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Critique de clairpickworth
(j'écrirai ma critique en français dès que je pourrai mais en attendant ...)
"Life and loss, one song at a time," says the tagline on the book cover.
Shy music geek Rob meets outgoing punk rock girl, Renée and they fall in love. They get married but he later loses her, forever (this is no spoiler, you learn it from the first few lines of the book, if you hadn't already guessed it from the cover).
Renée, however, is very much alive and kicking for a good first half of the book and while Rob doesn't tell us everything about her, keeping many details for himself, we immediately feel the depth of his love for her. It's a story of Rob's live with Renée, rather than about Renée herself. Then suddenly, it's about losing Renée, the shock, the long process of coming to terms with it, the hopelessness, the realization that even if you might gradually come to terms with widowhood, there's no "reward", that person is not coming back, ever.
We may be aware of Renée's fate from the outset, the suddenness of it leaves us stunned and the hole she leaves is felt right to the end.
The book is really a series of anecdotes and memories, woven together by the thread of music. Each chapter opens with an eclectic list of tracks on a mix tape, and we're reminded of the power of music, its place in our own personal landscape. How music helps us build dreams, how it defines the present moment, and how it forms memories and a very strong bond with our past, or as Rob says in the book, "an old mix tape does a better job of storing memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life."
For me, it's totally about my generation, my decade, my music. I was in the UK having the time of my life as a twenty-something for most of the 1990s, not in the States like Rob and Renée, but there's a lot of overlapping with my own references from that period, and so lots of self-indulgent reminiscing as I read this, lots of "Oooooh, I need to go and listen to that song now" and "Oh my God, I remember that so well," moments, which no doubt add to the book's appeal.
Sheffield's writing is open and honest. There is no real aim or message here, as he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson who "knew the score: “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” It is however a beautiful remembrance and tribute to Renée and their time together, a sad story and a poignant read but one that'll often bring a smile to your face too as there's a lot of love and warmth in there.
And if you feel the urge to rush off to make your own mix tape after reading this, you don't need to ... there's a whole playlist on Spotify!
"Life and loss, one song at a time," says the tagline on the book cover.
Shy music geek Rob meets outgoing punk rock girl, Renée and they fall in love. They get married but he later loses her, forever (this is no spoiler, you learn it from the first few lines of the book, if you hadn't already guessed it from the cover).
Renée, however, is very much alive and kicking for a good first half of the book and while Rob doesn't tell us everything about her, keeping many details for himself, we immediately feel the depth of his love for her. It's a story of Rob's live with Renée, rather than about Renée herself. Then suddenly, it's about losing Renée, the shock, the long process of coming to terms with it, the hopelessness, the realization that even if you might gradually come to terms with widowhood, there's no "reward", that person is not coming back, ever.
We may be aware of Renée's fate from the outset, the suddenness of it leaves us stunned and the hole she leaves is felt right to the end.
The book is really a series of anecdotes and memories, woven together by the thread of music. Each chapter opens with an eclectic list of tracks on a mix tape, and we're reminded of the power of music, its place in our own personal landscape. How music helps us build dreams, how it defines the present moment, and how it forms memories and a very strong bond with our past, or as Rob says in the book, "an old mix tape does a better job of storing memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life."
For me, it's totally about my generation, my decade, my music. I was in the UK having the time of my life as a twenty-something for most of the 1990s, not in the States like Rob and Renée, but there's a lot of overlapping with my own references from that period, and so lots of self-indulgent reminiscing as I read this, lots of "Oooooh, I need to go and listen to that song now" and "Oh my God, I remember that so well," moments, which no doubt add to the book's appeal.
Sheffield's writing is open and honest. There is no real aim or message here, as he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson who "knew the score: “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” It is however a beautiful remembrance and tribute to Renée and their time together, a sad story and a poignant read but one that'll often bring a smile to your face too as there's a lot of love and warmth in there.
And if you feel the urge to rush off to make your own mix tape after reading this, you don't need to ... there's a whole playlist on Spotify!
