Fargust's Full Review: Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down
I was a fan of Nick Hornby before I'd ever read any of his work. You see, High Fidelity (starring John Cusack) is one of my all-time, desert island top five favorite movies, and Hornby wrote the book on which it was based. I read the book not long after seeing the movie, and I loved it just as much. If High Fidelity had been Hornby's only contribution to literature, it would have been more than enough. Thankfully, though, he's written more, and A Long Way Down is a book worth celebrating.
The Story
The story of A Long Way Down is deceptively simple to outline, but also startlingly inaccurate once you get into the book. It would be easy to say that this is a book about four people who meet each other on a roof, separately ready to kill themselves. It would be easy to say that they talk each other out of killing themselves and form a support group to prop each other up. And in a nutshell, that's sort of what the book's about.
But it's not nearly that simple at all. I won't spoil what's wrong with that summary, because that would spoil some of the book. Suffice it to say, the real magic of the book is in...
The Characters
Jess - Easily the most volatile and unpredictable character in the book, Jess is an enigma. She's the teenage daughter of a Junior Cabinet Minister in the British government, and her older sister disappeared without a trace several years before the events of the book took place. Is she up on the roof for attention, or is she legitimately depressed? When her problems are outlined, they don't seem as bad as everyone else's. Is she just reaching out? If so, to whom? Also interesting about Jess, though, is how insightful and sensitive she can be, though it's through a brash, uninviting veneer. Her heart is quite often in the right place, though her mouth is more often in a place that's frighteningly wrong.
JJ - The only American in the group, JJ has maybe the most heartbreaking story of all, in a manner of speaking. His is an existential dilemma. After his band breaks up and he loses his girlfriend, he truly doesn't know what he has to live for. His angst is the most touching, to me, because it's real. It's the kind of self-doubt that we all experience from time to time, carried out to a scary extreme.
Martin - Once the successful co-host of a daytime morning show (think Regis and Kathie Lee), Martin lost his family, his job, and a few months of freedom after sleeping with a fifteen-year-old girl at a club. Martin's protests that "she said she was sixteen" are indicative of his whole outlook on life. Everything's always somebody else's fault, and it's fundamentally this passing of the buck that leads him to his decision to end it all.
Maureen - Maureen has had enough of taking care of her son. Matty's a vegetable, victim of an unnamed condition, and Maureen has tired of thanklessly devoting her life, night and day, to a person unable to express his gratitude for her sacrifices. Maureen's a matronly type whose face goes a bit pale when any of the other characters uses a four-letter word.
The Writing
The book is written in the first person, alternately from the perspective from each of these four characters. There is no overlapping, or clever alternate versions of the same scenes through different pairs of eyes. The events are all laid out in fairly straightforward fashion no matter who's narrating. What we really learn in each section, though, is a bit more about whoever's narrating.
Hornby exhibits great skill in making each of the characters have a distinct voice. When it's Jess talking, we would be able to tell it was Jess, even without the chapter heading with her name on it. Likewise with all of the other characters. These folks are profoundly different from one another, with only their shared near-suicide in common, but somehow they find in each other the will to go on, whether they like it or not.
The Final Verdict
A Long Way Down is a wonderful story, and a wonderfully written book. Hornby resists going for the easy ending, where each character learns about himself or herself, and goes on to live happily after. That makes it more realistic, but more than that, it makes it more important. This is a book that can really have you learn something about yourself, if you're open to it.
I would have sprinkled some excerpts from the novel in here, but I let my father borrow the book right after I was done with it, so I don't have it. But if you pick it up, I highly recommend you do the same. A Long Way Down deserves to be read, dog-eared, and passed around.
In his fourth novel, New York Times bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reach...More at HotBookSale
From the Publisher: In his eagerly awaited fourth novel, New York Times-bestselling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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