Arthur Phillips reading at The Raconteur on Friday, May 8, 2009. Arthur Phillips first novel, Prague, followed a group of young expats living in Budapest and yearning for the more glamorous city of the title. His second, The Egyptologist, set mostly in Egypt in the 1920s, had two unreliable narrators and was plotted with one devilishly clever reversal and switchback after another. Angelica, his third, began as a Victorian ghost story and gradually darkened into a complex psychological tale. Now comes The Song is You another radical departure in a career of radical departures. A middle aged man, a troubled relationship, an IPOD. At first glance The Song is You sounds like pure Nick Hornby territory, but it turns out to be a lot closer to the grim fable of The Red Shoes, a story in which characters are tragically torn between the twin forces of love and art. Julian Donahue is 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. Recently praised on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, The Song Is You takes on loneliness, alienation, middle age, and what it means to be saddled by your past. Yet despite these sober concerns, Phillips' sparkling prose makes for a ...
Keywords: Arthur, Phillips, Raconteur, Books
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