the good life? (How to be good - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: pje

Product:	How to be good - Nick Hornby
Date:	26/08/01 (180 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, thought-provoking

Disadvantages: Not out in paperback for some time.

Why don't we like do-gooders?

Is it because we're all talk-gooders? Happy to give money to charity, donate our old crap to a jumble sale or help the homeless by buying a Big Issue, just as long as we don't have to put up with them in our comfy homes or comfy lives because, let's face it, they're all smelly. Right?

Oh, you disagree?

So you'll be happy to invite a street-kid home for dinner tomorrow then? Hmmm, thought not. ...Off topic? Me? Oh no - this is roughly what happens in Nick Hornby's latest book (amongst other things).

Maybe I've been a bit naughty there, giving away a bit too much, but you might not read it otherwise - I nearly didn't. Having read the blurb inside the front cover I expected a story of marital strife. Frankly it sounded like a bit of a drag, and early on it was.
Other people's domestic problems can be rather tiresome.
At times this book makes marriage seem like an unrealistic fairy-tale. 'Just stop moaning and get divorced for goodness sake!'
I wanted to yell at Katie, the narrator...

Katie Carr is a G.P. and at the outset she is having an affair and wants out of her marriage to David, who is the Angriest Man in Holloway according to the title of his bilious newspaper column.

"David, like me, is highly skilled in the art of marital warfare"
Katie tells us. However, David undergoes a personality-changing experience when he meets a faith healer. A hefty suspension of disbelief is required here, as he is transformed, Stepford Husband style, into a cross between two classic Richard Briers characters... The naive helpfulness of Martin Bryce (Ever Decreasing Circles) meets the zealous enthusiasm of Tom Good from the Good Life (except that for self-sufficiency, read help-the-needy).

I vaguely remember the discussion of this book on Newsnight Review concentrating on whether Hornby was convincing when writin
g from a female point of view. Well, as far as I'm concerned, that is missing the point. The clue's in the title: How To Be Good…

How to be a good spouse, how to be a good person,
how to be good to the needy, how to be good for yourself.
Or perhaps that should be: How Not To Be Guilty,
or How To Be Part of the Solution not Part of the Problem?

Hornby uses David's new-found naive desire to DO something GOOD as a way of poking fun at pretentious intellectuals, liberal professionals (and pretentious liberal intellectual professionals) who talk-the-talk but would run-away rather than walk-the-walk.

At times it's like having someone reach inside you,
pull out your conscience, hold it under your nose and tweak it.
But don't worry, it's not preachy at all, it's actually very amusing.


"How To Be Good" is on the long-list for the 2001 Booker Prize.

ISBN: 0670888230

Summary: