Julie, Naked

A book about Xsters? No way!

"Juliet, Naked," explores Hornby's usual themes with an ambitious strategy using three characters, all of them members of an aging Generation X.

Duncan is 40-something, living in a small seaside town in England and working as a media instructor in the lower rungs of higher education. He's also an earnest, pompous and self-appointed expert on the subject of Tucker Crowe, an American 1980s singer-songwriter who's been in hiding for 22 years — the J.D. Salinger of the Top 40.

The book begins with Duncan's vacation, an obsessive Tucker Crowe pilgrimage to the United States. Duncan thrills at standing in front of the San Francisco home of Julie Beatty, the long-ago girlfriend of Crowe who inspired his greatest album, "Juliet."