Benjamin Myers clearly has a penchant for stories in which ties unexpectedly bind. Having written so generously about unlikely friendships in two previous books – 2019’s The Offing and 2022’s The Perfect Golden Circle – he does so again now with Rare Singles.
The British writer’s ninth novel takes place over a single weekend in Scarborough. Bucky Bronco is a forgotten singer from Chicago who, 40 years ago, had the merest glimpse of success, but things ever since have been disappointing. If, back then, he traded in soul music, now his life is very much a depiction of the blues: increasingly at odds with the modern world, grieving his late wife and hooked on prescription drugs. Just when he convinces himself that, like all good bluesmen, his future comprises nothing but sepia-tinged memories and an expectant grave plot, he receives an unlikely invitation: to headline a soul weekender in Yorkshire, which, he has it on good authority, is somewhere over the sea, in England, a place, he presumes, “of kings and queens. Country houses and cucumber sandwiches on the lawn. Cups of tea.”
