(Riverhead)

www.riverheadbooks.com

BY JAKE CLINE

With a single book, 1995's High Fidelity, Nick Hornby established himself as contemporary literature's preeminent rock 'n' roll novelist. If he'd never written another word about music, his readers and critics alike would forever associate him with that novel and the seemingly supernatural way with which he appeared to express almost everything they've ever thought or felt about a song or artist. But Hornby did keep writing about music, first with About a Boy, which concerned an irresponsible layabout living off royalties earned by his songwriting father, and later in the essay collection Songbook (which came with a CD of tracks by Paul Westerberg, Aimee Mann and others the author addressed in the book). Even when he was contributing a discursive column about books for the literary magazine The Believer, Hornby's writing hummed like a warm Marshall stack, ready to blast grace notes and power chords with equal intensity.

Hornby's latest novel, Juliet, Naked, is his most overtly musical work since Songbook and a welcome return to form following the flawed tragicomedy A Long Way Down and the slight but charming young-adult novel Slam. But like High Fidelity, Juliet, Naked isn't really about music, even though the narrative involves an aging singer-songwriter and the members of his small but rabid fan base who have spent more than 20 years waiting for their idol to emerge from seclusion. While Hornby has much to say about the relationship between an artist and his admirers - a relationship that he finds as plagued with as many misperceptions and unreal expectations as any romance - he is primarily concerned with more direct and personal interactions. The story is really a love triangle, albeit one in which love is more of a concept than a reality, and sex is an often selfish act riddled with consequences.

Chief among those consequences are ex-wives and children, of whom the American rock-star-turned-recluse Tucker Crowe has several. On the verge of separating from yet another wife and losing his only real means of financial support, Crowe tentatively decides to slip out of retirement in small-town Pennsylvania by releasing demo versions of his best-known album, Juliet. Meanwhile, across the ocean in an unexceptional British town called Gooleness, Crowe-obsessed Duncan and his tolerant but bored girlfriend Annie are nearing the end of their childless, motionless 15-year relationship. The catalyst for the next phase of their lives appears in the form of Crowe's demo recordings, titled Juliet, Naked. Duncan loves it, Annie hates it, and, this being a story about music obsessives in the Internet age, both post wildly divergent blogs about it that hasten the demise of their relationship and draw the attention of Crowe, an early plot twist that requires a minor suspension of disbelief but offers ample rewards to the reader.

That Hornby from here eschews predictability in favor of a thoughtful examination of personal connections and entanglements is not surprising. For all the approachability of his writing, Hornby seldom sends his characters down expected paths, a reflection of his deep understanding of and appreciation for human nature. Our lives are anything but routine, Hornby seems to be saying, so why should our fiction be? Yet the fog of desperation that permeates Juliet, Naked will come as something of a shock to Hornby's longtime fans, particularly those who approach the book expecting the jocularity of High Fidelity and his Believer columns. Duncan and Annie are, Hornby writes, "stuck in a perpetual postgraduate world where gigs and books and films mattered more to them than they did to other people of their age." More than one reader of this book - and, no doubt, of this Web site - will relate to that line, and the feeling isn't comforting.

But Hornby isn't being cruel to these characters. His affection for them is obvious, and it's unlikely that he would be able to write so realistically and frankly about these people if he didn't see himself in them, as well. That he leaves at least one of them at the end of the book in roughly the same state that he found him (or her) only heightens the novel's sense of honesty. Juliet, Naked may read as if it's been tuned to a minor key, but it's a major accomplishment.