![Benjamin Myers, author of Rare Singles and The Gallows Pole](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000385336242_17207862168940_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-IWLY18X4-CzgyIcjLEAj0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul
Rare Singles, a lively and good-natured new novel by Benjamin Myers, brings an ageing US soul singer together with an English superfan
![Benjamin Myers, author of Rare Singles and The Gallows Pole](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000385336242_17207862168940_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-IWLY18X4-CzgyIcjLEAj0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Benjamin Myers’s last novel, Cuddy, was a virtuosic romp through the life of the hermit St Cuthbert, who was buried on Lindisfarne until his body was moved to keep it safe from invading Vikings. It deservedly won last year’s Goldsmith’s Prize. Myers’s new book is a more contained and straightforward affair, but it again reflects the author’s dedication to Northern stories, and his knack for making them come alive.
Rare Singles has two main characters: Earlon “Bucky” Bronco, an American soul singer in his 70s, and Dinah, a tough Englishwoman with an uninspiring job in Scarborough and an even less inspiring husband. We meet Bucky first, in a quintessentially American setting: he’s queuing up to collect his latest boat-load of pills at a Chicago pharmacy. The anniversary of the death of his beloved wife Maybellene is coming up, and he has decided to spend it in Britain, where he has been invited to sing at a Northern Soul festival. Bucky is daunted by the prospect of performing, but needs the money; and though he hasn’t been outside the States before, the idea of England appeals to him – it’s the land, he reckons, of “kings and queens. Country houses and cucumber sandwiches on the lawn. Cups of tea.”
When Bucky lands at Leeds Bradford, he’s bemused to find Dinah, waiting by the car, feeling nervy. She can hardly believe her luck, she confesses: “There’s an actual legend of soul sitting in my c---py little banger.” To Bucky, the idea that he’s a legend of soul is laughable: he only has a couple of singles to his name, which sank like a stone when they were released in America 40 years ago. But unbeknownst to him, both records have, in the intervening years, become celebrated by the Northern Soul movement.
Set over the course of the festival weekend, Rare Singles slips between the perspectives of Dinah and Bucky, who turn out not to be as dissimilar as they first appear. About 50 years old, Dinah works on the tills of a supermarket, where her shifts are interrupted by security guards catching her own husband stealing bottles of vodka. At home, he’s just as bad: he tells jokes three times to ensure they don’t go unappreciated, and is too lazy even to flush the toilet. Their 26-year-old son is cut from the same cloth. A pornography addict and a gamer, he leeches off Dinah’s modest wages, whining when she doesn’t buy him chocolate milk. His idea of tidying up, she notes acidly at one point, is him changing the water in his bong. Both men are on the ridiculous side of repellent – would Dinah’s obvious goodness not have rubbed off, a bit, on her son? – but thankfully, neither weigh the story down.
Gradually, we also piece together Bucky’s life story. Following the failure of his musical career, he took whatever jobs came up, working variously as a delivery driver, a security guard and a valet; lately, he has become addicted to opioids, which afford him a break from his hip pain, as well as relief from his grief. His dependence on the drugs he’s disastrously left on the plane is captured by Myers with all the requisite jitteriness and urgency. As the hours tick closer to Bucky’s performance, and the effects of withdrawal kick in, the question becomes: will he be able to sing?
Myers delivers the key turning-points over a background hum of humour: not laugh-out-loud jokes, exactly, just lively turns of phrase. Sometimes he gets carried away: the initial effect of Bucky’s painkillers is like “sinking in silk”, “waking in a womb” and “bathing in lava” – the last of which doesn’t sound so nice to me. Some of the novel’s messages, too, land with rather a thud. “Grief is the price of love,” Dinah tells Bucky more than once, truncating the quote often (mis)attributed to Queen Elizabeth II.
But Rare Singles is an involving and unexpectedly pacy novel. It wears lightly the research that must have gone into it. And it’s a treat to find the Northern Soul movement – which unearthed forgotten singers such as Bucky and elevated them to cult status – given space so good-naturedly.
Rare Singles is published by Bloomsbury at £18.99. To order your copy, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books