Nashville Chrome Book

I picked this up on a total whim because I was driving out of Nashville and it's about Nashville and hey, why not. The story follows a trio of siblings who work their way through the rising country music scene in the 40s and 50s and it could have been really cool, but unfortunately Bass completely mishandled it.

The "show don't tell" image is because maybe (maaaaaybe) 10% of this whole thing is dialogue, and you know what you can't do with very little dialogue? Tell a long story. Especially tell a long story with characters anywhere near vibrant. I felt like I was reading a long essay of the author's delight in these people who never had the chance to be fully real to me because I only ever heard his voice rather than theirs. (Well, I heard the voice of the actress who read this on the audiobook; she was okay. Nothing exciting, but not unpleasant.) And the flashbacks between the aging Browns and their youth in stardom always felt disconnected, not in the chronological way that time swings like that inevitably must but in some way that evoked a sense of bored pity about the decline of fame rather than a sorrow with investment in the characters' shifts.

Which, that's a thing; this book was just depressing. It wasn't meant to be, but since I never connected to the characters and had nothing to go on in terms of emotive triumph other than Bass telling me there was emotive triumph, I ended up just feeling like I need to go hug my great-aunt who lives alone in her childhood house and sleeps on the downstairs recliner. I didn't feel as though some arc had been completed or that hope lay in the future for the Browns or the videographer kid.

Also, whoever produced this audiobook missed out on a ton of opportunities. Out of curiosity, I Googled the Browns and discovered holy crow, they were real. This is an imagined version of a true story, but neither the text nor the production really give it that feeling. Okay, Elvis is a secondary character, but all manner of stories have been written with fictional main characters moving among historical figures. I never got the feeling that it was real--and one of the huge things the audiobook missed was using real sound. It's an audiobook! Use the Browns' music as transition pieces or examples or something; let the reader know what the author means when he yammers insistently about the wholeness and peace their sound produced in its listeners.

So the story was interesting and I'm glad to have been introduced to this family and their music, but this could have been done with such strength and verve--I'm sorry that the Browns got undersold yet again. Well, as of 2016, Maxine is still alive. Maybe there'll be something better to commemorate her yet.