Bleeding hearts and how to live with them (How to be good - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: robqueen

Product:	How to be good - Nick Hornby
Date:	08/07/01 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, good character development

Disadvantages: DJ Goodnews? What sort of name is that?

Nick Hornby, the master of modern laddism, has attempted a bit of a departure here, in that the whole book is written from a woman's viewpoint. Our humble narrator is a GP, married to the self-styled 'Angriest man in Holloway', who writes a newspaper column, railing against everything from theatre curtains to liberalism to life in general, just to prove how angry he is.

Katie, the narrator, is busy demonstrating how fed up with her life she is by having an affair. On the day that she finally decides she wants a divorce, her husband, David, suddenly undergoes a complete personality change. All of a sudden, he's no longer the angriest man in Holloway. He's not even slightly miffed any more. In fact, he's filled with nothing but love for humanity and all its foibles. This turns out to be due to a meeting with DJ Goodnews, a local faith-healer, philosopher and general odd person.

The rest of the story concerns the attempts of David and DJ Goodnews to make the world a better place. And to set out rules for telling people How To Be Good. To achieve their aims, they help the homeless, give away their (and other peoples') worldly goods, and generally act as saintly as possible. Of course, this starts to get tiring for Katie pretty quickly. Another main thread of the story is how all this do-gooding affects David and Katie's fragile relationship. She wasn't too keen on the old, angry David, but will she prefer the new, saintly version?

Where I felt the book was the strongest was in the way it examines middle-class liberal attitudes, with all kinds of 'what if' questions, concerning how the average middle-class liberal would react if all their firmly-held beliefs were actually put to the test.

I didn't enjoy it as much as 'High Fidelity' or 'About A Boy' (hence only 4 stars), but it's a very good read, and it gets the reader thinking about various philosophical issues.
For instance, there aren't a lot of people who think homelessness is a 'good thing', but how far are any of us prepared to go to actually do anything about it? The predictable answer has to be 'not very far'.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who normally enjoys Nick Hornby. Or anyone interested in a good old late night philosophical discussion.

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