A book club regular during the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & The Six” won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction in 2019. This historical fiction novel, Jenkins’s seventh book, follows the lives of the members of a fictional band, loosely based on Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s.
The most striking element of the book is its format. The novel is delivered in a series of interviews with different band members. Any dialogue between characters is presented through flashbacks, with the various characters often interpreting the same events differently. While this could have made the story volatile, it instead created an amorphous plot more realistic than most. The characters were flawed, each carrying a different perspective than the next. The writing style made the cast of ’70s rock stars more relatable, and the story all the more satisfying to read.
The story’s opening is raunchy, real and does not shy away from addressing the skeletons in the closet of the ‘70s music industry. Daisy Jones is introduced as a young, fatalistic, highly fashionable girl growing up in the Los Angeles scene, making her susceptible to the drug abuse and slimier industry practices of the time. As she advances in the music sphere, her narrative intersects with that of the other protagonist, Billy Dunne. Dunne is the charismatic vocalist and guitarist who founded The Six, mastering soulful up-and-coming rock ’n’ roll hits with his brother and friends. The pair would come to have a passionate professional relationship —often relating over their shared addictions and musical savvy.
Jones and Dunne’s dynamic gives the story a gritty, lustful edge written to mirror that of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. The parallels between the bands encourage readers to delve into Fleetwood Mac’s discography while reading the novel, painting the story in a beautiful musical backdrop. The universe that Reid creates with “Daisy Jones” invites a rigor for rock ’n’ roll, serving as a modern homage to the pivotal genre for older generations while delivering a powerful story to new audiences.
