Daisy Jones & The Six
A story about a rock band that climbs to the top of the charts in the Seventies, attaining iconic status, only to fall apart spectacularly, is the subject of the unputdownable Daisy Jones & the Six.
Opening in 1965, the story follows Daisy Jones, a singer who could never catch a break, in part due to her troubled past and stubborn disregard for authority, and a rock group called The Six, a group of six musicians who, while on the road to success, teamed up and discovered something extraordinary. However, what made them work as a band also contributed to their eventual downfall.
Although the novel is fascinating in its own right, with a cast of wholly original characters, the storyline is advanced tremendously because of the way it is told: the entire book is an “interview” in the style of Rolling Stone, with an unnamed interviewer and the band members, some forty years after the breakup. The voices of the band members who are being interviewed are remarkably authentic and distinct. As the characters are reliving their time in the band and telling their individual stories, the reader is pulled into the messy conflicts.
What is so intriguing is how each of their perspectives is just a little different from the others; two band members will tell two different versions of the same story, which mirrors human nature. It is also quite impressive that the author wrote lyrics to all the songs mentioned in the book; although the reader will never hear the actual music and melodies, the lyrics are a poetic P.S.
The book is multilayered with a twist at the end that ties everything together. For anyone interested in what goes on behind the scenes of a (albeit fictional) rock band, this is the perfect read.
