It's like a question on an IQ test: All Smiths fans are Morrissey fans. All Morrissey fans are Smiths fans. When were Smiths fans not Morrissey fans? To American Smiths fans who experienced the band in real time, especially those who witnessed them live in concert, the answer is easy. Some Smiths fans would take years to become Morrissey fans (a decade, in my case) because by going solo he broke up the band that defined our most influential years. As Marc Spitz recounts in his semiautobiographical novel How Soon Is Never?, a lot of us were so devastated by the split that Louder than Bombs would be the last Smiths album we'd ever buy, even though Strangeways, Here We Come is the official final album. It's been 15 years since that record's release, and I still haven't listened to it in its entirety.

How Soon Is Never? isn't merely an extrapolation of post-breakup bitterness. It follows suburban teenager Joe Green as he searches for meaning in Reagan's '80s and discovers salvation in Morrissey's witty lyrics and Johnny Marr's exhilarating guitar. He becomes a disciple, reading Oscar Wilde and styling his hair like the rest of the Smiths devotees, puts all of his faith and attention into the band, and manages to find his first love in the process. Joe loses himself when the band breaks up, feeling so betrayed that he turns his back on everyone except a bunch of butt rockers, and over the years struggles with heroin and eventually becomes a rock journalist who thinks his life will find meaning again if he can just get the Smiths to reunite. Spitz's novel is funny, sad, and appropriately ridiculous in retrospect.