How to Be Good

Rating:
Summary: Amusing but not his best
Review: Hornby's female character lacked the punch of his male predecessors and though I laughed aloud a dozen times in the third quarter of this book, the rest was fairly bleak. If you need another Hornby, check out John Hawes "White Merc with Fins".

Rating:
Summary: How to Be So-So
Review: I've been a fan of Nick Hornby since I read High Fidelity a few years ago and liked Fever Pitch and About a Boy fairly well. This book has some great Nick Hornby touches - real, sarcastic children, lovable characters with murky motives, funny, witty dialogue - but doesn't leave much of an impression once you've read it all the way through.

This book reminded me of Martin Amis' novel Success and I guess was also intended as a Jacobean comedy of sorts but the overall effect is rather flat. Zeitgeist and irony aren't enough - I want to care about the characters! (That goes for Amis too!)

Buy Nick Hornby's other novels and check this one out from the library.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Book!
Review: I loved this book. I read it in three days. Nick Hornby is a master at writing the way people actually speak. I laughed out loud at almost the entire book. It was wonderful. All of Nick's books are well written and easy to read.

Rating:
Summary: Depressing
Review: I don't think Hornby can write from a female point of view. The whole time I was reading the book I felt like the protagonist was man saying the things what he would say, if he were a woman. I never felt like I truly understood what Katie was about or why she did the things she did. She seemed to bounce through life, simply reacting to those around her.

Plus this book was incredibly depressing statement on marriage - do not read it if you are thinking about getting married or are recently married. I loved High Fidelity and About a Boy but did not enjoy this one.

Rating:
Summary: Nick Hornsby failure
Review: The very idea of the main characters is so very repulsive to the reader, it never got me to do anything except hate them thoroughly by the end of this short story about fiddling about nothing. Where 'About a boy' had interesting characters from all walks of life, this objectionable work only expresses the characters in a shallow fashion, jerking to a halt to explain unbelieveable stories about less than interesting people. The only juicy parts of the book were cut short, as confrontations came to a head only to be rigidly cut off to be explained later, as if the writer wanted to convey the story in the fashion of "Bridget Jones' Diary", but then never coming back to the original issue. Horrid novel. Can't waste any more of my time with it, but I did warn you.

Rating:
Summary: Brisk, fearless, and pointed
Review: A great book to escape into for laughs and thoughts. Hornby beautifully weaves humor with paradox. The book made me think about things in new ways, and asked some simple questions that proved unanswerable. I would recommend "How to be Good" to anyone who: (1) is a bleeding heart liberal, (2) isn't a bleeding heart liberal, and/or (3) doesn't mind having their middle-class sensibilities tugged at a bit. While I was somewhat dissatisfied with the ending, it couldn't have credibly ended any other way. I look forward to seeing it as a movie.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting concept
Review: For some reason, this book really disturbed me. It took such a cynical look at marriage and relationships, and broached the fragility of identity and a person's ability to control and or forge it.

The couple at the center of this book is in in an unsatisfactory marriage whereby the man is always angry and cynical and the woman is miserably ensconced in a less than satisfying affair and wanting to get out of her marriage. That is, until the door is opened for her.

The man meets some street guy who has supernatural healing powers brought on by too many drugs, and suddenly has an epiphany. No longer angry and out to save the world as well as his marriage and relationships, his wife decides she likes him better as he was.

This book took on an interesting concept -- that of altruism, and of what would happen if one suddenly decided to be good? Of course, this book takes that to the extreme in all sorts of directions. Hornby somewhat carries it out with witty dialogue, but with some quirky and annoying characters.

Although Hornby is a great writer, and his other books are surefire hits, this one was painful for me. The subject matter bothered me and there was nothing refreshing or enjoyable about the ongoing cynicism. Not to mention the characters, all of whom were unlikeable. In fact, I put this book down after skimming the second half, and will not pick it up again. There was nothing positive to be gained from this book.

Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down from a Hornby fan
Review: Among my favorite reads are "About a Boy" and "High Fidelty." And, truthfully, Hornby writes just as well in "How to Be Good." His characterizations provoke reaction, the depth of Katie's thoughts are very real, and the wry, sarcastic humor is on target.

Even so, I did not enjoy this book. Finishing it was just a hair less than a struggle. I don't necessarily read to feel good all the time (though that is among the reasons), but this book _really_ doesn't make the reader feel good. It's downright depressing and frustrating. I wanted to shake Katie so many times; admonish her for not standing up for herself more.

Then again, I also wanted to shake her for relying so heavily on her profession to make her "good." It is highly annoying. But I suspect that is part of Hornby's point, so I won't go any further down that road.

A talented writer, yes. An interesting, though somewhat dubious storyline. Worth your time? Perhaps. Unfortunately only you can answer that question.

Rating:
Summary: Hornby's Deepest Work to Date
Review: The real strength of this book comes from Nick Hornby's rich portrayal of Katie, and the issues she deals with in an everyday way. I never thought that Hornby could accurately characterize a woman, but boy oh boy was I wrong. But as much fun as Katie's character is (and believe me, she is great), the real issue is, "What does it mean to be good?" Katie is a doctor and helps people daily, and she truly wants to help people, so just because she's had an affair and sometimes hates her husband, does that make her a bad person? On the other hand, for years her husband has been the angriest man in the neighborhood, sour and mean, but all of a sudden he reforms and vows to do good and move homeless teenagers into the homes of his neighbors, things like that. Does that make him a good person, or does the past still count? I think that Hornby's previous books have been fantastic, but this one works on a deeper level. It's not so much what you read, but what you begin thinking about after you've finished the book: it's far more encompassing than his previous novels.

As for his style: it's very clean and simple; uncomplicated. This book is so easy to read, and Hornby's signature tounge-in-cheek humor is in full force. I did feel that the ending was rushed and somewhat unsatisfying, but in the same way I kind of liked the ending after I gave it some thought. For all of Hornby's humor, this is not a happy book. The ending is appropriate in a way. It's amazing how what appears to be such a simple book brings up such complicated issues. He's definitely an easy read, and I would recommend this book to any first-time Hornby readers. For his other fans, it probably isn't what you would expect, but still at his level and will not disappoint.

The greatest asset for this book is that Hornby manages to write about serious stuff in a purely arbitrary way, but then pulls it off so beautifully that it's almost wrong how enjoyable it is. This fact alone is a good enough reason to read "How to Be Good."

Rating:
Summary: This self-conscious and cutesy novel has little to say.
Review: Having loved the movie "About a Boy," based on Nick Hornby's book, I decided to pick up the author's latest novel, "How to Be Good." I was surprised at how diffuse and shallow it turned out to be. Although there are some clever lines here and there, "How to Be Good" fails to coalesce into a coherent whole, and the characters never come to life. What a shame.

Dr. Katie Carr considers herself to be a fairly good person. She works in a North London clinic, helping the poor and the mentally ill, and she believes in all the "right things." She is a liberal and a feminist, she is tolerant of people who are different from her, and she is basically a nice person. Katie has two children, Tom and Molly, whom she loves very much.

However, one day, she realizes that she no longer wants to be married to her husband, David. David has little visible means of employment. He writes a mean and sarcastic column for the local paper, and he is working on a novel that will never be published. Katie's passion for David is tepid at best, and she thinks that their marriage has gone stale. She has been having a clandestine affair and she thinks that she may want to divorce David and start over.

Before the divorce papers are even filed, David undergoes a miraculous transformation. He meets a guru named GoodNews, who not only cures David of his back problems, but who teaches David that the way to "be good" is to give away your possessions and make the homeless part of your everyday life.

Thanks to David's sudden epiphany, the Carr family's lives are turned upside down, and David is suddenly asking people on his block to have homeless people live with them in their spare bedrooms. David even gives away some of his family's possessions to needy people. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell his family that he has done this until after the fact.

If all this seems rather dour rather than amusing, it is. The funny lines that pepper the book do not take away from the thin character development and the overall pointlessness of the book. Is Katie's marriage worth saving? Do we all have an obligation to take care of the outside world when our own families need a great deal of attention? What does it take to "be good?" Hornby doesn't give any coherent answers to this question, nor does he given a good reason for asking the question in the first place. It seems self-evident that how to "be good" is a subjective decision that every individual must make for himself or herself. I do not recommend "How to Be Good." Its occasional cleverness does not make up for the thin plot and the often irritating characters and dialogue.