Unity Street was a tiny cul de sac off a main avenue in an unnamed British city. On one side of the street were small, shabby homes and on the other side was a group of tiny businesses that included a music store, a Polish bakery, a tattoo parlor, a religious article store, an undertaker, a florist. At one end of the cul de sac was a pub. There was also a developer trying to buy the stores and convert them to a modern housing development.

The music store, owned by a solitary man named Frank, sold only vinyl records. Frank and his fellow shopkeepers were a friendly group and helped each other. However the stores were not very busy due to their off the beaten track location. Frank’s specialty was being able to recommend the music that would solve the problems of his customers. He even had a listening booth for them to listen before buying.

Frank’s life was a very solitary one. He had been raised with an unconventional single mother who was devoted to music. When she died and left him her extensive collection of vinyl records, he decided to open a store and sell only vinyl records not the CDs that were popular at the time. Then one day an attractive German immigrant, Ilsa, fainted in front of the store. Frank’s life changed forever once he met her and fell in love. However Ilsa admitted to having a fiancé in the town but kept returning to the store. Eventually she hired Frank to teach her about music in weekly lessons at a local restaurant.

Ilsa was harboring secrets and Frank had never recovered from his mother’s death. So when she confessed her love to him, he could not handle it and ran from her. Many years later they were finally able to discover the healing powers of music and reconnect.

I had a hard time getting into this book. However I soon began to enjoy reading about the quirky characters like Father Anthony, the former priest who operates that religious article shop, Kit, Frank’s cheery but inept assistant, Maud, a Goth tattoo artist and Mrs. Roussos, a nosy neighbor. I also enjoyed learning g about how contemporary music could be coupled with classical music to help someone deal with a problem.

The Music Shop is a hymn to vinyl, love

British almost to a fault and an ode to the eighties, Rachel Joyce’s The Music Shop spans decades of a record shop on a minor London street filled with similarly unprofitable stores and the lives of the heartbroken owner, a heartbroken young lady with a sad story, and the wildly diverse characters who swirl around them and the neighborhood like flotsam in unkempt gutters. Musical, lyrical, cinematic, and occasionally naughty, The Music Shop is the most unlikely of romances: a page-turner.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

Another excellent book by Joyce! Will be hand selling this to many customers.

4.5 Stars

”There was once a music shop. From the outside it looked like any shop, in any backstreet. It had no name above the door. No record display in the window. There was just a homemade poster stuck to the glass. FOR THE MUSIC YOU NEED!! EVERYONE WELCOME!! WE ONLY SELL VINYL!!”

The shop was difficult to navigate with boxes packed in everywhere one looked; every nook and cranny had records, although none were classified. There were two booths for listening with turntables in between. And Frank, as much of a fixture as the records, felt it was best to keep the shop open late into the evening for those passing by in need of music.

You could find what you needed, as long as it was on vinyl. And if you didn’t know what you wanted or needed, Frank could always tell exactly what you did need. Stacks of classical, rock, blues, jazz, punk, heavy metal, he carried it all – as long as it was on vinyl.

”Frank could not play music, he could not read a score, he had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when he sat in front of a customer and truly listened, he heard a kind of song. He wasn’t talking a full-blown symphony. It would be a few notes, at the most, a strain. And it didn’t happen all the time, only when he let go of being Frank and inhabited a space that was more in the middle. It had been this way ever since he could remember. ‘Intuition,’ Father Anthony called it. ‘Weird shit’ that was Maud.”

In 1974, the year Frank bought his shop, Britain was beginning a recession that year, but he didn’t want to quibble over the asking price, and so he bought this place, despite the stench, despite the condition it was in, despite the crumbling masonry falling now and then.

He began to tackle the things that needed tackling right away. Slowly, he began to make repairs, plastering walls, repairing pipes, fixing the roof, and replacing the windows. People begin to pop into the shop just to see how it’s coming along, and he begins to know his neighbors better. Word spreads about his shop, and slowly, over time, he builds up a somewhat regular clientele. His customers are amazed that he always seems to know just the right music for them.

”Music comes out of silence and at the end it goes back to it. It’s a journey. You see?” His mother had told him when he was six. ”And of course the silence at the beginning of a piece of music is always different from the silence at the end.”
Why? He questioned her. ”Because if you listen, the world changes. It’s like falling in love. Only no one gets hurt.”

By the time his shop is up and running, music has changed. Moved beyond vinyl to 8-track tapes, then cassette tapes, and then, by 1988, came CDs. Shiny, eye-catching and new. But Frank remains steadfast in his determination to keep in the old and blocking the way for those new, shiny objects. In this neighborhood, it feels as though time has marched on, but time seems to have forgotten this neighborhood, these people.

Throughout this story are many quirky and endearing characters, but there is one character that really stands out from the rest: Ilse, a young woman who may wear her heart on her sleeve, but that sleeve is made of amour. He first meets her when she faints just outside the door to the music shop. A new person in this neighborhood is worthy of notice, but there’s something about her that sets her apart from them. It’s not just the clothes or the gloves that she wears, it’s not her green coat, or her German accent that sneaks through when she speaks, and she’s just a bit of an enigma. And that difference is something they all seem to find intriguing.

There are a host of other characters, Father Anthony, Maud, and Kit, with the occasional glance back in time to Frank’s memories of his mother, Peg. Each character is uniquely charming, even grumpy Maud. There are also those that wander into the shop as a break in their day of wandering the streets.

There is a considerable amount of conversation about music, which should be obvious since it is a book that is based on the comings and goings of people in a music shop, but the range of eras and genres of music is fairly eclectic. I loved this, the discussions which were less about music than about the feelings evoked, what the artist was trying to say, to convey to those listening.

The description of this book says that it is “a love story and a journey through music,” however there are many different kinds of love stories, as many as there are different songs, and this story deals with more than one way that love is shared. I would say that this is a love story / song to music, and the ability that both music and words have of breaking, and healing, our hearts.

In a very basic sense, there’s an essence to ”The Music Shop” which charmed me as much as her “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” which I loved. There’s a raw, but not overly sentimental charm to these characters, as well as an emotional journey over time, as well. Like Harold’s followers, you’ll be cheering these characters on in their journeys.



Pub Date: 02 Jan 2018


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group / Random House

This could be a primer on music history from Bach to Aretha Franklin. The story, however, is about Frank and his ability to put the right vinyl record in the hands of one who needs it---akin to books. Frank and the other store owners stick together to survive. The characters are quirky, but somehow the author makes it believable.

Quirky, eccentric characters in this book who I really enjoyed meeting. The book is focused on Frank, who owns a record store devoted to vinyl records only in 1980's London. Frank was raised by a single mother who used to tell him stories about about musicians from all genres of music - from Bach to Dizzy Gillespie. She was a fountain of information. Frank can't play a musical instrument, but his life is music and he has the ability to "listen" to a person and be able to tell what music would be helpful to them. The music shop is losing business and company reps stop selling to him because Frank refuses to carry CDs and cassette tapes - only vinyl.

Ilse appears one day in front of Frank's store and falls to the sidewalk, unconscious. Frank and other locals bring her into the music shop to revive her and she awakens to Frank's kind face. This is the beginning of an intriguing relationship between the two of them.

This was a fun read and I enjoyed the backdrop of the music shop and all the local characters. Thanks to Rachel Joyce and Random House Publishing Group - Random House through Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

By the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and, The Love Song of Miss Queen Hennessy, The Music Shop turned out to be a sweet story that not only deals with music but about wounded people and second chances as well.

The story is set in the late 1980's where Frank owns a "music shop" in a somewhat rundown area of town. Although he sells all kinds of music and can recommend just the right piece for each customer who enters his shop, the one thing Frank refuses to do is to change with the times and to begin selling CDS, the latest rage. For Frank, nothing will ever replace vinyl.

One day a mysterious woman enters his shop. Her name is Isle Bachmann, but before he ever learns her name or anything about her, something happens and she's gone in a flash. He soon finds himself somewhat obsessed with finding out who the lovely woman in the green pea coat is and what brough her to his shop.

Part mystery but, this novel, for me was all about quirky Frank, a charming, wounded man who is easy to root for. Readers who enjoy reading about music and like flawed characters should give this one a try.

4.5/5 stars

I really enjoyed Rachel Joyce's The Music Shop. She brings us the story of a bunch of quirky characters who are brought together on a small, crumbling side street full of little shops. The owner of the music shop, Frank, is the thread that ties everyone together. He can read people so well that he can make recommendations as to the music that you need to hear and what will fix your ails. Unfortunately, he is unable to do this for himself and struggles even when he meets an interesting woman, Ilse, who he tutors to develop her music appreciation/understanding. This novel has quite a few aspects that I like [the 1980s, music references, and some quirky types (I loved Kit)] and it really came together well. I do wish that some characters had been fleshed out more, such as Ilse and Maud, rather than characters like the bank loans manager.

This was a lovely book spanning a twenty-one year period about a stretch of shops in London with the address of "Unity Street." This turns out to be a metaphor for the way the various shop owners band together to support each other through personal and financial challenges. There are twin brothers with a funeral parlor, a female tattoo artist, a Polish baker, a religious store run by an ex-priest, and the music shop. These business establishments face a row of apartments opposite that have seen better times, along with a corner bomb site that was never redeveloped.

The main character in the book is Frank, a staunch devotee of vinyl records with a knack of advising customers of what music they need. They might come into the shop thinking they want Chopin and walk out with Aretha Franklin instead...and be thankful for it. Frank had a wealthy and eccentric mother named Peg (and wanted to be called as such by Frank) who relentlessly taught him a wide array of music along with the personal stories of their composers. It was a fervent passion for Peg which she passed along to her son. Unfortunately, in her eccentricity she deprived Frank of a normal childhood and destroyed the most serious romantic relationship of his young life. These experiences reverberate through Frank over the years along with the music. It lands Frank into his music shop business surrounded by his coterie of interesting workers/friends.

Then one day an attractive young woman in a pea green coat peers into the music shop's window and everything changes for Frank. A real estate development corporation is pressuring the shop owners to sell, the record company reps are coming down on Frank because he won't sell CDs or cassettes, and Frank is battling strong feelings for the mysterious German girl that wandered into his shop months ago.

I once read another book by author Rachel Joyce called "Perfect" which I enjoyed very much...which is why I wanted to read this. This is a very different storyline from that book, and almost as engaging. Joyce is also famous for the award winning "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" and "The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy" (both waiting to be read in my kindle library).

What a sweet quirky book about quirky people. But aren't we all quirky? Some people just hide it better than others.

It took me a while to get in to this book but once I was invested in the characters, I was hooked

There is so much wisdom and nuggets of truth in this book especially with how our world is today. A few of my favorite are:

"They just had to look after one another. They would be ok, so long as they stuck together."

"When a man has a passion to stand up for something crazy, it makes other problems in people's lives seem more straightforward. "

"The fact was it was safer to stay uninvolved. He was perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people."

"Helping someone is entirely different from being involved. Belong is all on your own terms. " I am honestly still mulling over this idea.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for a honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Vividly depicted characters, as well as a musical education, made this novel a joy to read. While the story itself was a little hard to believe, the endearing characters and the beautiful writing kept me enthralled.

Hallelujah! Here's a novel that goes to the essence of music and the vital core of the human soul. This is a book that plucked at my heartstrings and danced through my head. I was taken with Joyce's flawed, lovable, and grudgingly loving cast of characters and the ways their offerings completed others. A beautiful book.

I loved it!! I spotted this title on the NetGalley list and was immediately interested solely based on the title. I love music as much as I loved books. I didn't even look if it was fiction or who the author was. I didn't realize that it was written by Rachel Joyce who also wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I also read and loved.
I can't say enough good things about this book. I loved the characters and I read this slowly over many days because I wanted it to last.... that is until the last 75 pages. Then I couldn't put it down and had to find out what happened. I don't often cry while reading a book but I cried at the end and I was sad the day after I finished it. The characters were well-developed; the setting elaborately depicted; and the plot flowed well. Personally I loved the ending and I'll leave it at that because I don't want to give anything away. When it becomes available I might possibly reread this and I will for sure recommend it to others. Well done, Rachel Joyce, and thank you NetGalley!!

May I begin by saying how much I love Rachel Joyce? From the moment I read "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" and "Perfect" I have been in love with her writing style and her ability to turn a narrative of a very simple story into something lovely.

So when I got the opportunity to read "The Music Shop" thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing, I jumped at the opportunity. The writing did not disappoint. The characters on the dying street in small town England were vivid and well developed. I felt like I had driven down the street, like I had wandered around the square and past the cathedral and the chain-linked bomb site.

At its heart, this book is a love story. Not just between the two main characters, but with music. I even created a playlist with all of the musical references that were in the book and closed my eyes to listen to it with the intensity that was suggested by the descriptions in the novel. As a former choir/band nerd, I instantly connected with the thread that music plays throughout a person's life.

The only thing that kept this from being a true five star read although it is a solid 4.5, was the ending. Although I can appreciate the simplicity of what Joyce was trying to accomplish, it seemed a bit abrupt after the 20 year wingspan of the book.

I highly recommend this novel - read all that you can of Rachel Joyce's beautiful literature.

Goodreads Rating: 4.5 stars

Loved the time period and setting (London); however, the book's a bit slow. I could not finish. Thanks for the reading opportunity.

Having found "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" a bit disappointing (it could have been amazing, but I felt that like Harold it lost its way en route) but nevertheless filled with promise, I was interested to see what Rachel Joyce did next. I've not got round to reading "Perfect" yet, instead I've skipped to her most recent writing with "The Music Shop", mainly because having spent the first part of my working life in record stores, I am always interested in books on this topic.
I do feel as though Joyce is really growing as an author, as her plot lines are getting tighter and more flowing, however she does seem to still feel compelled to set her novels in this weirdly stereotypical version of modern day England, a bit like a Richard Curtis film, but with slightly darker undertones.
That said, there is plenty to love about "The Music Shop". Imagine "High Fidelity" but with a grumpier, hairier, less angsty owner, who falls for a woman who literally falls for him outside his store.
Frank and Ilse's imperfect love story will have you frustrated and heartwarmed in equal measures. The path of true love never runs smooth, and in their case it is an extremely turbulent ride, but one that you'll be glad you took with them. As with Harold and Queenie, Joyce really does excel at creating wonderful richly-drawn characters who come to life off the page, and who you really feel you know by the final page. All in all, a great read.

Thank you, Rachel Joyce, for another fantastic story, with characters I won't soon forget. It's the 1980's in a decrepit part of London, where only a few shops remain, including Frank's record shop. Nothing but vinyl for Frank and the customers who come to him, needing a piece of music to help the through life. Filled with quirky characters like Father Anthony, and of course, the mystery woman, Ilse, who shows up one day and changes Frank's lonely existence. This is a winner.

I know I'm biased toward Ms Joyce. I'll read anything and everything she authors. But this book is so giving. The music knowledge is fantastic, but Frank, the shop owner, is such a delicate, generous character that he lingers on your skin like aloe. His descriptions of his musical world were vibrant, loving, effusive, and utterly joyful. I want to listen to every single thing he recommends. I want to know a Frank in the now.

Frank's knowledge of music is legendary and when he couldn't hear Ilse's, he didn't know what to think. Everybody but him, kknew she loved him, but havning been burned once, Frank wasn't about to open himself to anyone. He preferred to love her at a distance. A novel way of telling a story - the music suggestions and the descriptions, oy the descriptions of the music! Wonderful!. This book will make the reader appreciate music and want to listen to all of the titles, but most of all it is a great story. It's about people, a dying area too late for gentrification, lost and found love and music. I simply couldn't put it down. Music lover or not, this book has something for everyone!

It pains me to rate this so low as I read and quite enjoyed two of Rachel Joyce's earlier books--The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye and especially The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy. Hence my request.

BUT. I cannot understand the love for the book. I was bored.

"Can a man who is so in tune with other people's needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him? The journey that these two quirky, wonderful characters make in order to overcome their emotional baggage speaks to the healing power of music--and love--in this poignant, ultimately joyful work of fiction." This is not the book I read.

The music shop on Unity Street is where Frank, the emotionally wounded shop's owner, connects people with just the music they need. Music as a healing power, music as psychology. And when a mysterious German woman, Ilse Brauchmann [who says she's engaged], enters his store and faints... The sort of plot gets set in motion.

Set in 1988 London, on a street with a mishmash of offerings. A record shop that sells vinyl and refuses CDs and tapes. Eccentric characters--somewhat engaging but not nearly enough. Maud, a tattoo artist in love with Frank. Kit, who works in Frank's store.Father Anthony, a former priest, who has a sort of shop and makes origami items. Two brothers who operate a funeral parlor. And development company that threatens the existence of the street. And so on.

A few lines made me smile. "...white Chihuaha was doing a smiley thing with his teeth." And particularly, "...two boys with so many piercings they look upholstered." But not nearly enough to sustain.

Late in the novel, the story jumps 30 years forward. I didnt care. Predictable though there is a bit of novelty. The novel jumps between mostly goings on in 1988, and in italics, Frank's back story, youth, young adult life, and relationship with Peg, his mother who "didn't know the mother recipe." She taught him about music. I didnt care.

So not for me. But this book did have appeal for others.