The Song is You - Softcover

'The whole novel zings with fresh insight and inspired writing... impossible to put down' - New York Times. 'Phillips has a perceptive eye for the precarious nature of vocal genius' - Guardian. 'The story is compelling and lively. Some wonderful descriptve sound-bites... and inventive vocabulary... I shall be searching out his earlier novels' - newbooks. 'Phillips achieves an elaborate, gratifying precision, combining a naturally flamboyant style with neat, observational wit. A beautiful evocation of music's consoling power to blur the borders between art, artist and consumer' - New Yorker. 'Highly contemporary and yet somehow timeless, "The Song is You" is a wise, articulate, stunning novel that eloquently illuminates that mysterious and beautiful junction where love, grief, and pop music intersect' - Jonathan Tropper. 'Gorgeously constructed prose... "The Song is You" showcases Phillips' gift for plumbing the depths of grief and emotional fragility... a writer of enormous talent' - USA Today. 'Phillips blends wit, erudition and eccentricity' - The Times. 'Arthur Phillips is a terrifically talented writer' - George Saunders. 'One of the best writers in America' - Washington Post. 'Neither mawkish nor syrupy Phillips's sentimentality is gossamer light ... [He] skilfully pierces novelistic convention and pat stereotypes to reveal the pathos and humour of flawed humanity' - www.literateur.com.

Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod. Each song triggers a memory - there's one for the day when he met his wife-to-be, and another for the day his son was born. But when a tragedy tears his family apart, even music loses its hold on him. Then, one snowy night in Brooklyn, he stumbles into a bar where a young Irish woman with a shock of dark red hair sings with a voice that demands his attention. Though they do not meet, a strange and unlikely love affair is ignited, and his life's soundtrack starts to play again. Cait O'Dwyer's star is on the rise, and from an anonymous distance Julian guides her along the path to fame - and she responds to the one voice who seems to understand her. As their entanglement deepens, they face the prospect of an inevitable, impossible meeting. What follows is a love story and a uniquely heart-breaking dark comedy about obsession and loss.