't know the significance, and tells him she is in a relationship with him.
She ponders the years she has wasted with Duncan and ends up going to the pub with her friend Ros, during which she meets Gav and Barnesy, two Northern Soul
dancers. Barnesy comes back to her house and tells her he loves her, but leaves after she says she won't sleep with him. Annie discusses the incident the next day with Malcolm.
Tucker discovers that Lizzie has lost the baby and Cat talks him into visiting Lizzie. On arrival in London, Tucker has a heart attack and is taken into the hospital. Lizzie invites all his children and ex-wives to visit for a family reunion.
A mini-narrative describes the events which caused Tucker to end his career after hearing that he had a daughter, Grace from the relationship before/during Julie.
Annie visits him in the hospital and he suggests staying at her house to avoid the family reunion. The next day Annie visits again and they do, though Annie discovers he had not yet met with Grace. Tucker tells her about Grace and Juliet and Annie insists he call his family.
They discuss his work; Tucker sees it as inauthentic rubbish while Annie thinks it's deep and meaningful music while clarifying that while the music is good it doesn't mean that Tucker as a person is good. She also admits that she was in a relationship with Duncan, whom Tucker knows of from the website. Annie encourages Tucker to meet Duncan but he refuses. The next day they bump into Duncan. Tucker introduces himself but Duncan doesn't believe him. After considering it, Duncan comes over and Tucker shows Duncan his passport as proof. They have tea together and Tucker clarifies some of Duncan's beliefs about him, while Duncan expresses his love of his music.
Grace calls Tucker. She says she understands how he and she can't be close because it would mean giving up 'Juliet'.
An exhibition Annie has been working on opens at the Gooleness museum, where she works as a curator. She suggests that Tucker could open it but the councillor in charge says he's never heard of him and invites Gav and Barnsey (two local Northern Soul dancers) to do it instead. At the party Annie admits to Tucker that she likes him romantically and afterwards they have sex. Annie says she has used a contraceptive but didn't. Tucker and Jackson return to America. Annie tells Malcolm about it all and tells him that she would like to sell her house and move right away to America to join Tucker and Jackson. Malcolm's paternalistic comment lets her realize that she's cured. She can then leave him.
In the epilogue, Duncan and other fans review on the fan website a new release from Tucker, which they think is terrible; one of them writes, 'Happiness Is Poison'. Only one new member says she and her husband love the new album, while they find 'Juliet' too gloomy for their liking.
, Julie Myerson
writes "Its likably bleak humour lies mostly in Hornby's pitch-perfect examination of male fandom
and the almost sinister way in which the advent of the internet has fed and enabled it. He's every bit as good as you'd expect on the crazed dynamic of the messageboard
and the way in which the web has enabled fans to stalk and even, somehow, take possession of their idols from the safety of darkened bedrooms. It's no joke when Annie quips that Duncan knows more about Crowe than Crowe himself. And Hornby knows how such an obsession can haunt a relationship: when Annie observes that she has long accepted the Crowe thing as "part of the package, like a disability", you know all you need to know about life with Duncan. However, so convincing is the Tucker Crowe who inhabits Duncan's mind that when we meet the real person pushing a trolley around a supermarket somewhere in America with his six-year-old son, it feels deflating. That is Hornby's point – idols are only as big as the fantasies we project on to them. Still, as Crowe establishes himself as the third narrator of this tale, the writing loses its engaging fluidity."
In his review for The Daily Telegraph
, Roger Perkins wrote: "A burnt-out case in rural Pennsylvania and a frustrated woman with an etiolated sense of self-worth on the east coast of England – what would happen if they met? The tentative relationship, online then offline, between Annie and Tucker offers Hornby a broad canvas to explore why we so often let the early promise of relationships, ambition and, indeed, life evaporate. Hornby writes so well that you can almost smell the birdseed odour of badly dried clothes combined with failure that pervades Annie's house; his triumph, though, is to find infinite amounts of warmth and humour in this seeming world of desolation."
In The Spectator
, Simon Baker called it "Hornby's best novel to date. It is written with the author's usual readable flow, with a style that somehow suggests (without being overt and therefore off-putting) an acquaintanceship between author and reader. This can make one underestimate the quality of the prose: the fact that the sentences are straightforwardly deployed can conceal their unfussy elegance and their wit. Most impressive is that Annie is fully realised as a character, notwithstanding that we are told very little about her past. She is occasionally too perfect — completely self-aware and alert to the subtext of any conversation, always conscious of other people’s clichés of word and action — and so can seem like a novelist’s proxy. The flipside of her intelligence and insight, however, is that we like her and want her to negotiate this defining period in her life successfully — whether that is with her nerdy ex-boyfriend, her ageing ex-rocker, or no one."
Lev Grossman
compared it with another 2009 novel—The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips
—and called it "an example of what you might call iPod lit,...novels that meditate on the paradoxical mixture of intimacy and estrangement that arises from listening to digitally recorded music, or really from any human interaction mediated by the Internet." He concludes "this is a novel about people who have wasted massive chunks of their lives—Duncan in sterile rock-critic hermeneutics (he's like the worst-case-scenario future of Rob Fleming from High Fidelity
); Annie in a dead romance and a dead-end job; and Crowe in sulky, creatively arid seclusion. They're trying to make the best of what's left, but what's left just isn't that great. Juliet, Naked is a bleaker book than Hornby's A Long Way Down
, and that was about four people trying to kill themselves."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
, released on 29 September 2009 by Riverhead Books
Riverhead Books
Riverhead Books is a division of Penguin Group .Notable books and major bestsellers published by Riverhead include Journals by Kurt Cobain; The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; The Color of Water by James McBride; Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft by Chang-rae Lee; Fever...
. It tells the story of Annie, the long-suffering girlfriend of obsessed music fan Duncan, and the object of his obsession, fictional singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
Tucker Crowe. The plot revolves around the release of Juliet, Naked, the first new Tucker Crowe release in over two decades. The novel has been compared with Hornby's debut novel, High Fidelity
High Fidelity (novel)
High Fidelity is a 1995 British novel by Nick Hornby. It was adapted into a 2000 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack. It also served as the basis for a 2006 Broadway musical of the same name.-Plot summary:...
.
Hornby has identified parenting, love, and relationships as themes in Juliet, Naked.
Plot
Duncan, an obsessive music fan, receives a CD of 'Juliet, Naked', an album of solo acoustic demos of the songs on the album 'Juliet' by his favorite artist, Tucker Crowe. Duncan's girlfriend Annie opens it first and listens to it on her own. Duncan is angry, especially when she expresses her dislike for it. He writes an enthusiastic review for the fan website he is a member of. Annie writes a passionate article criticising it and receives an email response from Tucker Crowe himself. Further email correspondence ensues, much of which consumes Annie's thoughts.Tucker Crowe is in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
preparing for a visit from his daughter Lizzie, whom he has never met. He has five children from four relationships, and his youngest son Jackson and Jackson's mother Cat are the only ones he lives with. Lizzie reveals that she is visiting because she is pregnant.
Duncan meets a new colleague called Gina, whom he sleeps with. He tells Annie of his affair and she insists he move out. The next day Annie talks to her judgmental therapist Malcolm. Duncan regrets leaving Annie but she refuses to take him back.
Cat breaks up with Tucker but Tucker remains looking after Jackson. Annie places a photo of Tucker and Jackson on her fridge and invites Duncan round to make him see it, gleeful that he doesn't know the significance, and tells him she is in a relationship with him.
She ponders the years she has wasted with Duncan and ends up going to the pub with her friend Ros, during which she meets Gav and Barnesy, two Northern Soul
Northern soul
Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged from the British mod scene, initially in northern England in the late 1960s. Northern soul mainly consists of a particular style of black American soul music based on the heavy beat and fast tempo of the mid-1960s Tamla Motown sound...
dancers. Barnesy comes back to her house and tells her he loves her, but leaves after she says she won't sleep with him. Annie discusses the incident the next day with Malcolm.
Tucker discovers that Lizzie has lost the baby and Cat talks him into visiting Lizzie. On arrival in London, Tucker has a heart attack and is taken into the hospital. Lizzie invites all his children and ex-wives to visit for a family reunion.
A mini-narrative describes the events which caused Tucker to end his career after hearing that he had a daughter, Grace from the relationship before/during Julie.
Annie visits him in the hospital and he suggests staying at her house to avoid the family reunion. The next day Annie visits again and they do, though Annie discovers he had not yet met with Grace. Tucker tells her about Grace and Juliet and Annie insists he call his family.
They discuss his work; Tucker sees it as inauthentic rubbish while Annie thinks it's deep and meaningful music while clarifying that while the music is good it doesn't mean that Tucker as a person is good. She also admits that she was in a relationship with Duncan, whom Tucker knows of from the website. Annie encourages Tucker to meet Duncan but he refuses. The next day they bump into Duncan. Tucker introduces himself but Duncan doesn't believe him. After considering it, Duncan comes over and Tucker shows Duncan his passport as proof. They have tea together and Tucker clarifies some of Duncan's beliefs about him, while Duncan expresses his love of his music.
Grace calls Tucker. She says she understands how he and she can't be close because it would mean giving up 'Juliet'.
An exhibition Annie has been working on opens at the Gooleness museum, where she works as a curator. She suggests that Tucker could open it but the councillor in charge says he's never heard of him and invites Gav and Barnsey (two local Northern Soul dancers) to do it instead. At the party Annie admits to Tucker that she likes him romantically and afterwards they have sex. Annie says she has used a contraceptive but didn't. Tucker and Jackson return to America. Annie tells Malcolm about it all and tells him that she would like to sell her house and move right away to America to join Tucker and Jackson. Malcolm's paternalistic comment lets her realize that she's cured. She can then leave him.
In the epilogue, Duncan and other fans review on the fan website a new release from Tucker, which they think is terrible; one of them writes, 'Happiness Is Poison'. Only one new member says she and her husband love the new album, while they find 'Juliet' too gloomy for their liking.
Critical reception
Reviewing the novel for The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Julie Myerson
Julie Myerson
Julie Myerson is an English author and critic. As well as writing both fiction and non-fiction books, she is also known for having written a long-running column in The Guardian entitled "Living with Teenagers" based on her own family experiences...
writes "Its likably bleak humour lies mostly in Hornby's pitch-perfect examination of male fandom
Fandom
Fandom is a term used to refer to a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest...
and the almost sinister way in which the advent of the internet has fed and enabled it. He's every bit as good as you'd expect on the crazed dynamic of the messageboard
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
and the way in which the web has enabled fans to stalk and even, somehow, take possession of their idols from the safety of darkened bedrooms. It's no joke when Annie quips that Duncan knows more about Crowe than Crowe himself. And Hornby knows how such an obsession can haunt a relationship: when Annie observes that she has long accepted the Crowe thing as "part of the package, like a disability", you know all you need to know about life with Duncan. However, so convincing is the Tucker Crowe who inhabits Duncan's mind that when we meet the real person pushing a trolley around a supermarket somewhere in America with his six-year-old son, it feels deflating. That is Hornby's point – idols are only as big as the fantasies we project on to them. Still, as Crowe establishes himself as the third narrator of this tale, the writing loses its engaging fluidity."
In his review for The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, Roger Perkins wrote: "A burnt-out case in rural Pennsylvania and a frustrated woman with an etiolated sense of self-worth on the east coast of England – what would happen if they met? The tentative relationship, online then offline, between Annie and Tucker offers Hornby a broad canvas to explore why we so often let the early promise of relationships, ambition and, indeed, life evaporate. Hornby writes so well that you can almost smell the birdseed odour of badly dried clothes combined with failure that pervades Annie's house; his triumph, though, is to find infinite amounts of warmth and humour in this seeming world of desolation."
In The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, Simon Baker called it "Hornby's best novel to date. It is written with the author's usual readable flow, with a style that somehow suggests (without being overt and therefore off-putting) an acquaintanceship between author and reader. This can make one underestimate the quality of the prose: the fact that the sentences are straightforwardly deployed can conceal their unfussy elegance and their wit. Most impressive is that Annie is fully realised as a character, notwithstanding that we are told very little about her past. She is occasionally too perfect — completely self-aware and alert to the subtext of any conversation, always conscious of other people’s clichés of word and action — and so can seem like a novelist’s proxy. The flipside of her intelligence and insight, however, is that we like her and want her to negotiate this defining period in her life successfully — whether that is with her nerdy ex-boyfriend, her ageing ex-rocker, or no one."
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp , Codex , The Magicians and The Magician King...
compared it with another 2009 novel—The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips
Arthur Phillips
Arthur Phillips is a Jewish American novelist active in the 21st century. His novels include Prague , The Egyptologist , Angelica , The Song Is You , and The Tragedy of Arthur -Life:Phillips was born in Minneapolis, received a BA in history from Harvard...
—and called it "an example of what you might call iPod lit,...novels that meditate on the paradoxical mixture of intimacy and estrangement that arises from listening to digitally recorded music, or really from any human interaction mediated by the Internet." He concludes "this is a novel about people who have wasted massive chunks of their lives—Duncan in sterile rock-critic hermeneutics (he's like the worst-case-scenario future of Rob Fleming from High Fidelity
High Fidelity (novel)
High Fidelity is a 1995 British novel by Nick Hornby. It was adapted into a 2000 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack. It also served as the basis for a 2006 Broadway musical of the same name.-Plot summary:...
); Annie in a dead romance and a dead-end job; and Crowe in sulky, creatively arid seclusion. They're trying to make the best of what's left, but what's left just isn't that great. Juliet, Naked is a bleaker book than Hornby's A Long Way Down
A Long Way Down
A Long Way Down is a novel written by British author Nick Hornby, published in 2005. It is a dark comedy, playing off the themes of suicide, angst, depression and promiscuity....
, and that was about four people trying to kill themselves."