How Soon is Never? is a novel about getting older, about realizing your wasted 
youth is behind you, and about the feeling of falling in love with music. Also, it’s 
about The Smiths. Marc Spitz, a writer for Spin magazine, tells the story of a 
music journalist who decides to reunite The Smiths before his 30th birthday in a 
quest to recapture the purity of his youth and impress a beautiful girl.

Joe Green grows up in Long Island in the '70s as the product of divorce and 
suburbia. His interest in punk music and disregard for authority set him apart 
from his prep school classmates. His discovery of The Smiths changes his life 
as he grows obsessed with the band and begins a relationship with a 
cheerleader and fellow Smiths fan. After getting his heart broken, he turns to 
drugs and puts his Smiths albums away. The irony is that while Joe mocks his
peers for being superficial, his life turns out to be pretty damn shallow as well.

As his 30th birthday nears, he finds that he’s fallen into a successful career at a 
music magazine but has nothing else to show for his life. He meets Miki, a new 
coworker, and falls for her when he discovers that she loves The Smiths as 
much as he does and that they both share an upcoming 30th birthday and 
feelings of dread about it. Despite her boyfriend, Joe decides to pursue Miki by
joining with her in an attempt to reunite their favorite band and cover the story for
their magazine. While I won’t give away the ending, I will say that Joe’s effort 
ends up being more about his own broken life than about the band he loved as
an adolescent.

Spitz writes with a witty undertone about the horrors of growing up in suburbia 
while not quite fitting in, and about the amazing feeling of discovering that one
song, that one band that will change your life. Since the novel came out in 2004, 
Spitz’s music references tend to be dated and the amount of Smiths trivia in the 
novel can be overload for casual fans. It’s by no means a perfect novel or an 
intellectual study, but definitely a worthy read for music lovers and Smiths
aficionados. 

How Soon is Never?, written by Marc Spitz, can be found HERE