ROPES Book Awards: Eimear's Pick
Daisy Jones and The Six - Taylor Jones Reid
351 pages
2019
Publisher: Hutchinson London
‘We love broken, beautiful people. And it doesn’t get much more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than Daisy Jones’.
Told through a series of interview transcripts, the novel follows the rise and fall of a fictitious Fleetwood Mac-esque seventies rock group, The Six, and their captivating lead singer, Daisy. Think Stevie Nicks mixed with Janis Joplin mixed with Penny Lane from the movie Almost Famous, and you’ve got Daisy Jones.
The story kicks off with Daisy and those close to her recall her discovery by those with the power to make impressionable young women's dreams come true, as a groupie simply too bewitching to not become a star. Simultaneously, the other band members regale the interviewer/documentary maker with their tales of Billy and Graham Dunne’s humble beginnings as a wedding band, and their rise to fame as The Six. When these two rising stars' stories cross paths, Daisy is beginning her way down a path of destruction in an attempt to escape from her exploitation as a woman in a male-dominated world, while the Six are trying to make their musical return after Billy’s stint in rehab. Separately, these characters are unfortunate victims of the industry, but together, Daisy Jones and the Six become a force to be reckoned with.
With no fixed narrator, the plot is pieced together through recollections and musings by band members and peripheral characters throughout, making it feel as though the story is one of a shared history, each character offering their own memories and anecdotes as they recount their glory days. Daisy Jones follows the highs and lows of the infamous Rock and Roll scene, from the exploitation of impressionable young talents to the poisonous drug culture of the industry, as Taylor Jenkins Reid thrusts her readers into the glitzy, gritty glam of such an iconic time in music history, making it a perfect summer read.