A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
by Zia ~ February 22nd, 2006. Filed under: Books.
I’ve been feeling like I’m coming down with something all day, and so at 5 popped into bed for a quick little nap. The next thing I knew, it was 8:30 –and midway through my Wednesday night pottery class. Oh the guilt! I figured I might as well do something useful, and catch up on all the books I’ve read recently. I am, once again, woefully behind.
Let me say first of all that I have loved previous Nick Hornby novels: High Fidelity; About a Boy (made into an execrable movie); and How to Be Good, which is probably my favorite. So I was pretty excited when A Long Way Down finally made its way into my hot little hands after 54 holds at the Seattle Public Library.
The novel is about an unlikely foursome who meet on New Year’s Eve as they each plan to off themselves off the roof of Topper’s House, the most sought after London destination for suicides. As a result of all piling onto the roof at the same time, they form a strange alliance that straddles the different worlds they all live in. There’s Martin, the former morning TV host who has lost his career, family, and self-respect after having slept with a 15-year old. There’s Maureen, the primary caregiver of a comatose, severely challenged son. Then there’s Jess, who’s a young, exceedingly ill-mannered girl with a very unhappy past, and JJ, an American musician who is wallowing in misery because his band–never very good to begin with–broke up, and his girlfriend dumped him.
The novel is told from the perspective of alternating viewpoints, from one character to the next, and on to a fairly predictable ending. In other words, they all realize they never wanted to do it in the first place. I found the novel not bad — indeed, one of Hornby’s abiding strengths is exploring his characters as thoroughly as they were real people in therapy. His deft characterizations and authentic voice render most of his protaganists both memorable and believable. Martin, Maureen, JJ, and Jess are no different.
However, I found the circumstances of their worlds colliding to be so staged that it cast a damper on the story. Yeah, the characters were believable — but that they all meet on New Year’s planning to commit suicide? And they don’t just scurry off into the dark to nurse their wounds? It all felt so artificial and posed and it was hard to get past.