Benjamin Myers clearly has a penchant for stories in which unexpected bonds are formed. Having written so generously about unlikely friendships in two previous books – 2019’s The offer and 2022 The perfect Golden Circle – he is doing it again now with Rare singles.
The British writer’s ninth novel is set in Scarborough over a single weekend. Bucky Bronco is a forgotten singer from Chicago who had a glimpse of success 40 years ago but has been increasingly disappointing since. While he played soul music then, his life today is a depiction of the blues: increasingly at odds with the modern world, mourning his late wife and addicted to prescription drugs. Just as he convinces himself that, like all good blues musicians, his future consists only of sepia-tinted memories and an expectant grave, he receives an unusual invitation: to headline a weekend soul concert in Yorkshire, which he has been told on good authority is somewhere over the sea in England, a place, he assumes, “of kings and queens. Country houses and cucumber sandwiches on the lawn. Cups of tea.”
Bucky hasn’t performed live since the 1960s and is convinced he can’t do it anymore. He accepts anyway because he needs the money. The fact that he forgets to get his much-needed opioids from the plane after landing raises an immediate problem: abrupt withdrawal is not a good image for a festival headliner.
In this fictional place of country houses and cucumber sandwiches lives Dinah, a middle-aged woman who lives with her shoplifter husband—who also drinks and farts, often in that order—and her irresponsible adult son, who is too stoned to motivate himself for real life. Dinah works as a cashier at the local supermarket and is so desperate for a change that she volunteers to take a second job babysitting Bucky for the 48 hours until the concert. Over the course of two days, these two lonely, disheartened souls not only find much in common, but are also able to instill in each other an optimism they cannot achieve on their own.
After the kaleidoscopic experimentalism of Myers’ previous novel, Cuddyabout the seventh-century monk St. Cuthbert, Rare singles is more of a series of vivid Polaroid snapshots. But it’s a deceptively simple story that grapples with existential crises and concludes that the best way to get through them is simply to reach out and connect with others.
Myers is an incredibly prolific author, and although there is no clear path from the coin counterfeiters of the 18th century (2017 The gallows post) to this short, sweet and charming hymn to the power of music, he still navigates it all so skillfully.
