If you handed me a book about a fictional 1970’s rock group caught up in a messy, meteoric rise to fame I would immediately be sold; this is exactly what happened when Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid was announced as one of our book club reads a couple years ago. Being a music lover and finding the culture surrounding 1970’s/1980’s rock kind of fascinating I was eager to pick this book up. I’ve held off reviewing this one because despite its popularity my opinion of it isn’t so popular. The book made for some great discussion during our book club meeting, but our thoughts were all over the place, with some of us feeling it was a middle of the road read and others stating it’s one of the best books they’ve ever read.
Daisy Jones is a product of LA in the 1960’s, staying out all night sneaking into rock clubs, sleeping with musicians on the rise, and enjoying every drug the music scene has to offer. Although Daisy is initially drawn to the “glamor” of the scene, her true love is rock and roll. She’s young, ambitious, and possesses an innate ability to draw people in with her beauty and charm. While Daisy’s budding career as a musician begins to make a steady climb there’s another band, The Six, rising to fame led by the brooding Billy Dunne. When a legendary producer cooks up a scheme to throw Daisy and Billy together it turns out to be a recipe for success and disaster. No one can deny their musical chemistry, whatever electric thing makes them unstoppable when they can stand working together, and the rest will become history.
I blindly anticipated this book would be a five star read for me, and it does pain me to say it fell short of my expectations. It has the makings of a captivating story about the music industry and a group of musicians trying to make it during what many people consider the prime of rock and roll. There was a lot of debate during our book club meeting about the pros and cons of using an interview format in a novel. I thought it was interesting, Reid’s attempt at writing a book in a documentary style, because each character is interviewed and gives their personal take on an event or moment. We’re all biased in some way when it comes to our version of what happened. More than once in this story we see characters experiencing the same events in different ways, creating what felt like an authentic retelling in the sense that no one is truly a reliable narrator. What I found difficult about the format was the lack of emotion, which other readers who didn’t love this book have also pointed out. Reid does a whole lot of telling and not enough showing, which leaves us with only statements about what happened between Daisy, Billy, and The Six instead of illustrating the events making up their rise and fall. The narration turned out feeling stale and left me less than sympathetic toward most of the characters, especially Daisy and Billy.
I wanted to call Daisy a manic pixie dream girl at first, but she doesn’t completely fall into this trope. She has her own desires and ambitions outside of her connection with Billy, but I feel the use of the word “connection” is too strong. Daisy is selfish, immature, and it didn’t work for me that she comes across as being this illusive and special woman, despite having few genuine qualities. It was like reading about one of the people in real life you don’t care for but everyone else loves for a reason beyond your understanding. Maybe you simply don’t gel with them, and won’t go out of your way to be friendly, yet everyone else makes you feel a little crazy for not liking them. It doesn’t make sense to try pushing the narrative of her “relationship” with Billy either when there is no tangible chemistry on the page. Billy comes with his own set of issues, more specifically unhealthy coping mechanisms amplified by life on the road as a musician. He can’t stand not being in control and overall sounds like a terrible bandmate and friend. No one can really stand each other, especially Billy and Daisy, with so many egos jockeying for attention. I think Daisy was supposed to come across as this talented, badass woman and she just didn’t.
The secondary characters had potential, yet their commentary added little to the main thread of the story beyond explaining the drama between members of the band. Everyone was dealing with their own struggles, but their difficulties took a back seat to the main conflict. Karen, the keyboardist in The Six, has perhaps one of the most compelling personal stories despite not being given much substance or bearing on the plot. It’s understandable Reid made the decision not to go into too much detail with every band member; doing this would have made the format even more overwhelming unless she took some focus away from Daisy and Billy, which I would have been a fan of. Their relationship wasn’t fleshed out enough for them to have so much influence over each other. I can applaud the effort given to making the characters realistic by highlighting their demons and their attempts to overcome them though. No one reads as being too perfect or polished.
Warning: Minor Spoilers ahead!
The entire breakup of Daisy Jones & The Six hinges on Billy’s attraction to Daisy, and his inability to remain faithful to his wife as well as his addictive personality. He doesn’t trust himself around Daisy, and this would be fine if there were even a small glimmer of this supposed attraction. I DON’T BUY IT. I’m not sorry, but I just don’t. They didn’t have some great love story in the midst of making music together and there’s no way Billy openly displayed his dislike for Daisy as a ruse to cover up his feelings. I wanted this story to have more. More substance and more emotion mostly. As I said before, too much telling and not enough showing due to the chosen format. By the end of the book I walked away feeling let down and wondering why so many people give this book high praise. It was an interesting idea with okay execution and I have no complaints about the actual writing. This one rates somewhere between 2-3 stars because despite my issues with it I did love the premise.
The Rummy Writer 