Is there something wrong with your life? (How to be good - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	How to be good - Nick Hornby
Date:	08/10/01 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: witty, thought provoking, insightful

Disadvantages: wish it had been longer

I bought "How to be good" for my husband, and waited patiently until he'd read it. It wasn't easy, but that's the sort of thing that good people do..... or is it?

Katie Carr is a doctor, she believes in being good, she tries to do the right thing, but she has no plans about changing the world. She is a long way short of perfect - she gets tetchy with her children, she's had an affair, (but there were reasons of course) and, perhaps worst of all, she has to live with the angriest man in Holloway. David Carr does very little - but what he does mostly is write a short angry column in a local paper. He's terribly angry - not about thrid world debt or pollution, but about old ladies on buses and ice cream at the theatre. His rage seems comical, sinister, strangely mispalced. Katie and David are at war, taking continual pot shots at each other. Early in the book, Katie asks for a divorce, and to irritate her, David takes his strained back to a faith healer.

Not only does DJ GoodNews heal David, he moves in with them and starts planning to rescue the homelss and teach everyone how to live better lives. David gives away his son's computer, invites a homeless lad called Monkey to live with them and encourages his children to bring home children they really don't like as some weird form of pennance. Throughout this, Katie remains sceptical, powerless to stop what is happening in her home, and disgusted by her husbands smug, self satisfied attitude to his new found enlightenment.

This was an odd read for me, being the stay at home trying to write a book partner with the impression that we aren't living our lives in the right way. Fortunatly, there ends the resemblance. I spent a lot of time thinking about it - why is David wrong? I know he is, but why? Well, firstly he's too busy being smug - smugness and holier-than-thou attitudes don't make things better. He manages a couple of good things, but als
o prompts his son to start stealing, he upsets his children and his wife repeatedly - thinking that the bigger picture is more important. I've always felt that charity should begin at home - that you should make sure those around you are happy as your first priority and work out to the rest of the world from there. If you want to change your life, you should change your own life rather than other people's - give away your own computer and gadgets, not those belonging to your children. There's nothing good or liberal about forcing other people into things that they don't like. David's mistake is that he wants to change everyone else, not himself. That's my theory anyway.

How well does Hornby create a female voice? Interesting question. I was fine with Katie - but I'm not the most femenine of women and if I was writing about myself, I probably wouldn't mention my appearance much or be all that comfortable talking about sex. There are women like Katie on that score. She's burned out emotionally, worldly weary and cynical - I can recognise that too. The great gender divide is nothing like as big as perhaps we would like to think. Most of gender is just steryotyping anyway (I could go on about this for hours) so hooraa for the slightly androgenous Katie who desn't spend ages talking about makeup, and hoorra for women like her!

I would wholeheartedly recomend this book. it's not big, but it is both funny and clever.

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