Peter Townsend the famous rockstar turns out to be a very good author.Hevhas written a novel of family of life even throws in witchcraft..A unique involving novel I really enjoyed.#netgalley#hatchettebooks

Usually when famous actors or singers write novels, I find myself forcing myself to get through them. Pete Townshend is the exception, as this book was a mixture of weirdness that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I hope to read more from him in the future.

First off, this book has nothing to do with The Who or Pete's career as a musician. That said, the story does involve music (of course) and I suspect several details are pulled from Pete's life, particularly the Lifehouse story. It is a fictional novel set in southwest London about a small group of friends and relatives and how their lives interact with each other over a 15-year period, at times centered around a popular local band whose singer is struggling with some issues (which ultimately cause him to leave the band at the height of its popularity for 15 years). His godfather and sometimes father figure also doubles as the narrator of the novel. There are several women, all of whom either marry this singer or are in love with him and those relationships are woven throughout the novel. There are several twists and turns that all reveal themselves at the end of the novel (mostly). Some of these coincidences are, frankly, too hard to believe but they all make for an entertaining read.

All in all, a great first effort from Pete!

Pete Townshend, co-founder and leader of the rock band The Who, is 74 years old and "The Age of Anxiety" is his first novel. Wow. First novel at 74. This must be some kind of literary world record for writers 65 and over. "The Age of Anxiety" is, for the most part, a brilliant debut and that was expected from Townshend, the creator of such epic recordings as "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia." I'm hoping Audible will come out with an edition in which Townshend is the narrator because he is one of the most eloquent voices of his generation. "The Age of Anxiety," which is set in England and Ireland, is at its best when it sticks to realism. The story about old and young rock musicians, their wives and lovers, artists and a protective godfather is pretty much straightforward except for Rushdie-like flights of fancy and those passages make me so tired I want to grab my surrealistic pillow and fall asleep. I fight the feeling and keep going, knowing there will be more magic in the pages to come in a tale involving drama and suspense told with class and wit. Some of it sounds like a soap opera, or perhaps it's mock opera, and I believe the soap-opera or mock-opera device heightens the entertainment value. And what's an opera without Pete Townshend.

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for granting me early access to "The Age of Anxiety".

I'm currently in the middle of a major move, and will definitely come back at a later time and write out a full review and rating.

Thank you so much!

Yes, Rocker Pete Townsend wrote this novel. But, it's nothing like you'd expect and is an absolutely awesome meditation on music, art, love, madness, witchcraft, and sexuality. It's more of a character study than a traditional storytelling novel. Think of a narrator slowly and gingerly peeling away the many layers of his life and discovering as the reader discovers what his life has been about. Where does madness end and creativity begin? Where does love end and jealousy and possessiveness begin? At what point does one sell out and is the truth found by living in the woods?

The characters here are complex and, like many a traditional novel, you see their lives, their glories, their errors, their madnesses play out over the decades. Louis lost himself in drugs and his wife ran off. A rock musician lets it all go to live in nature and make charcoal drawings. Two Irish sisters, Siobhan and Selena, and their friend Floss all fall for Louis' godson who leaves pub rock to listen to the music in the void and create a labyrinth of shrubbery for fifteen years. The three women are by turns bewitching and one claims psychic powers. All these lives are interlinked in a complicated soap opera of madness and seduction.

As noted, it's not a classic mystery and not a story of gunfights and sorting through the clues. The prose, however, is beautiful and absorbing. This is a top notch literary work about people, their characters, their motivation, their visions, their grip on reality.