Member Review

The most incredible thing about Joe Heap’s When The Music Stops is the way it mixes the ordinary with the extraordinary. In one way it’s a version of David Nicholls’ One Day, but set over a longer period (the protagonists meet in childhood) and in the world of jazz music; the parts of the book that happen in the present day are very surreal indeed.

The clever structure gives the book rhythm. It’s very much tied to the music, so rhythm seems like the right word. It makes for very long chapters (sections, really) but that’s fine, because I didn’t want to put it down. At first you wonder what’s happening in the present day but then it begins to make sense and you expect each section to have a certain chain of events. You even know what will happen in the end. But that’s comforting when the boundaries of your imagination are being stretched in other ways.

The love story running through the book is compelling too and each decade incredibly well researched so you feel each period, rather than words being wasted describing it. Ella and Robert meet as children in pre-war Glasgow and have so many near misses you wonder if they will ever get together. I would have enjoyed it on its own, and have appreciated the quality of the writing, but adding the extra dimension makes this a standout book.

This review will appear in Frost online magazine closer to publication date.