Rachel Joyce is a master of tender, heartening storytelling. I’ve read two of her three novels, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Music Shop. In both cases, I wanted to curl up and live in her stories for a while. Joyce’s writing epitomizes sweetness.
The Music Shop takes place on Unity Street, where a tiny row of rundown shops exist despite all odds – a bakery, an undertaker, a Christian store, a tattoo parlor, and a vinyl record store. The masonry is falling from the shopfronts, the town council wants to demolish and redevelop Unity Street, and the little community of shop owners and their neighbors are barely scraping by. Yet, they form a scrabbled together family who does not wish to be split apart.
Frank owns the music shop, and has a knack for suggesting the exact right song for each of his customers. A customer is likely to come into the shop asking for one thing, and walk out with something completely different, yet expressly what they needed in the moment:
“Frank could not play music, he could not read a score, he had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when he sat in front a customer and truly listened, he heard a kind of song”.
In this way, Frank becomes the center of his little community, comprised of people whose lives he has transformed through music. He is well-loved, despite being stubborn and a tiny bit bumbling.
Frank’s life is forever altered when a pretty woman in a pea green coat peers into the music shop one day, and promptly faints. Frank and his fellow shopkeepers revive her, and instantly their curiosity is piqued by the mysterious woman. Gradually, she and Frank get to know each other. She suggests Frank give her music lessons, and they meet at a little cafe each week. No matter that she is engaged to someone else, Frank is besotted and seems quite comfortable with his seemingly unrequited love:
“Real love was a journey with many pitfalls and complications, and sometimes the place you ended up was not the one you hoped for. But there. Better to have held her hand on a summer’s day than to have had nothing at all”.
I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll stop there. My one criticism is that the story is a tiny bit cheesy. It’s a good sort of cheesiness though. The kind that verges on saccharine without tipping fully over. Music lovers will appreciate Frank’s suggestions and varied stock of vinyl. Readers will fall in love with the charming characters. The Music Shop is a feel-good must-read.
Yesterday was my 4 year old daughter’s last day of dance class at our local community center. On the last day, parents are invited into the classroom to watch a little “recital” – which sounds like a level of cuteness rivaled only by videos of sea otters holding hands (or paws, if you insist on accuracy). All seemed lost when my son woke up with a cold and had to stay home. My husband, hero to the rescue, worked from home so we could make it to the recital. Perhaps it was doomed from the get-go. We arrived at the community center, but the teacher did not.
Last week I took my 6 year old son (past his bedtime, on a school night…) to see Junot Díaz talk about his new children’s book Islandborn. Leading up to the talk, I was a little concerned about keeping my son up late. Exhaustion brings out the worst in him. The minute Junot Díaz stepped on stage, my fear was alleviated. My son was captivated. I was captivated.
The other evening, a friend asked what I’m currently reading. I had just finished Rabbit Cake that very morning. When she asked how it was, I told her that I had trouble getting into it. I’d read 
This book reads like the little sibling of a John Hughes movie. It’s not as inspired or accomplished as its older brother, but it is loveable in a similar way.
I was in the mood for some light reading, and thought a cozy mystery might hit the spot. Browsing the aisles of my favorite bookstore, A Murder of Magpies jumped out at me. The cover art pops – robin’s egg blue background with bright orange birds (magpies, I assume) perched above a typewriter. It certainly looked like a light-hearted mystery, and the back cover made claims of wittiness and humor. Perfect.
After the mysterious and tragic disappearance of their father, sisters Snow and Rose are forced to move with their mother to an old cabin in the woods. The girls soon venture into the depths of the forest where they find a host of strange and magical things: a cozy house buried in the ground, a library of found objects, a bear with kind eyes injured in a hunter’s trap, and a little man with oddly bent legs whom they repeatedly rescue from bizarre situations. Here lies the strength of this story – it is fantastic in the way of all good fairy tales, with richly imagined details.