The Day The Homeless Monkey Came To Stay (How to be good - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	How to be good - Nick Hornby
Date:	14/05/02 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wondefully written, great characters, lively story

Disadvantages: it stopped me revising....

Normally I love shopping at airports, especially Manchester. There’re good shops that always seem to have things that high street shops don’t, there’s the buzz from seeing the 50kg bars of toblerone (even though I don’t like the stuff) and there’s the nice warm and excited feeling in your tummy because you know that, if all goes well, you’ll be on a plane soaring across the skies in a couple of hours. Sometimes, however, it all goes wrong. At Manchester last autumn, waiting to fly to the States, I was on my own because, erm, I was travelling alone. When I’m alone at airports I shop. And shop. And shop some more, because there’s no partner / parent / sibling there to stop me. In Waterstones in Terminal 1 they had a “Special! Only available to fliers! Wonderfully unique!” edition of this book. Therein lay the dilemma. I enjoyed High Fidelity, and loved About A Boy, and the parts of How To Be Good that I’d read novelized in the Times had been fantastic. Plus, this was the paperback version. But, it wasn’t the mainstream paperback version. It was a limited edition £9.99 version which, in my book, is almost as bad as a hardback. Hardbacks aren’t me – they look funny on the shelf for a start – and this version, although softback, was also big. Too big. So, with a heavy heart, I stopped myself buying it, and bought “Posh and Becks” instead. Ha. Smart move, not. 6 months later we were in Tesco when, bam! , I found myself staring at the standard release – and proper sized – version of Hornby’s latest. It was £3.84 and I had to buy it. So I did it. And I read it while I should have been revising. And now that my exam is over I’m writing this for you.

For the first time, Hornby has told his story from a woman’s point of view and surprisingly, it’s just as good as the male viewpoint ones. On the very first page we are plunged into th
e middle of the lives of Katie, David and their family, as she sits in a carpark, hundreds of miles from her London home, and tells him she wants a divorce. Only some of the usual things you’d expect to follow such an announcement happen, but as the story progresses in leaps and bounds, hurtling towards a most unusual but none the less satisfying conclusion, there are numerous twists and turns. The story centers around Katie, middle class GP, Radio 4 listener, mother of two and all round Good Girl. Katie, though, has been feeling somewhat less than Good lately. There’s the naughty nookie with a naked stranger for a start, not to mention the deliberate disregard for her depressed brother’s life, her almost undying hatred for her spouse and the pure contempt with which she views far too many of her patients. Just when she’s about to break away from it all, something happens which makes her reconsider. David, her until now self-centered hatred filled journalist husband, goes to see an alternative therapist and is becomes nice and good over night, and Katie just doesn’t know what to think.

Through the dozen or so chapters that follow, we are dragged along on a roller coaster ride with David and his new best friend, the aptly name GoodNews, as they plot to save the world. It’s not a nice funfilled plan you see: it’s a plot. From lecturing his neighbours on their duty to take in street kids to giving away his kid’s toys, David is clearly shown as a man on a mission. Things like this don’t last for ever, and eventually things begin to crack. Sceptisism begins to emerge, and with it come worries and fears until the life and belief system they’ve worked so hard to build up slows begins to crumble and soon comes crashing to the ground. Concerned as she is about the affect this might have on the kids who have lived through their father’s transformation the good guy and almost back again, Katie can̵
7;t help but sit and smirk. This is one of the main reasons I liked the book – the characters are so easy to identify with, right down to the schadenfreude aspect.

Hornby is a good writer. No, I take that back, Hornby is a great writer, and this is a great book. The story is compulsively readable, the characters undeniably lifelike. If you’ve ever known a child like Molly (so god damn priggy that you want to beat her up), a chap like Monkey (in a nutshell, not what he seems) or a fellow like GoodNews (Kooky with a capital K), or ever had the smug I’m better than you feelings shared by Katie, then this is the book for you. It’s a hilarious tongue in cheek look at today’s society. Or at least the part composed of middle aged, married London doctors. There are as usual with Hornby books, pop culture references that help bring the book to life – you’ve heard of the bands and films in the top 10 in the book because they’re still in the top 10 now. I couldn’t get enough of it, and I almost wish I’d bought it back in October instead of Morton’s meager offering. Believe me, there’s no comparison.


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How To Be Good

Published by Penguin

ISBN 0 140 28701 9

£6.99 rrp (but you'd be mad to pay that)

~13 x 20 cm – just the right size :p

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