Alaska Employment Law

Julian Donahue, a middle-aged, highly successful advertising/fashion photographer, separated from his wife and grieving following the death of their two-year-old son, wanders out on a snowy Brooklyn night and finds his way to the local tavern, where he hears a punkish band fronted by a fiery redheaded Irish singer, Cait O’Dwyer. He doesn’t get too much closer (physically) to Cait than that, but somehow everything changes for him. So that you might say, boy never quite meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl falls for boy, and girl never quite meets boy. Then the boy, the man, Julian, does something rather surprising. As for his affection for music, Julian is not a casual fan: he is a music junkie, and his iPod is always on. The Song Is You is full of song references, some of them coded, as well as some very good song lyrics by the fictional Ms. O’Dwyer.

Julian’s love for music likely derives from that of his father, a Korean war vet who lost a leg fighting. In Paris, the father attended a Billie Holiday concert and fell in love with her music. He shouted out a song request (for “I Cover the Waterfront”) at one of her concerts; and you can hear his voice, asking for that song, on an LP of the concert released later on.

The Cait-and-mouse game between Julian and the object of his affections is digital in the extreme, intriguing but ultimately a little weird. If it were not the case that Cait ends up pursuing Julian, we might be repelled by the rather too absorbed way in which Julian pursues Cait. It’s believable, as long as you don’t think about it. In the end, this is a book about what we project onto those we love – and the answer is, pretty much everything.