Should have been the audiobook

This is a fizzy drink of a book and I mean that as a compliment and also as its ceiling.

I did it in paper and that was a mistake. It's written as an oral history, interview by interview, and on the page all those short bursts started to blur into one another — everybody sounds faintly like everybody else once you're eighty interviews deep. Three separate people have since told me the full cast audiobook is the version. Why did nobody say so before I bought it?

The middle third is genuinely great. The studio scenes, the arguments over a single lyric, the way Billy and Daisy write against each other rather than with each other — that's the good stuff and it's very good indeed.

But Camila is a saint with no interior life, Karen deserved her own book, and I saw the reveal at the end coming from a very long way off and then had to sit and wait for it.

Seven. Two evenings in July with something cold and pink in a wine glass, no phone, windows open, and I had a lovely time. That is what the rating is measuring. I'm not going to pretend it's a better book than it is, and I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy myself either.