Everything Changes (How to be good - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	How to be good - Nick Hornby
Date:	14/04/02 (369 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: there are some laugh out loud moments, Hornby has tried something new

Disadvantages: He didn't pull it off, no real flow to the storyline, forgetable charqacters

Y’know when you first buy a book, you sit with a hope and glint in your eye that this one may take away a couple of hours a day for a week or so, well when I bought ‘How to be Good’ I had a quiet hope that this time Nick Hornby would be able to write something that could last me more than a couple of days – how wrong I was, its less than 48 hours since I started the book – and well, I just finished it.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I have a dislike of Nick Hornby, in fact if I was being honest I’d say that theres only 3 authors that I’d buy a book by solely because they’re involved in it – and Nick Hornby comes way above Stephen King and Alex Garland any day. For you see I can judge how much I enjoyed reading a book by how long it takes me to read it, the longer it takes me the more dull it is to me – and How to be Good broke my record reading time by a whole 2 days, so it has to be, well, errr, good doesn’t it?

So first things first a little bit about the story-line – the biggest selling point of this title was that Nicks done this one from the female point of view rather than the male and well, to be honest, it’s a classic Hornby tale, Katies a doctor so automatically she qualifies as a good person or at least that’s what she feels in her mind, but shes also a bad person in her mind as well, especially when we open the tale to her laying in bed with a man she hardly knows less than 24 hours after telling her husband she wants a divorce.

But she has a reason though as David (her Husband) is apparently ‘the angriest man in Holloway’ and has been writing a book for the last x amount of years which in her eyes is genuinely awful.

As the story progresses we get to learn that David really is the kind of person that Katie has described – he tries to get one-upmanship with the kids, is obnoxious and gets ang
ry about the stupid things in life like Old People on buses and almost every famous person (apart from a couple of comedians like Tony Hancock and Jerry Seinfeld – they’re geniuses apparently), and hes the kind of guy you want to hate.

Katies described her feelings over all this as ‘she doesn’t want to leave David’ she wants ‘a new David’. As the book goes on the reader then learns the great tale that you should be careful what you wish for – it may come true.

As the story progresses we start to see a dramatic change in David – he buys tickets to a musical that Katie wants to see, hes considerate of other people, he gives money to homeless people and most importantly he starts to pay attention to Katies wants and needs in life, so much so that she finds she doesn’t want to divorce her husband any more.

Of course when someone you care about changes that much you start to wonder why they’ve gone through this metamorphosis and before long David tells her – hes been seeing a faith healer to help with his bad back and hes kinda helped him some more with his emotional problems – the very fact of this is absurd as David never takes any type of treatment unless its dangerous to pregnant women and small babies (aka drugs), but its true – and whats even more absurd about it is that the Drs name is DJ GoodNews, a Dr who charges £200 for one 5 minute consultancy and doesn’t use any known medical practices, this as you can probably guess is a cause of friction between David and his GP wife.

This friction is further increased when a couple of days later David decides to take Molly their 8-year-old daughter to GoodNews in a hope of curing her eczema and surprise surprise – hes healed her. Before long David comes home with a request for Katie – can GoodNews stay there as hes about to be evicted from his ‘surgery’ and needs a place to
stay for a couple of nights – little did Katie know that this couple of nights would expand to months and induce an even stronger change in David as he takes in homeless people and starts to care a little too much about people less fortunate than himself.

So that’s the basics of the storyline (and believe me as much as I’ve given a lot of information away – theres a lot more in the story) and how does the book feel? Well…. Although I said it was classic Nick Hornby (and it is) I feel a little cheated by this one, the Storylines there – but theres not as much building of it as there are in Nicks 3 previous releases, in Fever Pitch we seemed to go along at a slow and steady pace gradually building the characters up as we went through each of Nicks tales, that’s not here in ‘How to be Good’, in High Fidelity there was a strong underlying current in the story at all times – once again that’s not here, and let me tell you this one ain’t no ‘About A Boy’ either.

However having said that I bet you’re all expecting me to say that I hated the book aren’t you?, well hates such a strong word and it’s the type of thing I save for Terry Pratchett books, and although I don’t feel that Nick Hornby has lived up to his abilities here – its definitely still a good book, just not a great one.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Nicks writing is that he won’t go into great detail explaining what things look like in the book – you’re left to your imaginations as to what people and characters really do look like and that’s the kind of thing I like to see in a book – if I wanted to know what the character looks like I’d have waited for the film release (and believe me there probably will be one – all previous 3 books have had film releases), but I’m happy to let my mind do the talking when I
’m reading a book.

The Characters hes given us to work with well – its hard to get to understand them, as theres very little building of the characters throughout the book, they all just seem to be ‘there’ – in fact the only character I feel any affection towards is Tom, the 10 year old son of the family, he reminds me of me a little bit when I was that age – and in fact he probably reminds everyone of a 10 year old boy they know or once knew. The only other character that sticks in my memory is a bit-parter – his name is Dick and he likes to make compilation tapes, sound familiar to all you Nick Hornby fans?, well if you’re thinking the same thing I am Nicks obviously paying homage to his biggest success ‘High Fidelity’ as it seems too much of a coincidence to be someone else.

So then what do I think of it overall?, I liked it but I also disliked it – if you’re a hardened Hornby fan you’ll find that like with myself – it won’t even last 48 hours from cover to cover – if you’re a newcomer to Nicks writing I’d really recommend you started off with High Fidelity and worked from there, but then its all up to you, what we have in total is a genuinely good read that does have some laugh out loud (not LOL) moments – its just not up to the standard I’ve grown to expect from Mr.Hornby.

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