Excerpt from The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

The Music Shop

A Novel

by Rachel Joyce
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (5):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 2, 2018, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Nov 2018, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


2
It's a Kind of Magic
Oh No Not My Baby

Tick, tick. It was dark inside the booth, with a hushed feeling, like hiding in a cupboard. The silence fizzed.

Everyone had warned him. Be careful, they'd said. He just wouldn't listen. So he asked her to marry him and he couldn't believe his luck when she said yes—her so beautiful, him so ordinary. Then he took her a bottle of champagne after the wedding breakfast, and there she was, upside down in the honeymoon suite. At first he couldn't work it out. He had to take a really good look. He saw a dress like a sticky meringue with four legs poking out, two with black socks, one with a garter. And then he realized. It was his new wife and his best man. He left the bottle on the floor, along with two glasses, and shut the door.

He couldn't get that picture out of his head. He played Chopin, he took pills from the doctor, and none of it made a difference. He stopped going out; he cried at the drop of a hat. He felt so bad he called in sick at work.

Tick, tick—

The song started. A twang of guitar, a blast of horns, a chirruping "Sweet-sweet-ba-by" and then a bam-bam-bam-bam from percussion.

What was Frank thinking? This wasn't the music he needed. He went to pull off the headphones—

"When ma friends tol' me you had someone noo," began the singer, this Aretha, her voice clear and steady, "I didn' believe a single word was true."

It was like meeting a stranger in the dark, saying to them, "You'll never guess what?" and the stranger saying, "Hey, but that's exactly how it is for me."

He stopped thinking about his wife and his sadness and he listened to Aretha as if she were a voice inside his head.

She told him her story—something like this. Everyone said her man was a cheat; even her own mother said it. But Aretha wouldn't believe them. He was not like those other boys who lead you on. Who tell you lies. She started the song calmly enough but by the time she got to the chorus she was practically screaming the words. Her voice was a little boat and the music was a Japanese wave, but Aretha kept riding it, up and down. It was downright pigheaded, the way she kept believing in him. There were strings, the bobble of the guitar, a horn riff, percussion, all telling her she was wrong—("Wohhh!" shrilled the backing vocals, like a Greek chorus of girlfriends)—but no, she hung on tight. Her voice pulled the words this way and that, soaring up over the top and then scooping right down low. Aretha knew. She knew how desperate it felt, to love a cheat. How lonely.

He sat very, very still. And he listened.


3
It's a Kind of Magic

Frank shook a cigarette from the packet, and as he smoked, he watched the door of the booth. He hoped he wasn't wrong about this song. Sometimes all that people needed was to know they were not alone. Other times it was more a question of keeping them in touch with their feelings until they wore them out—people clung to what was familiar, even when it was painful.

Excerpted from The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce. Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Joyce. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book:
  Vinyl Records

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
by Clare Leslie Hall
A love triangle reveals deadly secrets in this thriller for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Original
    by Nell Stevens

    In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

  • Book Jacket

    The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant
    by Liza Tully

    A great detective's young assistant yearns for glory, but first they have learn to get along in this delightful feel good mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    Angelica
    by Molly Beer

    A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.

Win This Book
Win These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas

"[An] atmospheric tale of unexpected hope." —Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

W the C A the M W P

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.