@storyseekers event 17 : art in books — music : daisy jones & the six
it is what i have always loved about music. not the sounds or the crowds or the good times as much as the words — the emotions, and the stories, the truth — that you can let flow right out of your mouth.
I was so pleasantly surprised by Daisy Jones & The Six. I thought this would just be a quick, light read that follows the trope you would think it would when thinking of a girl joining a rock band, but it was so much more (and better) than that. Immediately when I started reading I was intrigued by the interesting format of the book. The story is told in the style of an interview with the band members in present day as they all talk about their rise to fame and how the band came to fall apart in the 70’s.
What really hits the hardest in this book was the characters and how well rounded they were. The book heavily features addiction, temptation, love and subsequent heartbreak, dedication, and epitomizes the rock and roll ideal. The musical aspects of the story are told in enough detail to be understandable but not too much detail to confuse someone who isn’t as music-savvy.
The heartbreak and the cycles of addiction are something that really get through to you even through the interview style formatting; even without the present-tense body language you feel and understand it. This book really showcased desires vs. responsibility, dedication to becoming the person you want to be, the battles that you come across in the process.
The ending was both quietly tragic and satisfying in a way that made this book as good as it was.
Daisy Jones and the Six Cast and Real Life Inspirations: Click for full photos
Had to make this once we got the full band cast for the “Daisy Jones and the Six” miniseries on Amazon based off Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel. I know some characters had more influences but most of the characters had one main inspiration and these were the ones I noticed. The casting director has done an amazing job as most resemble their real life counterparts and I’m sure the others who don’t but look like the book describes will have the personalities too.
Daisy (Riley Keough) - Stevie Nicks Billy (Sam Claflin) - Glenn Frey & Lindsey Buckingham Graham (Will Harrison) - Don Henley Karen (Suki Waterhouse) - Christine McVie Eddie (Josh Whitehouse) - John Deacon Warren (Sebastian Chacon) - Roger Taylor
#6 – Daisy Jones & The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Rating: 2/5 stars
What a disappointment.
The plot was mildly engaging, eventually. It took me about half the book to start to care, though, because of the presentation. I don’t think the interview format is a good choice for a number of reasons:
1. It takes a long time to differentiate characters because so many of them are presented so quickly, and in small chunks of transcript that don’t give any individual much chance to develop a clear voice.
2. It doesn’t lend itself to the page well, compared with visual media. Even if I intellectually understand that these are snippets interlaced from presumably separate interviews with the subjects, presenting them all at once gives the sense that they’re all in a room together talking to the interviewer, and I had to remind myself frequently that that was probably never the case. In a film or television documentary, you would see each character separately in frame as they were speaking to reinforce this (or not, if anyone was actually interviewed together.) The cuts between segments would be clear, where on the page everything runs together for the length of the section.
3. The style is flat and unrelieved; it never changes tempo or tension, because it’s always a single person speaking about themselves or someone else, and there’s no body language included to give indicators on how they’re speaking. Only vocal sounds like [laughs], [chuckles], etc., are included, which further flatten the narrative.
My other complaint is that the revelation near the end of the interviewer’s/author’s identity felt unnecessary. Once I knew what was going on, I realized that’s why I’d been seeing a certain [name] in brackets for clarity to the reader, because the interview subjects had been referring to them another way that would have spoiled the mystery. Except there was no mystery? Because I never thought it was going to be important in the slightest who the interviewer was, as there was very little in the text beyond those infrequent clarifications to even hint that the interviewer’s identity needed to be concealed somehow. It’s all setup for a somewhat maudlin ending that ties up the plot neatly but was so clearly attempting to be a tearjerker that I didn’t cry, because the presentation of the story had prevented me from being fully invested in these characters. I was too detached, because everything was so lifeless.
➤ the leading women of taylor jenkin-reids novels; thesevenhusbandsofevelynhugo,daisyjones&thesix,maliburising.
“It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
@storyseekers event 17 : art in books — music : daisy jones & the six
it is what I have always loved about music. not the sounds or the crowds or the good times as much as the words — the emotions, and the stories, the truth — that you can let flow right out of your mouth.
