WHEN I was asked to read this book I thought it was going to be a painful, arduous process. Like reading 250 pages of Rois�n Ingle, perhaps. I thought it would be twee, fey, overly nostalgic and cringeworthy. At best I thought Rob Sheffield would be to Nick Hornby what the American Office is to Ricky Gervais - a poor imitation. How wrong I was.

Rob Sheffield is a music journalist who has had a lifelong love affair with his subject. Like most of us he made tapes of his favourite songs for certain people in his life: friends, lovers and would-be lovers. Like most of us, the making of the mix tape was probably more enjoyable for the maker than the receiver. And again, like most of us, the songs have lived longer than the people have stayed in our lives.

For the author, though, that fact was literal rather than metaphorical: one ordinary day Sheffield's young wife of five years, Renee, dropped dead of a pulmonary embolism while the pair of them were hanging out at home. She literally died in his arms, to quote Cutting Crew.

From the outset, Renee's death is a given; we're not giving anything away here. The tone of the writing is like a good Smiths song; each word could be an eye bulging with tears but which has yet to burst out crying.

The couple's love affair is explained chapter by chapter, each one prefaced by a photocopied mix tape of the music they were listening to together at the time.

You could conceivably listen to his selection of music as you read each chapter; their love of '90s music, from Nirvana and the Pixies to (bizarrely) Hanson and Eminem, merely mirroring their own ardour.

Then, about 140 pages in, she dies. What on earth is he going to write about for the next 100 or more pages?

Sheffield begins to document his decline. Drinking alone, hiding in supermarkets, following around strangers who remind him of his deceased wife. And the house they shared, empty and finally - eternally - quiet.

No doubt this book could only have been written once. I doubt there was too much rewriting. But with every passing page you feel the cathartic, healing power of the written word and the music take hold. You can almost imagine yourself sitting next to Sheffield as he throws his depression onto the page.

There are only two real debits, one of which is hardly his fault.

Firstly the book's popular culture landscape is inescapably American - obviously it makes it hard to relate to some of the passages. Secondly, Sheffield doesn't devote enough space to his colourful tangents on the music of the 1990s and what it meant. For example, there is a chapter on Nirvana that makes for very interesting reading but in this respect Hornby's High Fidelity