A love story for grownups

When it comes to offbeat love stories about and for grownups, British author Rachel Joyce may be the queen. She's the writer who gave us The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, actually one love story told from two perspectives. Now comes The Music Shop (2017), a different kind of story but with the same kind of appeal.

In 1988, when the tale opens, the compact disc is all the rage, but Frank insists he will sell nothing but vinyl records in his music shop. The few records he manages to sell are mostly due to his uncanny ability to spend a few minutes talking with customers and then lead them to exactly the record they need, whether they know it or not. When a customer comes in wanting Chopin, he gives them Aretha Franklin, for example, and somehow it always works. Joyce writes that he "heard the song inside people."

Then one day a beautiful German woman named Ilse shows up outside his shop and promptly faints. She has, we are told, skin "so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn't." So begins a love story, even though Frank is the last person to realize it. He is, we are told, "perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people."

Ilse, supposedly engaged to another man, has a habit of disappearing, then suddenly reappearing. Frank starts giving her music lessons, or more accurately music appreciation lessons. They meet each week at a restaurant where he gives her records and explains how to listen to them and what to listen for.

I won't spoil any of the surprises, and there are many. But this love story spans decades, resuming at a time when vinyl is making a comeback. Ilse, who has disappeared again, comes back, as well.

If you have dry eyes at the end of this one, you lack a heart.