Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsCool idea, but...
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2019
I liked the interview format, though I didn't expect it to work when I first started reading. The characters were very much stereotypes, however, and that made the book much less enjoyable, or rather much more forgettable, once I had finished. {MILD--OR MAYBE METAPHORIC--SPOILERS} There is a handsome guy, talented, a little tortured and brooding. Romance staple, in other words. There's the (pretty much impossibly) Good Wife. She's so good, it makes the back of my teeth ache. Good, good, good. A bit sanctimonious, as Good Wives are wont to be. We have no idea what she does while her guy is out wooing the world as a rock star. Except having babies, and keeping the home fires burning. Good Wife, as I said. And there is the star of the book, the Sexy Bad Girl. Also tortured, given to excess, too beautiful, too talented, too selfish. Do you want to know how this all ends? Ever read The Odyssey? Odysseus almost gets eaten by Sirens, but lashes himself to the mast of his ship so that he won't be lured to his death by their Deadly Song. Aeneas almost gives up his career as the Founder of Rome because Queen Dido was so hot and alluring. But in the end, he married a Good Wife, and left Dido by the side of the road--I mean the side of North Africa. My point is that this is an old, old story--wicked sexually excessive woman vs Good Wife, struggling for the soul of a decent but weak guy. Okay, Daisy isn't wicked, but she's drug addicted, self-involved, and mostly impossible to deal with.
All that said, it's a fun read. I have heard they may be making this into a movie, and I think that would be a shame. Movies in which actors try to act like rock stars always fall flat, to me, at least. Maybe I saw too many live shows in my youth. I think it's hard to make a "fake rock band" seem real--and that goes for the book a bit, too. I get the Fleetwood Mac analogy (Karen, the Christine MacVie analogue, was in fact my favorite character), but it was hard to imagine The Six having anything like the power and energy of that band at its peak. That said, one really did want to hear these songs while reading about them, to see Daisy and Billy on stage, so maybe with the right casting...
Anyway, the upshot for me was this was a good beach read with some unfortunate and tired assumptions about women. I'm not a radical feminist, so I can still enjoy the book. But I wish it hadn't been quite so reliant on mythic stereotypes. My advice: if that kind of story doesn't bug you, read it anyway. It's a nice afternoon's recreation.
