Juliet, naked

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Juliet, Naked is a novel by British author Nick Hornby and published by Riverhead Books in September 2009 . The German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in the same year .

overview

The novel, set around 2008, tells of a rock star named Tucker Crowe , who left public life around twenty years ago, and of his probably greatest fan (→ fandom ), Crowe admirer Duncan , and his partner Annie . They are all dissatisfied with their respective life situation.

action

Annie and Duncan live in the sleepy British coastal town of Gooleness and have had a passionless relationship for 15 years. Duncan belongs to an internet community of ardent Crowe supporters who call themselves crowologists. Annie, who has largely come to terms with his whimsy, works in a local museum and has a desperate desire to have children. When, surprisingly, after a twenty-year hiatus, a new album entitled Juliet, Naked is released, which mainly consists of rough versions of the songs on Juliet , the album that made Crowe famous at the time, their opinions differ widely. While Duncan sees it as a brilliant concentrate of Juliet , in Annie's opinion much of the statement is lost. When Duncan posts an enthusiastic review in which he praises the album beyond measure, Annie follows suit and publishes her opinion. When Tucker Crowe reads the review on the other side of the Atlantic , he feels understood for the first time and contacts Annie.

At first Annie may not really believe that Tucker Crowe, who has been a topic for her for 15 years through Duncan, is actually writing her. But finally she answers him. As it turns out, contrary to all fan theories, Crowe's life is rather average. He lives on a farm in Pennsylvania with his six-year-old son Jackson and third wife . He has four more children with three other women, with whom he hoped to find solace after the end of his music career, but with whom he does not have a good relationship. When this marriage falls apart, he decides to visit his adult daughter Lizzie, who had a miscarriage, with Jackson in London. He also plans to meet with Annie on this occasion.

Annie has since broken up with Duncan after cheating with a colleague. Tucker has a heart attack . On this occasion, Lizzie and her mother Natalie decide to gather all of his children together. Tucker, who doesn't like all that at all, asks Annie, with whom he has since met, to take him to Gooleness. There Annie gets Tucker to grapple with his work and his relationship with his blended family. While walking on the beach, they meet Duncan. When Tucker introduces himself, Duncan doesn't believe him. In retrospect, however, it becomes clear to him that he has actually met his idol. He stops by Annie and Tucker's for tea and apologizes for his behavior. Later, at the opening of an exhibit at the local history museum, after an elderly lady told her that she regretted never taking any real risk, Annie confessed to Tucker that she had been feeling for some time and asked him if he could sleep with her would.

When they get back home and Tucker Jackson has put to bed, they researched the possible risks of an erection after Tucker's heart attack. They kiss for the first time. They sleep together that night. Annie is only pretending to be using contraceptives because she desperately wants a child. Two days later, Tucker and Jackson fly back to the United States. Whether Annie will later fly to America is left open, as is whether Annie is pregnant. Tucker is releasing a new album.

style

As in his early works, Hornby describes the effects of extreme fantasy . In contrast to his previously published works Fever Pitch and High Fidelity , the protagonists are no longer faced with the difficulty of growing up, but with the admission that they have long since failed in adulthood.

Hornby also describes the changes in fantasy in the age of the Internet . Important stylistic devices of the novel are, for example, the two fictitious Wikipedia entries - which extend over several pages in the novel - about Tucker Crowe himself and his last musical work "Juliet" as well as longer passages in which the protagonists communicate by email .

filming

In 2018, a film adaptation of the novel was released , directed by Jesse Peretz, with Rose Byrne (Annie), Ethan Hawke (Tucker) and Chris O'Dowd (Duncan) in the lead roles.

literature

  • Nick Hornby: Juliet, Naked . Penguin Verlag, 2009, ISBN 0-670-91565-3 (English original edition)
  • Juliet, naked . From English into German by Clara Drechsler and Harald Hellmann. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009, ISBN 3-462-04139-8 .

Reviews

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