This is my first Nick Hornby book, and I will be reading more of him because his writing style and innate cleverness appeal to me. I think, however, (or, rather, I hope) that I’ve started with one of his weaker books – not that How to be Good didn’t have something to impart or wasn’t worthy of my reading time, but the humour did little to hide the fact that Hornby was writing about some rather depressing and unfulfilling themes, and the narrator’s hopeless vacillation on the subject of whether it was possible to be either good or happy, never mind both, became less a biting insight into the human condition and more a source of mild irritation. Is it ironic that the only character I remotely liked was pre-lifestyle-change David who was, at least, honestly and brilliantly hateful, or was that Hornby’s point all along? Anyway, I read the entire book waiting for him to make at least a partial comeback, and the knowledge that his wife and children seemed to be doing the same thing was more than a little sad.

I can see why people read Nick Hornby. But I will be careful in future to make sure that what he’s writing about actually appeals to me, because while my time as a reader might not have been wasted, I’m pretty sure this book was wasted on me. ( )

Schriftstellerisch o.k., spannungsmäßig unterste Schublade: Die vorstehenden Bewertungskommentare greifen neben dem Buch selbst auch die inhaltliche Seite des Romans auf und ich lese zwischen der Zeilen der Bewertenden, dass das Buch nicht geeignet ist für Menschen, die sich nicht schlecht fühlen, wenn sie bedenken, dass sie das Haus voller Luxusartikel haben, während anderswo Leute erfrieren oder verhungern.
Daher erstmal vorneweg: Niemand muss sich schämen, dass er zwei PCs, zwei Autos oder drei Fernseher in seiner Familie besitzt. Und aus der Tatsache, dass ärmere Menschen auch hierzulande dies nicht ihr eigen nennen können, leitet sich für diese ärmeren Menschen noch lange kein Anspruch ab, dass eine Gleichverteilung aller Luxusgüter unternommen werden muss.
Viele Obdachlose sind nicht verantwortlich für ihre desolate Lebenssituation, aber eine Person, die sich durch jahrelanges Arbeiten und Sparen einen persönlichen Freiraum (eigene Wohnung, eigenes Haus, usw.)geschaffen hat, kann ebensowenig als Verantwortlicher dafür herangezogen werden. Und demnach weise ich es weit von mir, dass ein Einzelner einen Obdachlosen aufnehmen sollte, weil dies das Gebot der Gemeinschaft ist.
Vielmehr ist das Gebot der Gemeinschaft, dass die dafür gewählten Vertreter (Politiker) diese Missstände mit den ihnen zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln beheben. Mathematisch logisch ist es sicherlich, wenn man sich hinstellt und behauptet, jeder können seinen Beitrag dazu leisten, aber es ist einerseits utopisch anzunehmen, dadurch ändere sich etwas Grundlegendes bei den Menschen, die aus Überzeugung gegen das System sind (und in Folge dessen u. U. obdachlos werden/sind), und andererseits kann man auch einem wohlhabenderen Bürger nicht die persönliche Freiheit einschränken, die er in seinem Heim genießt.

Nun zum Buch selbst:
Stilistisch gut wie immer, bleibt Hornby viel zu lange an den immer wieder gleichen Sachen hängen und fördert damit Langeweile. Nach vier Fünfteln des Buches gab ich auf und überflog die restlichen Seiten nur noch, um zu sehen, wie die Geschichte endet.
Ebenfalls schlecht gemacht ist die Figur "Good News". Anfangs wird er eindeutig als Wunderheiler dargestellt. Warum, so frage ich, wird diese Fähigkeit, mit der er Millionen verdienen könnte, in der Folge komplett ignoriert? Warum hat Hornby sie dann überhaupt eingeführt? Offenbar nur, um den Sinneswandel Davids vom Saulus zum Paulus zu erklären. Schwächer geht's kaum!

Die beste Stelle im ganzen Buch ist übrigens diejenige, an der der kleine Tom dem quengelnden Schulkamerad, der zu Gast in Toms Zuhause sein darf und dies dann auch noch undankbarerweise als Drecksloch bezeichnet, einen kräftigen Hieb auf die Nase gibt. Da hab ich laut gelacht!

Not his best but i finished it which means it had merits because I don't finish a book if I don't like it. ( )

This was one of those books that I catch myself coming back to and thinking about again and again in the days and weeks after closing its pages.

Katie is discontented in her marriage, and sick of her husband’s anger, and this story shows the way in which she responds when her wish is actually granted, and her husband David’s whole outlook on life changes.

David describes this change as follows:

“I’m a liberal’s worst nightmare ... I think everything you think. But I’m going to walk it like I talk it.” (p. 80)

In a way, this is a cynical indictment about the way in which our actions often fall short of our supposed ideals, about the extent to which we are content to simply mouth platitudes about the way in which we ought to think and feel and act, while behaving in the materialistic/ selfish/ comfortable way in which we always have.

And yet David's radical new views don't make Katie's life easy, and I caught myself sympathising with her on many occasions.

Ultimately, this book questioned my own assumptions about what it was to be ‘good’, and challenged me to think about whether I actually walked my own talk ... ( )

Funny enough to have me snickering frequently, honest enough to make me think about my own life..... ( )

The story of a woman's attempts to save her marriage after her husband becomes infatuated with new-age guru. There are so many wonderful things about this book -- instantly engaging prose, credible characterizations, too many laugh-out-loud moments to count... And it was thought-provoking without ever becoming preachy. Ugh, but the ending! Grim and cold and felt like a complete cop-out. Throughout the story, the characters seemed to learn a lot about themselves and their situation and what it would take to move forward in their world... and then in the last few pages, they just turn their back on all that and go back to being more or less exactly as miserable as they all were at the beginning. I understand this must have been a difficult book to end, and I was curious as to how the author was going to pull it off... but in truth, he did not, and it was ultimately disappointing. ( )

This was perhaps the most difficult review I've had to write yet. After reading I got my Book Lust journal out and wrote all sorts of things down in it about the book and then realized none of it was review worthy. It was simply notes about the book. I still needed to write the actual review.

Maybe it's because I've been through a divorce which still causes frequent and serious pain for a daughter who is nearly 21 now. Maybe because my current husband and I went through a very difficult separation. Maybe some of Kate's cold fishiness strikes home a little too much. I don't know. But the cover reviews boast of this story being breezily hilarious and I didn't get that. At all. There were some brief moments of humor.

I'd like to ask of the people who found hilarity, where did you find it? Did you find it from an ending in which I don't know about others, but I seriously found that there really is no way to be good. Or did you find it from the silly buffoonery made of those in the being good industry, like Goodnews?

I was saddened and depressed by the ending of this book. I was certainly not inspired to be a better (or good) person. But then, it was just a bit of comedy, am I right? ( )

What do you do when your husband, formerly "Most Angry Man" does a 180 degree turn and becomes altruistic? It sounds great until he starts giving away the kid's toys, inviting a stranger to live with you, and giving your cab fare away to a homeless person.

This book gives a funny, frustrating look at what it takes to keep a marriage - and your sanity - together. ( )

Dec. 2008

I love the voice, I love the characters, and I read the entire thing practically at a gulp, yet still have no real idea what Mr. Hornby was trying to say. Of course, with a book that examines how we feel about ourselves, and what we consider "goodness", that may have been the point. Enjoyable tale of a family gone wrong, with mom gone astray and dad being a jerk, but suddenly, one day everything changes for the better, and you find yourself wondering why they wanted that in the first place. Liked it very much, and will be thinking about it for some time to come. ( )

Humor ( )

This was the first Nick Hornby book i read and although i enjoyed it, i prefer "A Long Way Down". At first i found the main character to be a bit unbelievable, as though she wasn't a real person.

The story had so much promise, but midway (two-thirds of the way through?) it took a nose dive when it suddenly escaped the world of reality. ( )

I usually enjoy British humor, so I got the humor. I found some truth in this bizarre husband/wife relationship. She says a husband and wife "fit" together. I would add that when your children are infant/toddlers, they just "fit" with a mother and/or father too. My favorite quote from this book was the last sentence on p. 302 "It is the act of reading itself I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale . . . " (Hornby 302). I can totally relate--love losing myself in books, what an escape from reality.

Perhaps, we'll taste cheese straws at book club!

Overall, this book was okay. I want to read _High Fidelity_ to see if I'll like that one more. ( )

How to be Good wasn't good, much to my disappointment. The author's female voice did not have a realistic quality to it. Although it is meant to be a humorous book, I did not find it funny. I found the writing dry, and gave up about 50 pages into the book.

This book started slow, and I nearly gave up on it within the first seventy-five pages, to be honest. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because directly after that, it became incredibly engaging and insightful. While Hornby still needs to work on a distinctively female voice (in part, I'm sure, because he's drawing out ideas of what that would be/mean), there's nevertheless a searing accuracy in the narrative voice he presents. While the book's conclusion seems weak for the dramatic tensions built into the text, there's still a very simple honesty to the resolute refusal of grand, life-changing solutions. A very funny, smart, and thoughtful novel. ( )

Just finished this novel about Katie, a married woman, who feels dissatisfied about David, her husband, wants to divorce him, but ends up staying with him anyway. I can't quite decide what to think of it. The plot is rather unlikely. The aggressively sarcastic husband meets Goodnews, a kind of guru, and suddenly turns into the ideal person, who wants to do good to the world. This turning of character merely serves to make Katie, and us readers, contemplate the issue of goodness. What is good? Is it good enough to have liberal convictions, donate some money to charity once in a while and otherwise continue your easy life? These are interesting questions, that we don't really get the answer to in this novel, but it does make you think and feel uncomfortable in a way. I guess that's the power of the book.
At the same time, perhaps due to its light and humourous tone, it didn't really touch me. It seemed to be more about the idea of goodness than it being a good novel. ( )

After High Fidelity, I expected more from this. Although I did like the writing style, this story is just too depressing and not that interesting either. ( )

This book made me sad. It was really, really depressing. In fact, so much that it actually put me in a bad mood while I was reading it.

Don't get me wrong; there were flashes of humor, clever writing, and certainly it begs a lot of introspection. But it was a real downer. None of the hope of "About a Boy", and although I haven't read "High Fidelity", I've seen that movie, and I think that had hope too.

So here's what I started writing after the first section for book club last Saturday:
"How to be Good" isn't exactly a cheery book yet, is it, and frankly those in attendance were wondering if the notes on the cover ("Hilarious", "Such a zip to read", and "Breezily hilarious") were about this book or another. However, it also offered up quite a bit of fodder for discussion. For starters, we were very interested that it's a male author and this is from the female point of view, especially because of our knowledge of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy". It's also interesting given the question she asks her son "do you think of me as the mummy or the daddy", and her perspective on being the primary breadwinner.

Neither of us got "GoodNews", or his place, nor his healing powers. We also discussed giving to charity, and her views about her position as a doctor.
I found this commentary so insightful that I was hooked from the bottom of the first page:I can describe myself as the kind of person who doesn't forget names, for example, because I have remembered names thousands of times and forgotten them only once or twice. But for the majority of people, marriage-ending conversations happen only once, if at all. If you choose to conduct yours on a mobile phone, in a Leeds car park, then you cannot really claim that it is unrepresentative, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't really claim that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs. (emphasis mine)

A sentence I wish I had written, and maybe one of the ones those cover blurbs was referring to, is "I can now see, for the first time, just how many worms a can holds, and why it's not a good idea to open one under any circumstances."

And then there's Katie's honesty, "My conversation with Molly has made it impossible for me not to think, even though not-thinking is currently my favorite mode of being." I totally get this -- when I'm upset, "not-thinking" is what I'd rather do any minute of the day. How is Hornby able to write a female character who thinks so similarly to the way I do?

And then there's this. Honestly? It's just one of many reasons why we didn't have kids.And the other thing I think is that I have failed my daughter. Eight years old, and she's sad ... I didn't want that. When she was born I was certain I could prevent it, and I have been unable to, and even though I see that the task I set myself was unrealistic and unachievable, it doesn't make any difference: I have still participated in the creation of yet another confused and fearful human being.

Here's something I thought interesting, at the top of 221, when David and GoodNews are working on "reversal", and "GoodNews says excitedly, 'That's what we're doing! Building an ideal world in our own home!'

An ideal world in my own home ... I'm not yet sure why the prospect appals me quite so much..."

I know why it bothers her so much! Because GoodNews is calling their home "ours"!

Last, I found this ... well, thought-provoking: When I look at my sins (and if I think they're sins, then they are sins), I can see the appeal of born-again Christianity. I suspect that it's not the Christianity that is so alluring; it's the rebirth. Because who wouldn't wish to start all over again?

In thinking through my final thoughts on this book, and my preference for hope in books, I would have been happy with the ending of this book if it had ended one sentence earlier. That is, I'd have removed the last sentence before publishing it. ( )

I was skeptical of a first-person narrative featuring a working mother, written by a man, but Hornby's voice is thoroughly, enjoyably plausible as he walks you through the uncomfortable questions that arise when you try to actually _live_ by your liberal ideals. ( )

I am fan of Hornby's other works, but this one seemed too depressing to really be a "great" book. It has the usual Hornby wit and is an enjoyable read but I think it lacks where other novels by him have excelled. ( )

What does it mean to be good? This question is tackled, but not answered in Nick Hornby's book. Can we be good? Is it worth it? I liked the movement between a heartfelt depiction of a marriage breakdown, and the controversial solutions of 'how to be good', and their consequences on a family. ( )

Funny thing: I laughed less while reading this Hornby novel than anything else written by him. I have my theories. Context. (A marriage relationship that is disintegrating.) Protagonist. (Hornby speaking from a female perspective rather than male.) The premise. (What happens when one partner in a strained relationship suddenly never exhibits the negative behaviors supposedly contributing mightily to the strain.) The ending. ("...just at the wrong moment I catch a glimpse of the night sky...and I can see that there's nothing out there at all.")

Yes, there are many laughs. Yes, it is quite witty. Still, it is even darker than his most recent book about four suicidal individuals who fortuitously meet on the roof of a building one evening (A Long Way Down).

Hornby's ability to have internal thoughts grab the reader in a way that says, "How did he know about that episode in my life?" is ever-present, perhaps too present in this book. His ability to do so never fails to amaze.

I think I have now made my way through the Hornby canon, and I heartily recommend any and all of his books, whether fiction or not. How To Be Good would not qualify as my favorite, but it is a very good book nonetheless. ( )