I would like to thank Random House UK and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Music Shop’ by Rachel Joyce in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.
This is a love story scanning three decades between Frank who owns a music shop which sells only vinyl and Ilse Brauchmann who comes from Germany and has a secret. Frank, who has the knack of finding the music someone wants even if they don’t know it themselves, meets Ilse for the first time when she faints in front of his shop. They have an instant attraction for each other but are too shy to acknowledge it.
I liked the characters, Frank, Ilse, Maud the tattooist, Kit who assists Frank in the shop, Father Anthony and the Williams brothers who are the local undertakers. Each had their part to play in the relationship between Frank and Ilse and added to the humility of the story.
‘The Music Shop’ was a pleasure to read and I will certainly be looking out for Rachel Joyce’s other novels.

From the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes a unique and beautiful story about music and learning how to listen. The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce takes readers on a journey through the developing music world of the late 1980s when CDs are beginning to wipe out all other means of recording music – a complete disaster for someone like Frank, the owner of the music shop, who only sells vinyl.

The book begins in 1988 in a crumbling down street where shopkeepers are barely making enough money to survive. Frank’s shop is one of the few remaining and, despite everything against him, is determined to keep going. Not only does he sell vinyl records, Frank has an empathetic gift allowing him to sense exactly what a customer needs to listen to, even though they may not realise it themselves. However, one day, Frank’s world is turned upside down by the arrival of a young German woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who faints on his doorstep.

Ilse intrigues all of the shopkeepers on Unity Street, particularly Frank’s teenaged assistant, Kit. Although Frank tries to deny it, Ilse also fascinates him to the point that he is rarely thinking of anything else. But what concerns him most is that he cannot pinpoint what piece of music she ought to listen to. When questioned, Ilse admits she knows nothing about music and begs Frank to give her lessons. These lessons have nothing to do with instruments – Frank is the least qualified to teach such a thing – but about how to listen to music. How to hear the pauses in classical pieces; understand the meaning behind Beethoven’s sonatas; feel the passion behind punk music; learn to love a number of composers for the things many people miss.

The longer Frank spends around Ilse, the more he begins to fall in love. However, love is something Frank denies himself ever since the death of his mother fifteen years previously. Written in italics are flashback chapters explaining how Frank’s love of music came about, his relationship with his mother, and how he ended up as a dead-end vinyl seller. Due to his fear of intimate relationships, Frank keeps pushing Ilse away until, one day, he realises how much he needs her. But, he may have left it too late.

The Music Shop is split into four sections, or sides (a reference to vinyl records). Side A introduces the characters and settings during a wintery January when Frank is beginning to struggle with the competition caused by the recently opened Woolworths on the nearby high street. Sides B and C focus on the development of Frank and Ilse’s friendship, the secrets they hide from each other and the foreboding sense of disaster hanging over the one-of-a-kind music shop.

As Frank begins to realise how much Ilse means to him, the sudden appearance of side D will break readers’ hearts. Whilst sides A, B and C take place in 1988, side D jumps forward 21 years to 2009. It appears Frank and Ilse never got the relationship they deserved. Two unhappy decades have been and gone, demolishing any resemblance of the way life used to be. However, because there is a side D, readers can only hope it will result in a happy ending.

The Music Shop is a love story between two quiet, modest characters whose past and present circumstances get in the way of a peaceful future. However, it is not only a piece of romantic fiction. Rachel Joyce writes a message in story format about second chances and being brave. Learning to listen does not only apply to music, it applies to hearing what other people are saying and what they are not; most importantly, the book urges people to listen to themselves.

The research undertaken for this novel is phenomenal. For starters, it is set almost thirty years ago when vinyl was only beginning to go out of fashion. The quality of music and the access people had to it was extremely different to the simplicity of today where it is possible to download everything at the press of a button. The breadth of music genre is as wide as possible. Every type of music is covered from Handel’s Messiah to Aretha Franklin and The Sex Pistols. To be able to discuss such a range without falling into stereotypes is a feat worthy of congratulating.

The Music Shop far surpasses anything Rachel Joyce has written so far. The story is fragile in a beautiful way, its delicacy causing the reader to treat it with care, rather than rush through it like some mundane piece of fiction. It will interest a whole host of readers: male and female, music lovers and those with a preference for silence. Whoever you are, be prepared to take something away from this distinctive, outstanding novel.

Rachel Joyce has written some real gems along the way and is undoubtedly one of my go to authors. This book hi tall the right notes for me. The story is about Frank and his music shop in the 1980s. The problem is Frank is very good with adjusting with the times. Frank likes vinyl, but the world is falling out of love with vinyl, and as a result falling out of love with Frank's music shop. I doubt anyone will fall out of love with Frank after reading the book.

The way that Rachel Joyce tells the story through music is beautifully captured. She describes songs in ways that I rarely have time to pick up on, but wish I had the ability to.

I loved the characters in this book, they were charming and personable, even the grumpy ones. Isle, the mysterious woman who falls into Frank's life, is a bit of a conundrum and I am not sure I ever fully upstood or related to her. Regardless the depths of characters that Rachel Joyce creates are whismical and wonderful.

Rachel is a favourite author for me to recommend and she once again delivers with this quirky tender tale of a misfit who can match music to the needs of his customers and thus enrich their lives. ( rather like us booksellers!). Wonderful, warm and uplifting.

This is a book that began well, for me, but then I struggled with the more that I read.
There's a lot about music - some of which felt very well thought out, and some bits which felt like they were trying just a bit too hard. It did make me want to seek out more of the classical music mentioned to re-listen to it, and see if I could hear all of the things Frank talks about.

I loved Frank's role at the start of the book, the way he sees and understands how people are damaged, and what music they need in their lives. Yet the more we got to see how damaged Frank was himself, the less I liked him. Yes, he had a completely bonkers mother, but you'd have thought that by his age, when he meets Ilse, he'd have been able to just man up and get on with his life! Perhaps that's overly harsh, but I became more and more frustrated with Frank, and also with Ilse.

I cared more about the tiny bit part players (the waitress in the cafe where Frank & Ilse have their meetings) that I did about Frank and Isle. The ending of the book lurched, for me, between frustration and delight, with all the other side characters reappearing but stupid Frank still missing...

This is still a good book, overall, but I just didn't really click with the key characters and so that stopped it from being a truly enjoyable read.
With thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a wonderful novel set in the late 1980s London, that evokes the culture and music of the era, and the economic decline hitting local communities and the ever encroachment of developers threatening the identity of a place, and its people. In the midst of the change taking place is Frank, running his Indie Music Shop, welcoming everyone and drawing an offbeat crowd. The CD has taken off, but Frank is not interested, preferring vinyl, in which there is a current resurgence. Amidst the growing closure of local businesses, Frank stands by the strength of his convictions, an idealist in Thatcher's Britain that is geared to crushing idealism with its gods of ruthless capitalism and grasping consumerism. Frank is a kind and compassionate man, with a magical gift of honing into the piece of music his customers need, rather than what they may be wanting.

German Ilse Brauchmann faints outside Frank's shop, she is destined to rock Frank's world. Ilse is a woman with secrets, getting married, dresses in green and is never to be seen without her gloves. We get a real sense of community as a raft of stories are unveiled about those who visit the store such as the bank manager, that include loss and other troubles that music helps and resolves, all thanks to Frank. Ilse's entry into Frank's life brings back his memories of Peg, his eccentric mother responsible for initiating and informing his unsurpassed musical knowledge. His problematic relationship with Peg haunts him. Frank gives music lessons to Ilse in a cafe, with a waitress that becomes invested in the blossoming love affair between the couple. Frank struggles to express his feelings to Ilse, which is ironic given how effectively Frank tunes into the feelings of others. This is a tale inhabited with a wide array of quirky characters, Maude the tattooist, Father Anthony, Kit and others, that charm and beguile. Frank and Ilse's relationship founders, years pass until Ilse returns to a changed landscape and people. Is it possible that love can be resurrected against all the odds with the power of music?

Rachel Joyce writes a love letter to all that music can be in this lovely novel. It is a story of loss, love, pain, friendship, and community solidarity. A community that tries to support Frank, after he has helped them despite the wrecking ball to community support that are the developers in London. Above all else, it is about the healing power of music, its capacity to unite, ease trauma, evoke and access memories, inspire and help address our deepest needs. It forces Frank to connect with his past and with his feelings. It highlights how music is nothing without the silences, which have a power of their own. Joyce has a knack for creating a range of characters which cannot fail to engage the reader. Additionally, the book is bound to serve as an education in music to many readers from the classical composers, to Aretha, and to the inimitable Sex Pistols and so much more. An engaging and entertaining book. Thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

This charming but rather too sentimental novel from Rachel Joyce is very much what we have come to expect from her writing. Quirky characters, warm-hearted themes, gentle storylines and a general air of whimsy throughout. In this one we meet Frank, a middle-aged owner of a music shop where he only stocks vinyl and has the uncanny knack of being able to find just the right piece of music to help and heal his customers. But when he himself needs help and healing things become a little more difficult. With its minimal plot I found it a bit too long and repetitive and the characters rather one-dimensional, but nevertheless it’s a charming read overall and its feel-good factor is hard to resist.

Thank You Rachel Joyce and Netgalley for a copy of this book.
I was so excited to read this book as I LOVED Harold and Queenie so very much. Sad to say that I nearly didn't get half way though The Music Shop. I was so bored with the slow pace and endless ramblings of the characters. Maybe I'm just not so into music as I thought.
Sorry Rachel Joyce but this was just not for me.

It’s the 1980s and Frank runs a music shop in an unfashionable end of town. The shops around him are closing one by one as their owners struggle to make a living, and the developers apply pressure to buy them out, but the small community remaining is a close one.
Frank sells only vinyl in his retro shop, he refuses to stock modern CDs and business is slow, but he has a special gift, a talent for providing his customers with the music they need, even if it is not what they think they want.
When the mysterious Ilse comes into the shop one day, she develops an unexpected friendship with him.
Will love conquer all? Will the small businesses survive against the odds? And will the healing power of music help resolve this David and Goliath conflict?
The Music Shop has a decent plot and the relationship between Frank and his bohemian mother and how she shares her love of and knowledge of music with him is the strongest aspect of the book. The remaining cast of characters is more forgettable and not nearly quirky enough.
But the challenging task of discussion of specific works of music, mostly when Frank gives weekly appreciation lessons to Ilse, veers towards an over-emphasis on the programme nature of music, at the expense of the emotional power of music as a response to its architecture.
Any mention of a novel with a music background makes me come running, but I was distracted rather than absorbed by the strange descriptions of violin playing. I haven’t heard of struts on the instrument and google was no assistance.
Many will love this, but I preferred Perfect.
Thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for the copy

I loved this book because of those wonderful, warm and complicated human relationships. I loved it because it made me cry as much as it made me smile and I loved it for the music. Frank's approach to music is unusual, to say the least, since he is possibly the total opposite of High Fidelity's obsessive alphabetiser but his tastes are broad. I loved the fact that its four parts are presented as being the four side of a double album (a concept album, obviously). And, for my money, any novel which opens with a quote* from Nick Drake deserves all the praise I can give it...

There are echoes of Rachel Joyce's earlier novels The Lonely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey in her latest, the Music Room, in that it also features two lonely souls embarking on a poignant search for love . The other similarity is that I loved them all.

The Music Room is owned and run by Frank, a gentle giant of a man whose dysfunctional childhood has turned him into a guarded and introverted adult with a passion for music in all its forms - apart from CDs and tapes that is. Frank's insistence on only stocking vinyl in his shop has made him an a bit of an oddity and an enemy to the record label reps whose commission depends on persuading him to stock the latest technology (the majority of the book is set in the late 80s). It also makes Frank and his shop a mecca for fellow eccentrics and lost souls who rely on his recommendations and generally find the shop a comforting oasis in an increasingly crazy world. It also attracts the local shopkeepers, an eclectic and (mostly) loveable cast of characters including a sociopathic tattoo artist, an ex-priest who runs a religious gift shop and two undertakers who may be brothers or might just have a different sort of relationship altogether. They are all united in a battle with a firm of developers who want to buy up their row of shabby and run-down shops, presumably to build a shiny and soulless shopping centre in its place. And then one day into this cosy and orderly existence of Frank's comes (in a rather dramatic fashion) a mysterious German woman in a pea green coat who, despite being just as shy and gauche as Frank, manages to turns his life upside down.

Quirky and whimsical, heartwarming without being schmaltzy, this book is also an homage to the age of vinyl and the joy of spending hours in dusty record shops searching for hidden gems. From her author's note it sounds like Rachel Joyce had a lot of fun researching it in record shops across the globe. The result is a fitting tribute to the love that people feel for music and the difference it can make to someone's life. I loved it.

One thing you can count on from this writer : expect the unexpected! As with her earlier
books, Rachel Joyce takes you where you never thought of going.
This is a good book to be reading on the computer, as makes it easy to listen to the music
whilst reading about it. (Thanks, YouTube!)
However, I have mixed feelings about this book.
As a music teacher, I particularly enjoyed it & found it really inspiring... but I was disappointed
with the bad language & 'rude' bits, meaning I cannot recommend it to pupils & friends.

This is primarily the story of Frank who owns a music shop in 1988. Frank stubbornly refuses to sell CDs in his shop as people stop listening to records. His shop is in a small row of independent shops on Unity Street. Frank had an unconventional mother, Peg, who believed in music and its power. Frank likewise believes that he can "prescribe" music according to people's needs.

Then one day a mysterious lady collapses outside the shop. She turns out to be Ilse Brauchman, who seems to have a fiancé but eventually agrees to have weekly music lessons with Frank. What is her story?

There is a supporting cast of minor characters in Unity Street There is a Jewish baker, Father Anthony (who owns Articles of Faith), Maud ( a punk tattooist), Mrs.Roussos, brother Undertakers and Kit his feckless assistant. They act like a Thomas Hardy- like Chorus commenting on what is happening when they meet at The England’s Glory pub. As in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy you can hear the characters’ dialogue in your head clearly. This may come from Joyce’s background in acting and her writing for radio plays. The individual minor characters all have their own implied “back stories” too and are not just plot “props.”


This is a book about music and its power. Knowing very little about music myself, it was good that Frank wasn’t devoted to just one genre of music. Copyright issues probably prevent what could have been an accompanying soundtrack (although Frank would have only wanted it to have been a record after all and definitely NOT a CD or download.) Still it inspires you to go and listen to pieces of music mentioned.

This is also a book about the changing urban environment. Unity Street’s sense of community is threatened by Developers and Joyce charts the changes to the town over time. For example the Shopping Mall:


“Giant waste bins stand at regular intervals, made in the shape of blue fish and squirrels, with wide open mouths, where you’re supposed to throw your rubbish…. Presumably all these things are designed to make people feel nice while they eat, though in reality if you came across a giant squirrel or blue fish with its mouth open,

Joyce writes with compassion and wit. Just as in Harold Fry, she is able to suspend one story in order to follow another story line- in this case that of Ilse.

Rachel Joyce has an original use of language
“her house has matching blue blinds now, pulled down halfway, like a set of sleepy, made-up eyes”
“….was out of the washing machine of love “

Overall her writing is like the jazz she describes it is “about the spaces between notes. It was about what happened when you listened to the thing inside you..

I urge you to "listen" to this story as well as read it.

Rachel Joyce instantly shot up to my list of favourite authors in 2012 with her debut novel “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”, a book that mixed unwavering joy with the ever-present sadness of reality. She wrote intricate, flawed characters and gave them plenty of room to grow.
Then came 2013 and her follow-up “Perfect”. Let’s just say that I was less than happy with that one and still consider it her weakest outing. Too contrived, too reliant on its strange twist, and way too lacking in the charm that made her debut shine.

2014 arrives and Joyce does “The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy”, a companion to her first novel, told from the POV of Queenie, dying of cancer in a hospital as Harold Fry traverses the country to say his goodbye. Still suffering from a shortage of happy moments, this is still Joyce in good form, serving a novel-full of depression, unflinching even in the darkest times. It’s not what I started loving her writing for, but it’s a strong story nonetheless.
And in 2015, with her first short story collection, “A Snow Garden and Other Stories”, Rachel got her groove back. That was all I could want from her writing: festive, lovely, fun, tear-inducing, and heartbreaking. I was waiting for her next outing with bated breath, quietly hoping she would live up to my expectations.

She curb-stomped those meagre things, she drove over them with a truck, she reminded me just how sheer amazing I think her first book is. “The Music Shop” is a return to form, it is Joyce recapturing that quiet magic, it is sweet and sad, and I wept for 10 minutes in the bathroom at work after I finished it.

Our protagonist is Frank, he owns a vinyl shop (no CDs, cassettes etc.), he recommends people the records that they need to hear based on their situation in life, he heals them through music, and he’s going to save his rundown neighbourhood through the power of music and unity! Sounds unbearably coy and contrived? Perhaps if it wasn’t treated as if Frank is an actual, real person. His friends and business associates are not afraid to tell him that he’s behind the times, his shop is failing at speeds that have not been witnessed for quite some time, and he’s so ill-adjusted to life that when a woman shows up in his life and does everything she can beat to do in order to show her love, he ignores it. Joyce makes Frank almost physically present, he’s so flawed and human that it is impossible not to feel something about every single thing he does or whatever is done to him. At about the halfway point in the book you may find yourself thinking “Huh, I should look Frank up on Google, I’m sure he does written reviews or Youtube vlogs or something”. It’s just that convincing, his childlike wonder at the power and beauty of music is infectious, viral like nothing I’ve seen before.

What grounds him even more is Ilsa, the amazing woman at the center of “The Music Shop, full of secrets, love, and much more realistic. She’s shy, handy with household chores, talented at many things, and completely awful at being upfront. The ying to Frank’s out there yang. And when these two come together in an excruciating slow dance, trying to express everything they feel, burdened by their past, it’s a sight to behold.

The side characters are less endearing but every single one is unique, be it Maude with her punk attitude that gets brought down in a subtle, hilarious way at the end of the novel or Henry, the empathic bank worker, who owes a lot to Frank but seems ready to give even more.
This all hinges on Joyce’s strengths as a writer: she makes characters humane in an uncaring world, tumbling into the uncertain future. She gives every smiling face sad eyes and she awards every heart-wrenching moment with a token of kindness. It’s all very unsteady, one moment you’re crying because you’re happy, the next, you’re bawling because everything is going wrong. But Joyce knows how valuable hope is and she utilizes its power to write a gentle, deeply moving novel that demands your attention.

This book made me listen to music in a different way. I loved everything about it. Well worth reading.

Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher. What a delightful and enjoyable read "The Music Shop" by Rachel Joyce is! It doesn't demand constant attention or keep you awake at night, it's just a lovely nostalgic story that makes you feel so happy when reading it, it's almost like you're floating through the pages (though the ending did have me in emotional goosebumps).

This is another beautifully written and heartwarming book by Rachel Joyce. You don't need to be a music lover to like this book.

It's 1988 Frank has a music shop full with Vinyl in a time that CD's have just been introduced. But this is no ordinary shop. If you have a problem, or just need a pick me up. Frank can choice you some music as medicine to cure what problems you may have,

I love all the different characters that is involved in this story it just like one big happy family. and they are all there for each other. If anything read this book it will put a smile on your face.

I have read a couple of Rachel Joyce’s previous books and enjoyed them, so was disappointed to find myself underwhelmed by this one.

It started out well for me. I liked the setting, an independent record shop struggling to survive in a run-down parade of shops, selling only vinyl in the heyday of CDs. I also liked the idea of Frank choosing music for customers according to their mood, explaining the musicians’ background and how the music makes him feel. I wanted more of this - more descriptions of album covers, since they are described as one of the best things about vinyl records, more detail of the music and its time and place, its impact not only on Frank himself but on society generally, perhaps a bit more modern music - these were the best parts of the novel for me and all too brief.

The major problem for me, though, was that I couldn’t engage with Frank or with Ilse at all and had no investment in their relationship. I had no real feel for either of them and, without that, my interest in their story slumped. A shame, but I don’t think I’d rush to recommend.

Another cast of quirky characters and another eclectic storyline. I loved The idea of this retro tale more than the actual read and tried so hard to stay with it - sadly I quickly lost interest, despite all the wonderfully sentimentality and well placed musical references and barely limped along to the end.

A moving and enchanting read. Thoroughly enjoyed the setting and characters here. Feel like it could have been fleshed out a bit more with what happened to the characters over time, but all in all a nice read.