How to Be Good

This book is a very good take on NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) liberals- they believe that asylum seekers should be let in, just not to my street. Sure we want to do something about the homeless - just make them go away.
The narrator in this story is in an unhappy marriage. Her husband is not very nice to her, but is that really grounds for a divorce? She seems to pride herself on what a good person she is - she is a doctor after all, and has to deal with boils and other icky things. Yet she does things that good people are not meant to do - like have affairs. Of course she can justify this - if only her husband was not so angry, if only he was good...

This is very much a 'be careful what you wish for' story - her husband very much becomes show more less angry and more good. Exactly what she wanted. Only she can't stand his new incarnation either.

The funniest bits of the book for me was the narrator having to re-examine herself, and modern day peer pressure. There is a scence where her husband empties out her purse and gives her money to a beggar. She is angry with him, yet realises that to the public watching, berating your husband for giving money to a homeless person makes you look very bad. There is also the scenes where her husband and DJ Goodnews (the apparant bringer of her husband's new found goodness) pursuade people to take the homeless into their spare rooms, and can't understand when things don't go according to plan.

How much of many liberal's attitudes are really just talking the talk, but not walking the walk? How much is just saying the right thing to sound like a good person, yet not something you would be able to put into practice? I think that this is what Hornby is asking, and doing a very good job of making us think. show less

A depressing but really excellent book; it made me think, and he manages to write really unlikeable people as just really human, if that makes any sense. The ending is so bleak, but it helps to retain the feeling of the whole book, the confronting theme – how unattainable and ridiculous the human concept of being a “goodâ€? person by the deeds we do.

What does it mean to "be good". Katie thinks she's a good person; she is, after all, a doctor. She's having an affair -- but she's still, based on her perception of herself, a good person.

Her husband, David, writes a regular column as the "angriest man" and rants about everything from the size of ice cream containers to public parks. Until David meets a spiritual healer and becomes a good person. He takes in homeless people, gives away half of the children's toys to a women's shelter, gives away money and food.

And when Katie makes what are, to most of us, reasonable objections, she starts to wonder if she is, after all, a good person. David's work with the homeless always trumps her efforts.

Nick Hornby has written an examiniation of show more what it means to be good. He's also written the story of a marriage in mid-life crisis mode. And, he's done so with a dry sense of humor and wit. Katie is a wonderful character that I really identified with -- her world is changing and she is trying to understand and hold on to what's important. show less

Basic Summary: Unhappy Doctor is miserable at home and begins an affair with an unimportant studly man-beast. {Don't get your panties damp yet, it's not an actual beast} Her husband writes a column for the local paper titled, "The Angriest Man in Holloway" and he lives up to is title. Until one day, he meets a loony healer named GoodNews who touches his head and makes everything change.

Into complete and utter chaos.

I love Nick Hornby, which makes me automatically disqualified to write any reviews about his books. This book is addictive, as are most of his books. The characters are all very distinct and fun to read - even in the midst of their nastiness. What I love most about Hornby novels, are that even the most insignificant show more characters (if there is such a thing) have loud & clear voices. It's wonderful to get submerged in and I often find myself panicking when I realize there are only 20 pages left.

I will admit, this book has its slow moments but it also has one of my favorite book quotes of the year: "It is easier to stereotype racially than it is to find out the truth".

Last but not least, anyone who has seen or read [b:High Fidelity|285092|High Fidelity|Nick Hornby|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327928082s/285092.jpg|2961887] will enjoy the subtle cameo of Dick. (Not the body part, you naughty fiends). show less

The voice is pitch perfect. So easy to read, I snapped this up in three days. Funny, canny, with entertaining presentation of some ugly truths about the nuclear family.

::Spoilers start here::
Katie is going to sleep at a friend's apartment and thinking about why she wants to step away, have a time out from being David's wife. "That's all there is left, when you take away working hours and family suppers and family breakfasts: the time I get on my own is the time I would have spent being a wife, rather than being a mother or a doctor. (And God, how frightening, that those are the only options available. The only times when I am not performing one of those three roles is when I am in the bathroom.)"

I liked how Katie has moved to some self show more knowledge by the end of the book. She knows that she wants to be with her family, including her husband. She knows that it's important that they function and support each other as a family and not invite various acquaintances into that intimacy. She knows that she needs to read and take in art in order to nourish her mind. She's fairly clear that she will choose middle class complacency and the easy path rather than engaging with every issue that comes past. But she's still ignorant of her own values beyond these items. I thought the last line of the book was an atonal clash with what was a satisfying falling together at the end. But I grant that Katie has not widened her consciousness very far and has not done wrestling with her selfish ness and her vanity about being "good". So the blankness she sees beyond her family makes sense. show less

I don't know what to think of this novel. I have enjoyed Nick Hornby's black humor and ferocious wit in his other books, but this one is so dismal in its darker spots, and so painful at times, and yet so funny. I cringe while I laugh, and then cringe that I am laughing at all. I kept thinking: there must be hope, he will find a way to offer redemption. Somehow. And he did, but then perhaps snatched it away again in the final pages. I am at a loss.

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.