A Long Way Down (2005)

This has the possibility to be a really decent movie. More decent than the book. Which is... decent? By decent I mean a few shades above medicore.

4 suicidal people meet at the top of a building and then spend the rest of the book convincing themselves and each other not to kill themselves. Laugh riot, right? They are incredibly mopey people and Hornby writes about each of them in turns in the first person, so you can really get in their mopey heads. Unfortunately this is one of the weaknesses of the book... I don't want to be in their oh-woe-is-me brains, I wanna laugh at them. Not that I couldn't laugh at them (the book is pretty funny sometimes) but internal monologues from people who have really lame reasons to kill themselves slowly coming to the realization that death would kinda suck (or more specifically, that suicidal ideation is a dangerous and ultimately futile way to try to get yourself out of a funk) don't help. BUT, I am 90% sure the movie (starring AARON PAUL AS JJ OMG) will not have voiceovers of these internalmonologues, creating INSTANT IMPROVEMENT. ( )

Four disparate characters meet on a London rooftop one New Year's Eve; each has come up there with the intention of jumping off. All have their own reasons for suicidal despair. Martin's life is in shambles since his conviction for having sex with an underage girl. Maureen can't stand taking care of her profoundly disabled son any more. JJ has lost both his band and his girlfriend, and teenage Jess has problems with sex, drugs, and parents. The four characters become comrades in the quest to determine if life is indeed worth living.

This novel is charming in its way (as charming as a novel about suicide can be), but I couldn't help but feel that all four of the main characters were a little flat. I never felt that any of them was really likely to take the plunge, so to speak. I've never read a book by Nick Hornby before, but I can't imagine that this is the well-known author's best work. ( )

“Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.”

One New Year's Eve, four very different people meet on the top of a 15-story building in London each, for varying reasons, intending to commit suicide by jumping off. This is a well known 'jumpers' spot but none of them has calculated that they might encounter company. This is the story of what happens next or perhaps what doesn't and in Hornby's distinct style is something of a playful novel about suicide.

The book has no chapters and is narrated by the voices of the four would-be suicides. Martin, the disgraced morning TV show presenter, recently released from prison where he served a sentence for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Maureen, a single mother with a profoundly disabled son,who feels imprisoned by caring for him. Jess, a troubled 18-year-old, daughter of a politician father with a missing older sister and JJ, a failed American musician who failed to go to college and now delivers pizza.

From the beginning Hornby finds uncomfortable comedy in the four characters situation. Suicide is usually a solitary act so when Maureen discovers Martin already on the edge apparently ready to jump, she taps him on the shoulder " to ask him if he was going to be long", thus giving the reader an insight into the book's tone even if they have never read any of the author's other works.

"............You'll be wanting to do it on your own, I'd imagine.'

" 'You'd imagine right.'

" 'I'll go over there.' She gestured to the other side of the roof.

" 'I'll give you a shout on the way down.' "

All four come down from the rooftop alive and together, meaning this is not a book about suicide at all. It's more about what happens when you don't kill yourself. The four characters become a little gang who promise to support one another. One of Hornby's strengths is his sharp sense of how completely the small preoccupations of our lives become inevitably entwined with the big, serious stuff. Frankly I found the first third or so of this book a little slow but as the four of them try and help each other rebuild their lives, with some inadvertent consequences, Hornby at least avoids the temptation to suggest that everyone's' life can be successfully patched. On a down side this does mean that the ending appears a touch aimless.

I read several of Hornby's other books in the past and generally enjoy his writing style. I found this a reasonably enjoyable read and at times I read it with a smile on my face but perhaps not one of his best IMHO. ( )

I found this book at a dollar store while buying party supplies for my son's birthday, so a decent find and a decent read, but I think I like Hornby's essay writing better than his novels thus far. ( )

This was one of the longest-standing books on my TBR, and I'm SO GLAD I finally read it. It's about four very different strangers who meet on top of a tall building on New Year's Eve, each planning to jump off - only they don't. Instead, they grudgingly head back down the stairs together, and after a rocky night, end up making a pact to stay alive until Valentine's Day and see how things go. I loved the four voices - disgraced TV presenter Martin, downtrodden Maureen, madcap young Jess and musician JJ (he was my favourite) - and the way this single shared experience unites them, separates them, brings them meaning but also trouble, creates opportunities but also slams doors. It was real and blackly humorous and strangely uplifting and I can't wait to read my next Nick Hornby novel! ( )