Boy spends all his time with his buds, boy falls in love, boy tries to reconcile buds and girl. A classic tale.

But things get a little weirder when it turns out that those buds are earbuds and the romance is almost exclusively virtual.

Welcome to Arthur Phillips’s The Song Is You, a daringly original look at love in the age of online music.

The saga follows Julian Donahue, a broken man whose wife left him after their infant son died. Weaving song titles into his narration, Julian chronicles his less-than-love affair with a young Irish singer carried on from afar via texts and cell phone videos.

Julian has a High Fidelity-style relationship with music, relating it to different periods of his life as his situation with the singer darkens.

It’s the ultimate MP3-some.

Available online at politics-prose.com.

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