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| Nick Hornby |
 A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby  Hornby tells the stories of Martin, Jess, JJ and Maureen, four people who, for totally different reasons, intend to throw themselves off the top of a highrise on New Year's Eve, but who decide on meeting each other to give life another try instead. Segments of the story are told from different viewpoints, and the book follows their lives and their mutual associations for 3 months afterwards. There are some similarities to About A Boy (although this is clearly darker in tone), in the sense that the characters slowly and painfully progress and grow, in themselves and their relationships with each other, until they each achieve some sort of resolution. The multiple-viewpoints story is interesting, but some of the characters sound a little too similar to be totally convincing - their sense of humour is clearly similar, for example. The characters themselves are so completely different (almost allegorical), I'd expect their narrations to be also different. Any Nick Hornby book is worth a read, any time, but this is probably not his best work. 7/10. David Bailey BUY A Long Way Down Now How to Be Good Interesting book in which Hornby writes from a woman's point of view. The woman is Kate (doctor, a good person) who is having an affair and being bad. She has an excuse, married to the negative cynical David but then David meets DJ Goodnews, a smug faith-healer and do-gooder, and Kate decides that perhaps being good isn't so good after all.  Reader's comments:Although I did enjoy this, it paled besides the previous About a Boy. 7/10  click here to buy How to Be Good About a Boy But who is the boy? Is it teenager Marcus - his parents have split up and his mother tries a desperate suicide attempt. Or is it Will Freeman who awards himself 5 points for sleeping with a woman he didn't know, and another 5 for spending more than three hundred pounds on a jacket.  Reader's comments:I loved the book, and the film starring Hugh Grant. I even made my husband read it (a die-hard science fiction fantasy fan) and he rated it highly. 10/10 click here to buy About a Boy Other books by Nick Hornby: click here to buy High Fidelity click here to buy Fever Pitch Buy the film of the book: About A Boy DVD Fever Pitch High Fidelity DVD Back to more articles Cecilia Aherne / Harlan Coben / Sophie Kinsella / J odi Picoult |
| Posted: 01/04/2005 17:53:44 Last Updated: 05/02/2007 12:48:55 |
Chick Lit > Lad Lit Authors :: Nick Hornby