Cait O'Dwyer is a red-haired Irish singer-songwriter with a demo and a serious need for a muse. Julian Donahue is the older television commercial director whose unflappable cool is shattered after the death of his son and the flamboyant unfaithfulness of his wife. Julian meets Cait — sonically, at least — when he hears her music at a Brooklyn bar. Thereafter he's the figure lurking in the shadows at her performances; a fan like any other who comes gradually to see Cait as his oracle.

Despite the curious dynamic, the relationship at the center of Arthur Phillips' fourth novel is far from one-sided. Julian, we find out, is as important to Cait as she is to him. We're familiar with the tale of the comely young girl and the older admirer, but Phillips forges a new kind of relationship between the two that is as intense as it is original. The Song Is You is marked by the feints and dodges of any romance, but Phillips' zesty prose turns his characters' emotional lives into the crackling fault line of his novel. For those with a stake in music, love, or the peculiar dynamic of fandom, The Song is You will prove an indispensable and fascinating treatise.