Have you seen that Tina Fey clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the one where she compares parenting a teenage daughter to having an office crush? (If you haven’t, please go watch it right now.) Well, I bought The Encore by Juliet Izon because I’m always trying to impress my teenage daughter—and lucky for me, it worked: she FaceTimed me from her spring break vacation to insist I read it immediately so we could discuss it. Done. I will read anything my daughter assigns me. I’m currently slogging my way through White Nights by Dostoevsky for the same reason. (It’s purportedly a “short story” but it doesn’t feel that way.) No shade on Dostoevsky, but I’m delighted to report that Juliet Izon’s debut novel is a page-turner.
The Encore is the story of three musicians: indie rockstar Anna Buckley; composer wunderkind Will Pendleton; and piano prodigy Lottie Thomas. The dual timeline jumps back and forth between 2003, when Anna and Will first meet at the prestigious Brookfield Conservatory in Boston, and 2023, when sixteen-year-old Lottie goes in search of the birth mother who gave her up for adoption. This culminates in a sort of dysfunctional family reunion on a rock and roll tour bus. Think Daisy Jones & The Six meets Little Miss Sunshine. Along the way, trapped in this bus, Anna, Will, and Lottie have to figure out who they are to each other now.
I bought this book for my daughter because she’s a classically trained pianist who writes songs that remind me of Fiona Apple. Meanwhile, I am tone deaf. The last time I picked up an instrument was when I played alto sax in my high school marching band. (And even then I played air sax on the field because I have never been a multitasker and couldn’t remember the steps and play at the same time.) No one in my house ever wants to know what’s on my Spotify Wrapped List. Which is a long way of saying: This book gets music. How it feels to need an instrument; what it means to have music be in your DNA; the magical way a new song arrives in your brain; how musicians talk about music with each other; what it means to really listen to a piece; how live music brings people together. If you don’t believe me—and you really shouldn’t—just ask my daughter.
More than music, though, this novel is about family, which is a topic I will claim a little expertise in. It’s about old wounds and new wounds, what it means to be a good mother, nature vs. nurture, how to parent when you weren’t parented yourself, and the many different ways we make sacrifices for our children. It’s also about the heartbreak and beauty of that moment when your teenager tells you all the ways you failed as a parent—and all the ways you could do better. (A topic I have a doctorate in at this point.) “I am so fucking lucky they let me love them,” Anna says. Which is now my version of an earworm.
The real magic of this book, however, is the way love and music come together: “The music vacillates between exuberant and somber, minor and major key movements tumbling into one sonic river. It, somehow, encompasses their past and their present. Their future.” Anna, Will, and Lottie are three notes in a chord, and you’ll be rooting for them to come together.
Bonus: this book comes with a playlist! Which of course I am now listening to on repeat in a flagrant attempt to elevate my Spotify Wrapped List and impress my teenage daughter.
