The jacket copy for A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing promises the reader a lyrical journey through one musician’s rise and fall, as seen through the eyes of his devoted girlfriend. It begins on Terrabain Street, in a lower-class neighbourhood where Lilah Cellini and her mother share a housing complex with three other tenants, including the Popilowskis and their musician son, Jamey.

Terrabain Street could exist anywhere in North America, at any time. That it’s in Canada is established half-heartedly with a fleeting mention of Petro-Canada; that it’s in Edmonton isn’t clarified until page 68. That the novel begins in the mid-1980s is established with a single mention of U2’s album The Unforgettable Fire and, later, Bryan Adams and his “classic,” “Cuts Like a Knife.”

While settings such as Terrabain Street and Crofton, the tiny B.C. town that Lilah and Jamey settle in during an overlong section of the book, are brought to life vividly enough, a general rootlessness permeates the story, which tosses off the names of Vancouver suburbs, Portland, Oregon, and settings in western California, but primarily seems to take place in Anytown.

The novel’s chronology also feels suspect. Lilah spends what appears to be years touring with Jamey’s band, Gun Wylde, records an album with them, gets pregnant, becomes a homemaker, and finally strikes out for home again – lending a sense of falseness to the final reveal that she’s done it all before the age of 21.

And yet, A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing is a pleasant read. Author Cecelia Frey’s depiction of the music industry feels authentic, and her prose occasionally reproduces the lucid, ethereal quality of good lyrics. Frey also captures the years of effort and dedication needed to become an artist, and by the end of the novel Lilah has experienced enough trials and tribulations to fill a couple of hit albums.

Too many novels capture a sense of time and place so vividly, but fail to make anything interesting happen. A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing, by contrast, has the opposite problem.