JULIET, NAKED: NICK HORNBY

A Kindle book, one I read on my trip West.  I liked it well enough to keep reading, found some fun in it but it's not a great novel.  Annie lives in a small, seaside town in Great Britain, with the boring teacher, Duncan.  Duncan's one passion, unfortunately, is not Annie but Tucker Crowe, a washed up American pop singer, who disappeared from sight after his first album years ago, fueling the fire of a few 'aficionados' who live by his lyrics, email each other with sightings,  and generally exist for any news about Mr. Crowe,

Annie finally gets fed up with Duncan and his obsession with Tucker and much to Duncan's dismay, she decides to live her life without him, but she is not sure how.  As she begins to jettison Duncan's things, she comes across Duncan's review of a new album by Tucker and in pique, decides to write her own review, lambasting the album as imitative and immature.  To her shock, she gets an email about the review by someone purporting to be Tucker Crowe.  She soon realizes  it is Tucker,  thinks this is too good to be true and never tells Duncan.

To make a long story short, the two seem to hit it off, with Tucker confessing his many sins to Annie, shocking her with his honesty, like the fact that he has five kids with five different moms, and has seen few of them over the years.  For some reason, he decides to go to Great Britain and wants to meet up with Annie.  When he arrives, he has a heart attack, and all his wives and kids gather to his embarrassment and dismay, so he runs off with Annie, leaving his ex wives and kids in the lurch.  He hangs around Annie's, gets to know both her and the town, and eventually she tells Duncan that Tucker Crowe is in town.  He's bowled over, of course, and cannot believe his luck.  Tucker actually opens up somewhat to Duncan, and both the reader and Annie end up liking Tucker in the end.  He eventually realizes, as does Annie, that he's going to have to go back to the States, that his staying with Annie is just a holding action, putting off his life.  The same goes for Annie.  He leaves, with hopes that Annie will follow.  Thus the novel ends, and we are left unsure of whether Annie follows him or not. And so it goes, as Billy Pilgrim says.