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The Song Is You: A Novel [Hardcover]

Arthur Phillips
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)


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Love in the Digital Age
Read the first chapter of Arthur Phillips's The Song Is You [PDF].

Book Description

April 7, 2009
Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod.

Each song that shuffles through “that greatest of all human inventions” triggers a memory. There are songs for the girls from when he was single; there’s the one for the day he met his wife-to-be, and another for the day his son was born. But when his family falls apart, even music loses its hold on him, and he has nothing.

Until one snowy night in Brooklyn, when his life’s soundtrack–and life itself–starts to play again. He stumbles into a bar and sees Cait O’Dwyer, a flame-haired Irish rock singer, performing with her band, and a strange and unlikely love affair is ignited.

Over the next few months, Julian and Cait’s passion for music and each other is played out, though they never meet. In cryptic emails, text messages, cell-phone videos, and lyrics posted on Cait’s website, they find something in their bizarre friendship that they cannot find anywhere else. Cait’s star is on the rise, and Julian gently guides her along her path to fame–but always from a distance–and she responds to the one voice who understands her, more than a fan but still less than a lover.

As their feelings grow more feverish, keeping a safe distance becomes impossible. What follows is a love story and a uniquely heartbreaking dark comedy about obsession and loss.

Called “one of the best writers in America” by The Washington Post, the bestselling author of Prague delivers his finest work yet in The Song Is You. It is a closely observed tale of love in the digital age that blurs the line between the longing for intimacy and the longing for oblivion.


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, April 2009: A man who's not quite young anymore, his relationship trouble, and his iPod: at first glance Arthur Phillips's The Song Is You sounds like strictly Nick Hornby territory, but it turns out to be a lot closer to The Red Shoes, a story of love and art in which the two are confused and jealously compete. And as in The Red Shoes, but so rarely in other works of art, it's the art-making that carries the most power and mystery. Julian Donahue is a "creative": a skilled director of commercials who has come to know his limits. Cait O'Dwyer is a singer, and a bit of a comet that Julian somehow catches the tail of. Their courtship--as Julian evades a marriage split by an unbearable loss and Cait shoots single-mindedly toward stardom--is an intricately constructed pas de deux that is both surprising and convincing throughout. It's Phillips's first novel set in the present since Prague, and in its artful structure, style, and heart it's a match for that smart and charming debut. --Tom Nissley

From The New Yorker

Phillips’s best writing achieves an elaborate, gratifying precision, combining a naturally flamboyant style with neat, observational wit. This quality is sharpest in some of the character portraits and delectable set pieces that animate this novel, his fourth, but the central plot is sometimes strained. A middle-aged advertising director, whose marriage has broken up following the death of his two-year-old son, plays an invisible and unlikely muse to a young Irish singer on the brink of stardom. As the two engage in an indirect seduction—they never meet—the narrative veers close to the “adolescent fantasy” that its protagonist fears. But this curious bond provides an armature for Phillips’s beautiful evocation of music’s consoling power to blur the borders between art, artist, and consumer.
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (April 7, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400066468
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400066469
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a dismally failed entrepreneur, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion.

His first novel, Prague, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and receivedThe Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. His second novel, The Egyptologist, was an international bestseller, and was on more than a dozen "Best of 2004" lists. Angelica, his third novel, made The Washington Post best fiction of 2007 and led that paper to call him "One of the best writers in America." The Song Is You was a New York Times Notable Book, on the Post's best of 2009 list, and inspired Kirkus to write, "Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have emerged in the present decade."

His work has been published in twenty-seven languages, and is the source of three films currently in development.

His fifth book, The Tragedy of Arthur, was named one of the best books of 2011 by
The New York Times
The New Yorker
The Wall Street Journal
Salon
The Chicago Tribune
Kirkus Reviews
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
The San Francisco Chronicle
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The American Library Association
Library Journal
Paste Magazine
PopMatters
The Toronto Globe & Mail (Canada)
The Toronto Star (Canada)
The New Statesman (U.K.)
Critical Mob
Hudson Booksellers
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

He lives in New York with his wife and two sons.



Customer Reviews

If you like good fiction, read this book. Larry Hoffer  |  10 reviewers made a similar statement
And, like I did, you'll probably finish the next 200 pages in about two sittings. Gregory Zimmerman  |  7 reviewers made a similar statement
I just could not get interested in the story or the characters. Anchorage Customer  |  8 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 42 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars It's the novel you'll treat like a favorite album... April 20, 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Arthur Phillips gave an interview to Amazon for this book and that interview found its way to my Kindle via the Amazon Storefront. In it, Phillips discusses his passion for the iPod and his feelings about music - how each song revives a memory, a moment, a relationship; how a record can make you feel as insecure as the rainy day after 9th grade when you heard it, or a song can make you shake in longing for the person who shares the memory of that song with you. Phillips was right, and as soon as he said this book took that approach and crafted a story about/around/inspired by it, I knew I had to read it.

Phillips gives his readers an honest, voyeuristic, captivating journey through the past, present, and future of Julian and the ones important to him. Phillips uses songs to shift through time and space fluidly from memory to memory, telling stories not in a chronological order but as randomly as the songs on his iPod appear that trigger the memories.

Julian finds a new musician, Cait, and follows her career from a lowly dive bar to an international tour. Along the way, he begins finding his attraction to her spread deeper and more thoughtfully, as he connects her lyrics to the moments in his life past and present. Cait's music and persona help him cope with his past regrets, deal with his present aimlessness, and his longing for...he doesn't quite know what, maybe just his longing to be longing over something.

Julian writes/draws out some feedback for Cait at a show and it gets around to her; from then on til the end, the relationship becomes something torn between friendship, romance, mentorship, mutual therapists, and philosophers. The two never come face to face, but they spend the book dancing around the courtship of one another and finding ways to tease along the desires they both sustain for each other.

"The Song is You" took me on a journey I wasn't expecting. I found myself longing to get to the end, then pulling back and hoping it wouldn't come. I expected a trip down memory lane with music and memories intertwined, as the interview suggested, but this novel became so much more than just that. It weaves and flows with suspense, tension, and anguish, like a great mystery or thriller.

Take your time and enjoy "The Song is You." It's the novel you'll treat like a favorite album; you'll be enjoying it over and over again when your ears (and in this case, your eyes) just can't tolerate anything less.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Cait O'Dwyer Fan April 30, 2009
Format:Hardcover
I am not sure what attracted me to this book at first, but one reviewer mentioned it was about a guy with his ipod. That is an extremely simple and ignorant way of looking at this novel.

I will not go into recapping the story except to say middle aged Julian has had a very emotional roller coaster of a life when he stumbles in a little club and hears the Irish swan song calls of Cait O'Dwyer, a young and rising musician on the scene.

What ensues is a journey through and with Julian's life and his search to find something "real" to hold onto, hence, his Greatful Dead-like following of Ms. O'Dwyer.

Love of music from Julian's father, especially jazz, truly links the two generations together and like father, like son, music seems to be the only constant true love.

Arthur Phillip's writing might be some of the best this reader has ever read. I found myself re-reading paragraphs due to my astonishment of his use of language and words. He is a remarkable writer and because of the writing I will be looking into his previous book Prague.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful but Predictable - Just Okay May 12, 2009
By Brenda
Format:Hardcover
I have mixed feelings about The Song Is You. I just finished and I don't really feel wowed nor satisfied. The story line is in one aspect frustrating, but in another very creepy - the stalking gets a little uncomfortable, though I think what Phillips is trying to achieve is for the reader to be undecided as to whether or not it's uncomfortable. For me, it was just creepy, so I couldn't really get on board with it. My main complaint, however, is that the whole book is given away in the prologue. Therefore, this story which should be suspenseful, isn't in the least.

However, though I'm not crazy about the story, I really love some of the prose and descriptions, though in some places it's too much. (A 250 page books feels like 500 sometimes, not really in a good way.) The 3rd omniscient works well here, and I enjoy the characters, who are all well-developed. My favorite passage is one description of Cait, from page 30:

"He especially loved how she handled the songs originally sung by men, how she sang the lyric straight (singer wants a girl) and then gleefully, evilly put it over as a blood-red lipstick-lesbian tune, or reversed the pronouns (singer wants a boy) and then she cold vary it, do it as a neurotic girl or raging girl or seductive girl or funny girl. The best, though, was when she kept a man's lyric the same but then somehow turned its meaning around, kept it in his words but put the whole thing in quotation marks, as if she were singing what a man had once sung to her and now she was only recalling it."

Overall, if you love music you may be interested in this, but be warned it's not really a love story. The end drops off too abruptly, and we never find out what happens to half the characters. I needed about 50 more pages at the end and 50 less at the beginning.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Well Written, But Unsatisifying
Arthur Phillips The Song Is You has a very interesting concept. Julian Donahue is a television commercial director in his mid 40's who lives in Brooklyn. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Thomas Magnum
5.0 out of 5 stars BLEAKER AND OBLIQUER
Julian Donahue loves music. Good music. Blame his dad, who managed to make it onto a Billie Holiday album by screaming a request ("WATERFRONT! Read more
Published 14 months ago by Drax
4.0 out of 5 stars A tease...but a good one
A gorgeously written novel, but I guarantee you will be frustrated as the author keeps you waiting...and waiting... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Celine Keating
4.0 out of 5 stars oddball case of unrequited love
After a mind-numbing 100 pages, our middle-aged protagonist, Julian Donahue, embarks on a fascinating, bizarre courtship of Cait O'Dwyer, a beautiful young Irish singer. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Patti
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterfully written love story for the Ipod Generation
I am a recent convert to Arhtur Phillips's books, first to The Tragedy of Arthur and now to this wonderful book. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Craig Brandon
5.0 out of 5 stars Melancholy of mourning
A song is a magical time-travelling machine. The opening bars of a familiar melody can transport us across time and space, conjuring memories of Christmases-past, first loves,... Read more
Published 20 months ago by BookRambler
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Overture, but Entire Work Does Not Live Up to It. . .
The book started out as a more literary Nick Hornby (and I am big Nick Hornby fan). A cool guy in early middle age has relationship problems and some growing to do, is deeply... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Middle-aged Professor
5.0 out of 5 stars Review by the Berglund Center for Internet Studies
For us, this story is about the transformation reality undergoes when it is recorded -- in this case, digitized. The novel is about people who live in music. Read more
Published on April 18, 2011 by Berglund Center for Internet Studies
2.0 out of 5 stars Eh.
I read this book all the way through and agree w/the lower ratings in that it's a bit creepy. There's nothing romantic about stalking - ever. Read more
Published on December 19, 2010 by A Far And Away
3.0 out of 5 stars only okay
This book is slow moving and hard to get into. I am not sure it is worth the money or time.
Published on November 19, 2010 by Jbman
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