Rare Singles (2024)
Why this one?
This is quite an unusual one for me in that I rarely read two books by the same author so close together. However, when this one landed on Netgalley I couldn’t resist for a few reasons. First, I loved Cuddy and was immediately ready to read more Myers. Second, it’s about music and I am a music nerd (it’s literally my day job). Finally, it was recommended by the excellent author/member of Suede/notable local resident (to me) Mat Osman, so that sold me.
Benjamin Myers (1976- ; active 2004-) was born in Durham, England. In his teens, he was a member of the local punk band Sour Face, and began writing for the weekly music paper Melody Maker. Alongside his journalism, he also published books on the likes of John Lydon, Green Day and The Clash. He published his first novel, The Book of Fuck, in 2004, but it was his second Richard: A Novel (2010) that brought wider attention. It was a fictionalized novel told from the perspective of the Manic Street Preachers member Richey Edwards, who went missing in 1995 and (in the absence of any evidence) was legally declared dead in 2008. It received some criticism (partly for its timing) from the surviving band members.
His third novel, 2012's Pig Iron, won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize, and his fifth, The Gallows Pole (2017) won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The latter was adapted for the BBC by Shane Meadows (This is England) and aired in 2023. His 2019 novel The Offing is being adapted as a film by director Jessica Hobbs (Broadchurch, The Crown) starring Helena Bonham Carter. His most recent novel before this, 2023’s Cuddy, won the Goldsmith’s Prize and is generally incredible. Alongside his literary novels he has also published crime fiction, short stories and poetry. He is married to fellow author Adelle Stripe.
Thoughts, etc.
Rare Singles is a slim novel focusing on Earlon ‘Bucky’ Bronco, a seventy-something Black man living in Illinois, who cut a few soul records as a teenager but has spent much of the recent of his life working dead-end jobs and devoting his life to his wife Maybellene, who has recently died. Out of the blue, he receives a request to travel to Scarborough, a fading seaside resort in Northern England, to play a comeback show at a Northern Soul Weekender. Unbeknownst to Bucky, who was paid a derisory flat fee for his initial recordings so has no way of tracking their afterlives, his two ‘rare singles’ have become loved and treasured in the Northern Soul scene, which gave another life to many obscure releases from US soul singers on the Northern-English dancefloors (and to some extent, the UK charts) of the 70s and beyond.
Having never left the US and never performed live, Bucky is apprehensive about his appearance, an issue that is magnified when he loses his supply of opioids which he has come to rely on. He finds help from Dinah, a Scarborough local who engineered his visit. She’s a Northern Soul superfan, with its ongoing weekenders for devotees her only escape from an otherwise miserable existence with a violent alcoholic husband, layabout porn-addict son and dull retail job. Through their friendship, along with the help of more unlikely new friends (a young German journalist; a muslim hotel cleaner with a love for modern rap music), Bucky is able to conquer his demons and start to envisage a new start in life.
Rare Singles immediately strikes you as a very different proposition to Myers’ most recent book, Cuddy. Its colourful cover, comparisons to David Nicholls and Nick Hornby on the blurb, promises of a story about the healing power music and friendships. This is about as far away, conceptually, as it’s possible to get from Cuddy. Where that book won the Goldsmith’s Prize, this one feels like it’s aimed somewhere closer to the new Nero Prize (which seems to be going for the slot vacated by the Costa). I haven’t read enough by Myers to know whether this is a typical shift in tone between his books, but I’m very much here for it in any case!
Taking it entirely on its own merits, it’s a wonderful book. I have to admit to always approaching books by literary authors that take on the world of music with a degree of caution. Too often, as - for me - with the usually reliably brilliant David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, they can stray into cringey cliche territory. Others have no doubt got it right - Hornby a couple of times, the aforementioned Osman also did a great job with his debut The Ruins. What unites those who do it well seems to be a genuine and active immersion in the world of music, whether as musician, superfan or journalist. Myers clearly has form in almost all of those spaces.
Being from the North of England myself (just about) the world of Northern Soul is something I’m decently familiar with - it was a universal for my parents’ generation, and I’ve definitely come across folks who are still Keeping The Faith well into the 21st Century, like Dinah and her friends. The risk with tackling a subject like this is that it becomes an exercise in rose-tinted nostalgia (a little like the entertaining but pretty vapid Northern Soul movie from a few years back). Myers addresses this head-on, highlighting the value of nostalgia (especially through music, but also in Bucky’s case through reconnecting with the memory of his lost wife) in taking us out of the troubles of the everyday, and taking us to somewhere more positive than the narcotic-driven obliteration of the present in which several of the book’s key characters take refuge. It’s also very good on highlighting the contrast between the joy derived from this unique scene’s ultra-rare records, and the relative lack of wider reward gained by the artists who actually created its music - an important distinction and the basis for some of the unspoken conflicts set up in the novel.
So although on the surface this could seem a little trite, the way Myers pulls everything together makes it anything but. Sure, it’s not the rich tapestry of history and references that Cuddy was, but it’s by no means superficial. The depth here is lightly conveyed - through an innate understanding of the world and music being described - but richly expressed through the beautifully drawn characters. That the tragedy of Bucky’s past is only gradually revealed gives his eventual triumph even more power.
Score
9
A book I’d recommend to absolutely anyone, from a card-carrying music nerd and/or literary snob to someone who just wants a straightforward and uplifting story with some superbly memorable characters. Great stuff!
Next up
Time to dive into the 2024 Women’s Prize longlist, which looks super interesting!
