The Fiddler Is a Good Woman

“The Fiddler is a Good Woman,” by Geoff Berner, has a storyline of musicians and their environment.  I get excited about the details of living that life.  It’s not because I’m a doper, a groupie, or a dead head.  It’s because I really like music and am enthralled by those who can skillfully perform it.  This book is about a small collection of band musicians who perform country rock in small venues, traveling in meager circumstances, while burning out the candle.  What a life.

Geoff Berner is, himself, of that ilk.  He’s a singer/songwriter/accordionist who has caroused the world and is a careful observer of the crazy arena he inhabits.  Berner has imagined a mysterious and talented woman violinist, DD, who is a sideman with whatever band she can tie up with, and who immediately transforms the group into a talented and cohesive assemblage whose music is instantly wildly received.  The problems he outlines, her unpredictability, her unreliability, her personal hang-ups, and her inability to stay the course, are character flaws that threaten every relationship.   Then she disappears, much to the consternation of those who depend on her talent to keep them working, flaws and all.

This is a novel into which the author has inserted himself, and it is he who searches for DD, trying to determine where she is and what she intends to do with her talent.   To do so, he uses the recollections of the people closest to her, an odd group who don’t agree on most things.  He constantly reminds the reader that the story is not true, although it seems to be non-fiction. 

The story is loaded with blue language, sexual encounters between all sexes, hateful attitudes, jealousy, and personal instabilities.  But there is also an undercurrent of musical resonance and performance that magically dumps the reader into smoky and whiskey-soaked second-rate music venues.

The characters in Berner’s novel are, in his words, “flawed, hurt people…making meaningful music.”  That ambiance is reflected in his dislocated and rambling dialogue that, somehow, keeps the reader immersed in its legitimacy. 

At the end, the author wants readers to evaluate his book as a piece of art, be it good, crappy, or middling.  I’d call it good.