For better or worse, I have spent an ample amount of time in online forums over the past 10 years. I have gotten into arguments about soccer, music television, you name it. I have even met some very good friends and alienated other people simply through online communication.

So I had some sort of expertise heading into Nick Hornby‘s latest novel, Juliet, Naked, the final book I read in 2009. The book focuses initially on the obsession with a musician by a small group of people connected only through the Internet and their common interest. We learn about this fascination with singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe mainly through the eyes of Annie, who lives with Duncan, the most obsessed Crowe fan out there.

If you have read the book and think this notion of people arguing over minutiae through message boards and developing grudges through said arguments is a bit silly, let me correct you. Hornby nailed this kind of community perfectly. Combine this new kind of social interaction with his clear understanding of musical obsession, and you have the return of the Nick Hornby who thrilled readers back in the 1990s.

He really had a great run in fiction with High Fidelity and About a Boy. Both were turned into movies, as was his non-fiction tome on soccer obsession Fever Pitch, although that was bastardized once in the U.S. by adapting the topic to baseball, a second time by focusing on the Boston Red Sox and a third time with Jimmy Fallon playing the lead role.

While all this was going on, Hornby wrote two novels which did not do as well, How to Be Good and A Long Way Down. I enjoyed each for the daring steps he took, first writing from a female point of view, then through a series of rotating narrators. He also has written a bunch of non-fiction and a young adult novel.

Juliet, Naked (the title refers to an album by Tucker Crowe) signals that through all that work, Hornby still has the voice and vision which made him a star in the first place. He really understands the way people tick and the role music plays in our lives. Duncan thinks songs and moments can only have one meaning, but Annie lets us know there is much more grey out there. That leaves us the opportunity to provide our own color and texture instead of just accepting the view of someone who says they know best for the rest of us.

In this day and age when we all communicate so much through the Internet and hears o many people telling us they know best, we all need to remember Annie’s lesson.