Because the one big piece of fiction I have written (attention agents – you can read it if you want!) revolves around the impact of music on the lives of people in their 20s, I could not resist picking up Sarah Rainone‘s novel “Love Will Tear Us Apart” when I saw it on the library shelf.

I have no real affinity for the Joy Division song which lends its name to the Rainone’s debut. I never really got into the band. That presents my only real stumbling block with the book. Each chapter wraps around a song, but I grew up about 5-10 years too soon for most of the songs to have much relevance in my life. The title track comes from my era, but I just didn’t like Joy Division. I preferred not to think about suicide. Other songs came when I could care less about new music so I don’t have the same connection as the characters do.

But that’s a minor quibble because the notion of a song tying together your current situation with a memory which helps define your current situation goes beyond whether you like the song or not. In fact, as I look at the upcoming songs on iTunes, I see “So. Central Rain,” which reminds me of that one time Paul Ewing used the lyrics of the final verse to write a farewell column for the student newspaper at college because he just couldn’t deal with some issue or another. I remember reading the column and wishing I could pull it off the way he did. I still think that sometimes when I struggle with words. I could go on, but the fact remains that songs have a powerful force, and any book which tries to harness that will suck me in.

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” deftly follows a group of friends on the day two of them marry one another. Well, they were once friends, but now have drifted apart, only to come back together at the wedding in less than ideal circumstances. That’s where the songs come in – to remind them of how far they have come and inform them of what they have left to do.

One instance of their youth seems to tie them together, but I didn’t get it at first. As the book went on, that kind of annoyed me because I had kind of figured it out, but Rainone’s storytelling was dancing around the fringes. I felt like yelling, “come on, already – I know what happened pretty much. Just tell me.”

But as the details became more clear, I really appreciated the understated way in which this piece of information came out. Sometimes authors can just hit you over the head with the connection so I just needed time to sit back and reflect on how things affected these six people. I liked how it was something they shared, but it didn’t define them. We all remember things, but don’t dwell on all of them. Rainone seemed to keep that in mind.

Other than that fact that I found one of the main characters a boorish d-bag and another reminded me of how much I hated girls in college who wore flowing skirts and listened to the Dead and Edie Brickell, I really enjoyed the book. But that’s another generational thing.