THE SONG IS YOU by Arthur Phillips (Random House, 2009).
Called a “dark comedy about obsession and loss,” this newest novel by acclaimed author Arthur Phillips is his least cohesive and absorbing. For recently-divorced and grieving protagonist Julian Donahue, longing and music go hand-in-hand. Living in New York and working as an advertising director, he fixates on an emerging club rocker Cait O’Dwyer, who is half his age, as a conduit out of deep despair. In the course of pursuit, his musical taste is revealed as dated (“the rock of aging”), his sexuality emerges as defeated and his stalking is creepy. The strategy of slowly revealing truths – about a dead son, a manic ex-wife -- doesn’t work here mainly because the present tense non-romance between this narrator and the young girl-rocker fails to compel. (6.5/10).
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