Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Will You Love Me Tomorrow / Danny Gillan

This is the second half of a double shot. If you missed it, Keith Nixon reviewed the same book this morning.




Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Humor

Approximate word count: 125-130,000 words

Availability    
Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: YES  Paper: YES
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Danny Gillan was raised and still lives in Glasgow, Scotland. His first ambition was to be a musician, but ended up in the pub and hotel trade for a number of years in a wide variety of roles, interspersed with periods in social care.
Danny has written two novels, and a series of short stories which have appeared in several magazines and anthologies.

You can learn more about Danny on his blog.

Description:

Claire Rivers returns home to find her husband, Bryan, has committed suicide, no longer able to deal with his depression. A music executive, Jason Clemence, calls and offers Bryan the recording contract he’d always craved, unfortunately the artist is no more. Claire however, at Clemence’s suggestion, agrees to publish Bryan’s music posthumously, to massive success…

Appraisal:

History is full of artists who didn’t become famous until after they died and there are a ton of musicians who, despite fame before, showed that death was a great career move. If there’s a Rock and Roll Heaven, they not only have a hell of a band, but great sales, too.

The hook for Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is a little of both, with a songwriter and musician finally getting discovered just days after his death. But the issues it addresses are weightier than music (and in my opinion, music is pretty damn important). Those issues mentioned in the book description (death, depression, grief, loss, friendship, and family) all figure in the story.

As in Scratch, Gillan’s other novel, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow tackles serious issues, but lightens what could have easily been a dark story with humor. It’s a fine line to include humor without trivializing the heavier subjects. Gillan walked that line by using subtler humor and sometimes making the subject of the humor someone (or something) not as involved in the more serious subjects. For example, he described a “20-year-old goth pretending to check out the porn magazines but actually trying to sneak a surreptitious look at Investments Today,” or described the family dog as a great listener and “the perfect confidant” because he was “smart enough to appear to empathise, dumb enough to be unable to judge or pass comment.”

A good, thought provoking read. Well worth your time.

FYI:

Some adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

A small number of typos and proofing issues.

Rating: **** Four stars

4 comments:

?wazithinkin said...

Excellent points, BigAl. Although I think that fine line deserves five stars. Each and every character was handled expertly with a descerning pen. So, I will have to respectfully disagree with your stars. :P

Unknown said...

Good review Al!

BooksAndPals said...

Thanks, Keith. (But yours was better. :) )

A little disagreement is good, ?wazi. I went back and forth on this one. It was a close call.

Danny said...

I'll take four stars from Al any day! Very pleased you enjoyed the book, Al, and really appreciate the double review.