Sancho
08-13-2009, 10:45 PM
Nick Hornby has a new book coming out next month (September, 2009) so I finally decided to get around to reading his last one, A Long Way Down. You know, so I could get all warmed up and stuff for the new one.
Loved it.
It goes like this: On the rooftop of Toppers’ House in North London on New Year’s Eve, a group of four previously unacquainted people have a chance meeting, and they decide to form a gang. They are all of different temperament, background, domestic situation, character, and age: Martin is 40ish and a former TV morning-show host (Former because he has recently been released from prison for having sex with a fifteen-year-old). Maureen is 50ish and a single, stay-at-home mom who is caring for her severely disabled twenty-year-old son. JJ is 30ish and an ex-pat American working as a pizza delivery man after the breakup of his rock-n-roll band and the departure of his girlfriend. Jess is a London teen with – issues. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, they were all on the rooftop that night for the same reason: to commit suicide.
As with his first novel, High Fidelity, Hornby’s story telling method is in the first person, told directly and intimately to the reader. In High Fidelity the neurotic protagonist, Rob, tells the story from start to finish, but in A Long Way Down each of the four main characters take turns guiding the reader through the story. It’s an interesting technique and it allows the author to use the strengths of the first person narrative and extend those strengths to four unique points of view. I’m sure professors of interpretive literature have a name for this style, but I don’t know what it is. Anyway, in my opinion, it is the method that provides for Hornby’s superb character development in this novel.
Here’s an example of Hornby’s first person narrative told intimately to the reader. I should set it up first. On the Toppers’ house that night the four of them decide to give their suicide decision some extra time just to see if they are really serious. During that time they plan to get together and check-up on each other. One of the things they decide to do in the interim is to read the work of writers who have killed themselves. I chose this vignette because, well, this is a literature forum. Here’s Jess:
We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: She killed herself because she couldn’t make herself understood. You only have to read one sentence to see that. I sort of indentify with her a bit, because I suffer from that sometimes, but her mistake was to go public with it. I mean, it was lucky in a way, because she left a sort of souvenir behind so that people like us could learn from her difficulties and that, but it was bad luck for her. And she had some bad luck, too, if you think about it, because in the olden days anyone could get a book published because there wasn’t so much competition. So you could march into a publisher’s office and go, you know, I want this published, and they’d go, Oh, OK, then. Whereas now they’d go, No, dear, go away, no one will understand you. Try Pilates or salsa dancing instead.
There’s a natural ease and flow to the writer’s prose and it was a pleasure to read. Even so, he managed to get at some pretty hefty philosophical questions in the novel, questions of life and meaning, and he did it by way of a comic novel rather than a bludgeoning philosophical tract.
Here I go with an opinion again but I thought his two stronger characters were Jess and Martin. They seemed to me to be spot-on. Maureen was a little flatter and yet he examined closely the relationship (or her imagined relationship) between her and her son. JJ missed a little. I suppose I could hear Hornby’s British come through JJ’s American from time to time, just a subtle slip-up in slang or a minor difference in syntax. It’s the same sort of thing I hear when a Hollywood actor attempts a southern accent. Close, but no cigar, mon frère.
Speaking of Hollywood, I understand that Johnny Depp bought the movie rights to this novel but I don’t think any work has been done yet. High Fidelity was made into a pretty good movie, although I thought John Cusack played Rob a little too serious. That said, I thought Hugh Grant nailed Will in About a Boy. (I mean, Hugh Grant didn’t literally nail Will, he just interpreted the part well.)
So, there you go. I went down to my local book-monger yesterday and put my name on the list for Nick Hornby’s new novel: Juliet, Naked. It’s due to be released in the US on September, 29. I’ll make it a birthday present from me - to me.
Loved it.
It goes like this: On the rooftop of Toppers’ House in North London on New Year’s Eve, a group of four previously unacquainted people have a chance meeting, and they decide to form a gang. They are all of different temperament, background, domestic situation, character, and age: Martin is 40ish and a former TV morning-show host (Former because he has recently been released from prison for having sex with a fifteen-year-old). Maureen is 50ish and a single, stay-at-home mom who is caring for her severely disabled twenty-year-old son. JJ is 30ish and an ex-pat American working as a pizza delivery man after the breakup of his rock-n-roll band and the departure of his girlfriend. Jess is a London teen with – issues. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, they were all on the rooftop that night for the same reason: to commit suicide.
As with his first novel, High Fidelity, Hornby’s story telling method is in the first person, told directly and intimately to the reader. In High Fidelity the neurotic protagonist, Rob, tells the story from start to finish, but in A Long Way Down each of the four main characters take turns guiding the reader through the story. It’s an interesting technique and it allows the author to use the strengths of the first person narrative and extend those strengths to four unique points of view. I’m sure professors of interpretive literature have a name for this style, but I don’t know what it is. Anyway, in my opinion, it is the method that provides for Hornby’s superb character development in this novel.
Here’s an example of Hornby’s first person narrative told intimately to the reader. I should set it up first. On the Toppers’ house that night the four of them decide to give their suicide decision some extra time just to see if they are really serious. During that time they plan to get together and check-up on each other. One of the things they decide to do in the interim is to read the work of writers who have killed themselves. I chose this vignette because, well, this is a literature forum. Here’s Jess:
We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: She killed herself because she couldn’t make herself understood. You only have to read one sentence to see that. I sort of indentify with her a bit, because I suffer from that sometimes, but her mistake was to go public with it. I mean, it was lucky in a way, because she left a sort of souvenir behind so that people like us could learn from her difficulties and that, but it was bad luck for her. And she had some bad luck, too, if you think about it, because in the olden days anyone could get a book published because there wasn’t so much competition. So you could march into a publisher’s office and go, you know, I want this published, and they’d go, Oh, OK, then. Whereas now they’d go, No, dear, go away, no one will understand you. Try Pilates or salsa dancing instead.
There’s a natural ease and flow to the writer’s prose and it was a pleasure to read. Even so, he managed to get at some pretty hefty philosophical questions in the novel, questions of life and meaning, and he did it by way of a comic novel rather than a bludgeoning philosophical tract.
Here I go with an opinion again but I thought his two stronger characters were Jess and Martin. They seemed to me to be spot-on. Maureen was a little flatter and yet he examined closely the relationship (or her imagined relationship) between her and her son. JJ missed a little. I suppose I could hear Hornby’s British come through JJ’s American from time to time, just a subtle slip-up in slang or a minor difference in syntax. It’s the same sort of thing I hear when a Hollywood actor attempts a southern accent. Close, but no cigar, mon frère.
Speaking of Hollywood, I understand that Johnny Depp bought the movie rights to this novel but I don’t think any work has been done yet. High Fidelity was made into a pretty good movie, although I thought John Cusack played Rob a little too serious. That said, I thought Hugh Grant nailed Will in About a Boy. (I mean, Hugh Grant didn’t literally nail Will, he just interpreted the part well.)
So, there you go. I went down to my local book-monger yesterday and put my name on the list for Nick Hornby’s new novel: Juliet, Naked. It’s due to be released in the US on September, 29. I’ll make it a birthday present from me - to me.