Everyone and their dog, I’m pretty sure literally, has been raving about this book. On the face of it, it didn’t seem that different from any other book marketed to women set in the 20th century. This one is set in the 1970s and centres around a fictional band that split mysteriously after playing a sold out show, and at the height of their success. They walked off stage, and just never went back on. No one knew why. Until this book, decades later, finally shares their story.
I am not a fan of the 1970s. The bell-bottoms, the big hair, the crochet, the fringes… just not my style. On top of that, it’s about a band and their issues with addiction, fame, in-fighting and creative differences. None of that really holds much appeal to me – it feels adolescent and played out. But I hoped that this would be one of those rare gems that is so well executed that the setting and subject don’t really matter. I didn’t really expect it to be, but I went in hoping. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised.
First the format. This book is written as a series of interview excerpts – the band are being interviewed by an unknown person, and we don’t know why. They are answering questions and telling their memories, and they are being very candid and forthcoming. I loved this because you get to hear different perspectives on and recollections of an event (often contradictory) right next to each other. It gives the story an immediacy and intimacy – like you are jumping between different characters minds in each situation to see the whole story. It’s as good as an omniscient narrator, but much more interesting.
I loved the complexity of the characters and of their relationships with one another. I loved that your expectations are turned on their heads again and again, and that even the characters who hated one another aren’t one note. There are conflicting loyalties, betrayals, love affairs, petty jealousies, and at the centre is true musical genius. By halfway through this book I believed Daisy Jones and the Six were a real band, and I wanted to see them perform live if only to experience the charisma and chemistry between Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, the band’s lead singer.
There are so many things I loved about this book. I loved that the characters don’t fulfill stereotypes (at least, not all of them). I loved that they all have a pure love of music that underpins all the drama and conflict. I loved that there are strong female characters who aren’t going to let anyone keep them from having what they want from life. I loved that there is a raw vulnerability to the main characters that makes you feel like your heart is breaking as you read, and makes you totally and completely invested in their struggles.
If you go into this book looking for 70s excess, you will find it. If you go into it looking for tawdry backstage antics, you’ll find them. If you go into it looking for band drama, you will find it. If you go into it looking for diva attitude, you will find it. If you go into it looking for people who need saving, you will find them. But if you also want to find people who love what they do, who will fight to make it as musicians, and who will not compromise their creative vision, you will find them too. And if you are looking for characters who will step right out of the page and spill their guts to you, making you believe their stories are real, you will most definitely find that here too.
The best books are the ones that make you want to know what is going to happen to the characters, but also make you feel like you are on the journey with them. They’re books that make you lose sight of your surroundings as you read, that make you forget the places you were supposed to be, and that have you unabashedly talking out loud to the characters as if they were right there in front of you. This book will do all of that. It will make you feel completely invested, and it will break you more than once. But you will be grateful, and you will wish for more.
There is a delicacy to Reid’s portrayals, particularly of Daisy Jones, and that made her all the more real. She is an addict, and she has been brought up in a dysfunctional family. She has also been insulated from the realities of the world and of people’s judgment by her beauty, notoriety and privilege. We see her start to become aware of the down side of her experience – how she can be protected by the distance her position creates, but also isolated by it. We see her start to realize that fame and success aren’t enough, and that the drugs she thought were giving her an outlet are actually destroying her. We see her flail and fall, we see her clawing for a hold on anything or anyone who can help lever her up out of the hole she finds herself in. There’s a matter-of-fact quality to Reid’s portrayal of Daisy that makes her all the more heartbreaking. She captures a voyeuristic dream we all have of celebrity, and shows its cracks. She represents our hopes, but also our fears.
I don’t feel as if my review is doing this book justice, so I think all I really need to say is that whatever you value in a reading experience, you are likely to find it here. It wasn’t a one-note read, and all the aspects – character, plot, pacing, intrigue, emotion – were balanced and well done. If you want an engaging summer read, this is a great place to go. But if you are looking for something deeper, that depth is also here. You can choose how deeply you want to engage with it, and whatever level you want to go to, it will take you there.
I’m looking forward to picking up some of Reid’s other works – I had been hesitant to try her before because she seemed a bit more fluffy than I generally like my fiction – but this book showed me that under the women’s fiction persona, she has teeth. I’m currently collecting her backlist, and will be rationing them out and hoping they live up to even a quarter of this introductory experience.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice. – Goodreads
Book Title: Daisy Jones & the Six
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Ballantine Books
Released: March 5, 2018
Genre: Fiction, Music, Character-Driven
Pages: 368
Date Read: March 25 – April 1, 2019
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.32/5 (36,380 ratings)
8/10 is a good rating! I was worried about the hype for this one. Thanks!