After reading Richard Powers’ The Overstory, I needed something less heavy to read, so I thought Marissa Stapley’s The Lightning Bottles would do the trick, however, it ended up getting me riled up about society’s internalized misogyny. The Lightning Bottles is specifically about misogyny in the music industry, but I think it is a good book for music lovers, particularly if you have an appreciation for the Seattle grunge scene of the 1990s.

The Lightning Bottles opens in Germany in 1999 when a teenage girl named Hen realizes that her new neighbour is Jane Pyre, one-half of the famous rock duo the Lightning Bottles. The other half of the Lightning Bottles, Elijah Hart, is Jane’s husband and he is presumed dead after disappearing off the coast of Iceland several years earlier. But Hen, who is a big fan of the Lightning Bottles, has found clues that might prove Elijah is still alive, and she convinces Jane to help her look for him.

The Lightning Bottles alternates between Jane and Hen’s search for a potentially still living Elijah and how Jane and Elijah became famous musicians after meeting a decade earlier. Jane is a small-town Canadian girl with an overbearing religious mother who runs away to Seattle to be with Elijah after meeting him in an online chat room where they bond over their shared love of music. Elijah is already in a band with his best friend, Kim Beard, a narcissistic, talentless hack who instantly hates Jane. A tragic event leads to Elijah parting ways with Kim, and he and Jane head to LA where they begin making music together. Soon they have secured a record deal and are catapulted into fame, which ends up destroying their relationship.

Stapley based Jane on two female musicians in particular: Courtney Love, who experienced a lot of hate after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and Sinead O’Connor, whose career was torpedoed after she had the audacity to speak out on the abuses committed by the Catholic Church and infamously tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. Both women were vilified by the media and by fans for pretty much not being demure and mindful. It was not until years after their respective “controversies” that people, mainly women, realized how the public’s perception of them was manipulated by society’s unnecessary hatred towards successful women and that both Courtney and Sinead were treated unfairly.

Jane’s own experience with the misogyny of the music industry starts with Kim’s irrational hatred of her just because she is more talented than him. Things get worse for her once she and Elijah become famous as she has to contend with hatred from everyone, such as jealous fans who love the charismatic vocalist, Elijah; the media that tells Jane to smile and stop being miserable when she is just a reserved person who does not like attention; the producers who think she is a bossy bitch just because they do not want to take directions from a woman; and a record label that does not want anyone to know that she is the real talent behind the Lightning Bottles and writes most of their music. If Elijah tries to defend her against the vitriol, then she is accused of controlling and manipulating him.

By the time Hen meets Jane, Jane is a bitter person looking for an anonymous life, and I completely empathize with her. Jane spends years struggling with the relentless hate, as well as the guilt she feels for her own perceived failure in saving her husband from his drug addiction, even though it was not her responsibility to make sure he got clean. His addiction and crazed jealous behaviour led to Jane’s own addiction to alcohol. While reading The Lightning Bottles, my pragmatism was drowning out my romanticism because I did not want Jane to find Elijah, if he was still alive, since their relationship is so toxic. Jane and Elijah were both incredibly young and immature when they fell in love and got married. They did not have the emotional tools in place to handle their sudden fame and their addictions. In the 1999 timeline, Jane is still young (she is just 27) and she is barely hanging on to her sobriety, so the last thing she needs is to find her addict husband. I do not like how The Lightning Bottles suggests that Jane and Elijah’s relationship is one that you should root for. The possibility of Jane and Elijah reuniting takes away from Jane’s horrible experience with the music industry, which was compounded by her relationship with Elijah. But even though I am not a fan of Jane and Elijah’s relationship, I still liked this novel and my only wish is that there was a soundtrack to go along with it.