How to Be Good

Rating:
Summary: Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes....zzz.....
Review: First, she (the book's character) wanted a divorce.
But the husband said, "No". Then she tried again;
and he still refused. Later on, when the kids asked
if there was a divorce brewing, and the husband
said, "Maybe". And she got annoyed with him for
his acknowledgement. So he agreed to the divorce;
but she said she didn't want one after all.
OH-MY-GOD! I was already at Chapter 4 and
this ding-donging was still going on. By then,
I've already made up my mind: I parted ways with

the book and moved on.

Rating:
Summary: Good book...
Review: How To Be Good is the first Nick Hornby book I've read which I haven't seen the movie version of first. In the cases of High Fidelity and About a Boy, seeing the movie first didn't limit my enjoyment of the book, and in this case, even without a film adaptation, I still found the book to be quite entertaining.

The book is the story of Katie Carr, a doctor who is disillusioned with both marriage and parenthood. Her husband has a rather snide streak, but when he undergoes a personality change, she learns to long for her old husband. He has gone from selfish and self-absorbed to extremely selfless, the result of an encounter with a strange New Age healer called GoodNews.
The husband's conversion makes him even harder to live with and forces Katie and her children to reexamine their own values.

Although a generally comic novel, there are definite bits of seriousness also. Katie is a distinctly flawed character, and while you often sympathize with her ordeal, other times she is completely unsympathetic (as even she realizes). Her husband is an interesting character as he remains equally distant from his wife no matter what his approach to life is. And GoodNews is more complex than a simple charlatan, if he even is somehow a fake.

The story does drag in places as Katie seems to spin her wheels a lot, takes little action and can't even decide what to do next. Overall, however, this is a fun and insightful novel and I look forward to the next Hornby book I read.

Rating:
Summary: Not a pleasure, but definitely worth it
Review: This is the first Nick Hornby book I've read. While I felt it compelling enough to pick up every night until I finished, I'm not running out to find another. There are books that provoke one or two emotions, usually satisfaction and/or a bubble of optimism. This isn't one of those feel-good novels that reassure you and your place in the world. Those, you can shut and be done with, no need to go back because there isn't a need to mine for more meaning. How to Be Good is deeper than that. It doesn't shock you or rock your world with new knowledge, but it infiltrates your foundations and gives them a nice big shove.

Most of us like to think we're "good." We pay taxes, recycle, do not condone prejudices, take an interest in critically-praised works, believe in globalized humanitarianism, quietly put up with annoyances. We feel sorry for the poor, hungry, homeless, aspire to the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity, maybe even take part in organized religion. Okay, so does Katie Carr. She's a doctor after all - of course, SHE's good. Somehow in her complacent way of thinking, being a doctor and taking part in the abovementioned activities, automatically makes her a good person, no questions asked. It's just so *obvious,* right?

No, not quite. That's where Hornby makes his point: is that all that it takes to be good? No, IT'S NOT ENOUGH, and what's more, it's pathetic to use the above criteria. Being good is surprisingly unpleasant and entails serious sacrifice. Katie is married to David, a pathologically angry man, whose rotten attitude would make the most jaded of us blanch in dismay. She's nearly a saint for somehow living with him for over two decades, but Katie is having a cheap affair. So much for her canonization (imagine, a doctor and a long-suffering wife - she had it made). Then David meets GoodNews, a strange young man with healing hands. Gone is his chronic back pain and his meanness, just when Katie is feeling justified for her misbehavior.

David is dissonantly gentle, understanding, generous. He goes on a crusade to do his part to save the world. GoodNews moves in and they embark on a semi-spiritual journey to correct society's ills. They persuade neighbors to take in homeless kids, make the Carr kids befriend social outcasts, and give away everything from prized possessions to their carfare home. Katie resists every step of the way, futilely. Taking the reader with her, she struggles with reality and the aspirations of social responsibility, charity, autonomy, altruism, and hope. The more she lives with David, the less she feels she has any of these things. Her marriage and family also unravel as she questions her understanding of goodness because certainly David's actions are examples of true goodness making Katie (and probably most readers) feel like a sham.

The deeper you get into the book, the more you begin to feel increasingly battered and enervated as Katie. David is - if possible - too good. Katie goes on desperate searches to regain her balance, her complacency, an assurance that *her* perceptions are right and David is just over-the-top. She attempts church, moving out, even threatening a minister unless she gives Katie a straight answer. In all of Katie's efforts, Hornby casts a satiric light on them, portraying them as ridiculous and vain. Honestly, it was hard not to feel as nothing was good enough, short of David and GoodNews' methods.

I didn't really find it as funny or witty as others have, but it was a pleasant, smooth read. Very readable and marked by graceful storytelling. I didn't like Katie or David or any of the characters much, but they were believable - sometimes painfully so. Hornby did an excellent job of writing in a woman's voice. I couldn't sympathize with Katie, but I could empathize with her. Hornby is definitely a writer I'll be considering in the future - reading him is deceptively easy, but what he's got to say lingers for quite a while afterwards, as you lie on the ground after the rug is swept out from under you. That doesn't sound terribly positive, but sometimes you have to look at things from a startling and unusual perspective.

Rating:
Summary: How to be a boring book...
Review: This was a very dry, yet easy read. I have to admit I finished this book because I was hoping that the author's past performance would shine through. It didn't and I was disappointed. I read High Fidelity and About a Boy both before they were slated to be movies and I absolutely loved them. I've underlined sections of each book that were particularly profound. Each chapter of HTBG was like the one before. The characters weren't very interesting. Their problems seemed contrived. Their involvement was bland. To sum this book up in one word, Boring.

Rating:
Summary: Good for Hornby fans
Review: If you like Hornby's style, and I love it, you will not be let down by "How to Be Good".

Hornby is still a relatively young author, and certainly has room to improve, but I've read all of his work and enjoyed this one as much as High Fidelity, and only slightly less than About a Boy.

Rating:
Summary: An utter waste of time, from an otherwise great author.
Review: Reading this book reminded me of the experience of hearing a new, bad album from a usually incredible band. They are your favorites, you really want to like the album, you try and convince yourself that it is good... but, in the end, you know that it is not. Hornby is an incredible, inventive, original writer - so where did this terrible book come from? It reads like a college creative writing project written by a young student who has yet to learn anything about the real world. Pointless characters, no plot to speak of, unbelievably crass plot twists, parts that are supposed to be funny but are not. Then, worst of all, the constant, harping moralising that reminds me of 16-year-olds who think they 'know it all' about the evils of the world - but don't. The only possible explanation that springs to mind is that Hornby had a publishing deadline to meet, panicked, pulled some old high school musings from under his mattress and slapped a title on it. He's just ruined his hard-earned reputation, and gone from the Beatles of novelists to Milli Vanilli...

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining read with many levels
Review: This book will keep you in stitches for a few hours (it's on the short-side) -- your airplane rowmates will wonder what you are sniggering at. The book can go much deeper than a couple laughs if you allow yourself to muse over the difficulties of actually "being good." I found the narrator, Katie Carr, to be a completely unsympathetic character - at one point she tells her daughter that her parents will not get divorced if she is good. However, because I did not like or relate to Katie or her husband, David, I was not on "Katie's side" or "David's side" throughout their quarrels. I think I put a lot more thought into the read as an unbiased observer. My boyfriend is reading the book now, and he is enjoying it as much as I did. A bunch of my friends would really enjoy this book, and I would recommend this book as a present for anyone except the devoutly religious.

Rating:
Summary: Not Hornby's Best
Review: After having read and thoroughly enjoyed Hornby's two previous works, "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy", I had expectations that "How to be Good" would be of a similar standard. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case.

"About a Boy" is simply too far fetched to be funny. It is hard to imagine someone going through a road to Damascus conversion and changing from an embittered person to a person who only does "good". While the style is perhaps classic Hornby, the subject matter just simply doesn't work.

My advice to readers new to Hornby is to read his other works before this one. If this one is chosen as your introduction to the author, my fear is that your introduction will have no follow up. And that would be a shame as Hornby has much to offer.

Rating:
Summary: How to be good
Review: I have to agree with some of the posts that I see below. This was a very odd book. I purchased it thinking it was going to be one of those British-like "Bridget Jones" books. How far from the truth.

The characters were wimpy and boring. Good News should have been kicked out of the house along with the husband and the coniving daughter.

This was a waste of a read.

Rating:
Summary: Good Satire For The Times
Review: Meet an average 40 something British couple with marital problems. She's a doctor with decidedly liberal leanings and is considered the "good" one in the marriage only now she's having an affair. He's a columnist known as "the angriest man in Holloway" and makes a living by ranting about everything and everyone - he's not easy to live with. To annoy his physician wife he decides to see a faith healer known as GoodNews about his bad back and ends up coming away a changed man. He forgives his wife and decides to give away many of their possessions (including his son's computer because they don't need two). He starts a community program to encourage his neighbors to take in homeless teenagers and basically begins to try and convince his wife that it's their duty to change the world and make it a better place. She's now forced to decide just how good do you have to be in order to be a good person, she doesn't want a homeless kid in the house and she's worked hard for the things they have but how do you say no. I read this book right after reading Carol Sheild's Unless and I thought this was a much more truthful look at what it means to be good and how much self sacrifice is too much.