Holiday Reading Part One - Nick Hornby

Time to write some reviews of the books I enjoyed whilst on my hols..and time to pay tribute to the works of some of my favourite authors..

I've always been a big fan of Nick Hornby. For me he is the King of "lad lit" - the genre to which I aspire. "High Fidelity" is right up there in my all-time top 5. I remember loving it so much when I first read it I lent it to a young lady friend of mine, Sam (17 at the time), beseeching her to read it. She did, as did her mum. They both loved it.

"About A Boy" is right up there as well. If anything I felt I identified a little bit with the main protagonist, Will. And I don't mean the positive bits - rather his shallow, self-centred and introspective existence. Maybe someone will come into my life one day and “show me the way” as Marcus did..

I have never read "Fever Pitch" believe it or not. No Sir. I should, I know - it's just that I don't much care for football so can't see how I could fully appreciate it. If anyone thinks differently, please let me know.

So it was only to be expected that I would be champing at the bit to read "How To Be Good". To be honest, I was disappointed. I didn't identify with any of the characters and couldn't really see the point of it. I guess we all read books now and then, which are actually very, very good but for whatever reason we just don't get into them.

This year I was hoping for a return to form with "A Long Way Down". The reviews I had read seemed positive enough, and I read in the paper that Hornby had sold the film rights before the book was published. The man clearly knows his business. So I bought my copy from www.bol.com (great prices, poor selection) and saved it for my holiday.

Whilst it was not my favourite read of the week, it was certainly worth the time and the money (and then some). As you may know, it focuses on four main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ, who meet under inauspicious circumstances - attempting to throw themselves from a tower block on New Year's Eve.

Hornby tells the story from each of the character's perspective and here lies his skill - he creates characters that you may not identify with, but who grow on you, who you feel for and make you understand what makes them tick. Whilst the story is heavy going at times, it is well paced and the dialogue is cracking. Some of the barbed comments and swearing (I like swearing in books; I think as a writer you need, occasionally, to use the language people speak). The writing style is superb: easy going without being patronising, yet intelligent enough to keep you interested.

So why was it not my favourite? I suppose a lot of it was down to timing - I was on my holiday, in one of my favourite places. I had found a way out of a job I hated and had a new challenge. I had just achieved a major ambition, running a half marathon and was still very much on a high. (Drug addicts everywhere: take up running. It's cheaper). Life could only get better if Jessica Alba was sunbathing by the pool. So I guess I really felt I had nothing in common with any of the characters and the idea of ending it all was complete anathema to me.

Having said that, I did sympathise with the characters. Hornby makes it impossible not to. I'd like to give an example by citing a paragraph from page 154, told from Maureen's perspective. I hope Nick doesn't mind. Maureen, in her fifties, had sex only once and as a result has a severely handicapped son who needs looking after 24/7. So she hasn't had much of a life and come New Year's Eve, felt she could no longer cope.

At this stage in the novel the four main characters have decided to go away on holiday in Tenerife. As you can guess, Maureen has never had a holiday (Christ, I'd be in a padded cell if I didn't get away every year!). This is what she thinks about the prospect, and I thought it was a particularly brilliant (yet, on the face of it, astonishingly simple) piece of writing:

"I wanted to tell Jess that I hadn't even seen an English beach since Matty left school; they used to take them to Brighton every year, and I went with them once or twice. I didn't say anything though. I may not know the weight of many things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible."

Now creating characters and then getting inside their heads like that - that's a special gift. Thankfully it was given to Nick Hornby.