Making the band (Goodnight Steve McQueen - Louise Wener)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Goodnight Steve McQueen - Louise Wener
Date:	07/12/03 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to read, Gripping Story

Disadvantages: Uses too much music business speak.

I like books, I like it even more when I find a new author who's started out with a bang, and anyone who knows me will know that I'm a big fan of the 'Hornby Style' aka writing about a man in his late twenties finally coming of age (I'm soooooooo not looking forward to my late twenties). So with this in mind I got excited when I heard Louise Wener was turning her hand to writing, for those of you who don't know who I'm talking about - try and download an MP3 or 2 by a band called Sleeper, I'm one of the bands biggest fans - and Louise Wener is the lead singer of that band, I also got extremely excited when I heard that she was going to be writing a 'Hornby Style' tale.

So onto the book itself then - Danny McQueen is basically me from a few months ago, working part time in a video store, he holds pipe dreams of his band making it into the big time, he's happy plodding along paying enough rent to survive and rehearsing with his band as often as he can - of course ensuring that he gets a few rounds in at the local, playing the Who wants to be a Millionaire machine. This of course all has to change, when his Girlfriend gives him an ultimatum - you have a proper job or a recording contract by Christmas otherwise I'm outta here!

The storyline itself revolves around the time leading up to that Christmas, including meeting up with former school bullies, having your band-mates Girlfriend coming on to you, having your own Girlfriend taking a temporary contract in Bruges Belgium and making the all important decision of what kind of footwear to wear when you're too old to get away with trainers as an accessory and too young to get away with them as an eccentricity.

For a debut 'Goodnight Steve McQueen' has to be ranked quite highly, I often rate books on how long it takes me to read them - I'm a slow reader but quite often I'll have more than one book on the go at the same time, this
one took me about 8 and a half hours last year - basically the length of a daytime midweek Train Journey between Southampton and Grimsby. Now usually with reading on Train journeys I'll get bored halfway through and take to reading a magazine or something - but couple Goodnight Steve McQueen up with Weezer?s self-titled album, and I was set for this trip.

So what does all this say for the storyline?, well I honestly believe there's room for improvement there, a lot of time there was a kind of repetition of scenarios, that does make for some hard reading at times and although the book is 345 pages a lot of the time it does feel like Wener is padding the story out a bit to make it more than it is.

Plus there are parts of the storyline that do seem ridiculous, Nick Hornby has the gift of making parts of the story humorous and believable - and I believe that this is something he's learnt over time - with High Fidelity he struggled a lot like Wener has here, and now he's one of the most successful British writers of recent times (first mention of that Potter kid gets a slap), hopefully Wener can learn from this and anyway, I'm one of these people who believes that every piece of writing has room for improvement - otherwise why would people keep on writing? (other than the money that is!) .

But that's not to say that this book shouldn?t be read at all, in fact its far from it!, y'see there's enthusiasm there, an enthusiasm I haven't seen in a long time in writing, and I get the idea that Wener has really tried with this one, this isn't the type of Standard story that a writer would sometimes churn out to keep their fans happy (I'm looking at you Mr.King), the humour is there but its the kind that at times you have to sit and think about it, and its not the laugh out loud affair that I felt some of the professional reviews made it out to be, but just because a person isn't laughing aloud doesn?t mea
n that they don't find it funny - it just means that they have a restrained laughter, and that?s what 'Goodnight Steve McQueen' portrays, but in a good way.

Enough of the story, what about the Characters?, this is where Wener has excelled herself, you begin to feel for Danny and his little neuroticism's, and all characters are put across as people who aren't bit players, everyone who has a say in the way the story goes is introduced to the reader over a period of time, and I do like the fact that Wener has chosen to reveal different characteristics as the story goes along.

If its one thing I like about certain books its the way you can get into the characters, this is one of those books, every single character is the type of person you can imagine seeing when you close your eyes, with their life stories all behind them and ready to tell you - all with their own intricacies and differences. Oh this character-assessment bit is too haaaaaaaaard!!!

If I did have one niggle it was that you could obviously tell that this was wrote by somebody who'd been around the music business, there was jargon there that your casual reader isn't going to pick up on, myself being of the ilk that are in bands that get gigs at concerts I understood this, but for someone who's never picked up a musical instrument in their life......... well they?re gonna struggle with it all.

Overall then - its a brilliant example of how to write your debut offering, the niggles and rough patches are there, but it still had me sat laughing along to the story we were being told, perhaps as I felt like Danny McQueen was me 5 years from now, but still - its definitely worth an attempt at reading, and if you?re like me and a member of a book-club, it may be a worthy addition to your yearly commitment of x amount of books!

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