How to Be Good

I was very surprised that Mr. Hornby could write a book like this from a woman's point of view. The couple in this book are in deep trouble with their marriage. The husband, David is a cynical man who seems to have complaints abpout everything. He writes a small column in a English newspaper where he lives called "The angriest man in Holloway". It even has a picture of him scowling. He writes about old people and their "antics" on public transportation. How they never have their money ready for a bus ride, they never use the seats set aside for them in the front, and the most hilarious, why they stand up ten minutes before their stop only to fall over in an "alarming and indignified fashion". I know it is completly "politically incorrect" to laugh at others misfortune. I was actually enjoying the hilarity of this man taking the time to think and write about these things with such seriousness. He also gets his friends in the act with complaining about things like the decsion making process at Madame Trussaud's. Of course they think he is fall over funny and laugh and laugh. The author explains the friends are laughing with him not at him.I belevie they are unaware of how deep his anger is and how it shows itself in private with hi family, particularly with his wife. His wife, Katie, is a doctor who explains frequently that she is a good person and can't understand how she got into her marital mess. She does have an affair with a man only because he pays attention to her and gives her what she does not get from David. Positive reinforcment and tenderness. all the time she does still want her husband but she hates the fights they get into and how they seem to know excatly how to "get to each other". They also have two children who are caught in the middle. They seem to do what, I remember from personal experience, is to ignore the parents and hope things will get better. Then they become more vocal about the situation and start to behave with anger and hurt. They also ask questions which in most cases are ignored or explained away by the parents. Enter "DR. GOODNEWS. This guy is a piece of work. David goes to this guy, he finds in an ad, for his constant back pain.Modern doctors where unable to help him so he gave up on them. Miraculously David is healed by this DR. GOODNEWS using his hands. He then send his daughter who has cronic eczema. He also heals her. Somehow this DR. ends up moving in with the family. He actually helps David to become "spiritually enlitened" which not only end his anger but sends his family on an unbeleivable emotional odyssey. This book is hilarious despite the almost sickening relationship between David and Katie.I highly recomend this book to anyone who enjoys this kind of humor and insight into marriage.

Was this "darkly funny", "marvelous", or even "more than a little surprising" to me? No. "A hoot" ? Now, that's hilarious... It was "a zip to read" though, as I readily identified with the middle-aged narrator who is unsettled in her marriage, and just wants to find out and judge for herself what the author has to say about How to Be Good. Though the language flows easily and fluently, I found the sarcastic tone of conversations between the characters to be sadly commonplace. I heard same old voice we often do in screen dramas, internet forums, blogs and other places (like home) where people are only too happy to unleash their anger and unhappiness onto each other. Awaiting the "daringly different" to emerge with the arrival of mystical healer GoodNews, I was again disappointed with a plot that was not fantastical (yes, I was looking for escape) but almost familiar enough to me to seem painfully unoriginal. In the end, I think it's the failure to achieve the big mission of spreading good as much as it's the failure to live up to personal ideals of being good which allows the characters some saving grace; that is, to recognize that we are Only human/Born to make mistakes. And it's only through our struggles that we can evolve, for better or worse-- because nothing stays the same.

My favorite (so far) of Nick Hornby's books, A Long Way Down, impressed me as an extremely ambitious achievement. One reviewer called it "a tight-rope walk;" a spot-on description, if I've ever heard one. To set about narrating the same story from the points of view of four separate characters is bold enough, in and of itself. That these four voices came from such varied social stratum and disparate generations impressed this greenhorn novelist no end. But, the most daring challenge of this circus act was this: two out of four were female. How a male author dares to speak from a woman's point of view is beyond me. I won't even write a song with a strictly female lyric, unless I'm working with a female collaborator. But, Hornby pulled this trick off seamlessly. But alas, Hornby has now leapt into the breach. This master of first-person personal has penned an entire novel inhabiting the voice, the thoughts, the emotions of a woman. I don't know how many male authors have attempted this insane stunt; but it's a feat that surely rivals Evil Kneivel leaping the Snake River on a motorcycle. Talk about a long way down! I imagine that How To Be Good was born of some kind of dare. I doubt that it was Hornby's agent who goaded him into trying this perilous task. More likely, the novelist challenged himself: "Okay, I've written from the POV of a pre-pubescent boy, a teenaged boy, and most all of the stages of adulthood. I've even spoken on behalf of a rebellious 20-ish punk chick and a frumpy spinster. What's next? Ah, yes," he might have pondered out-loud, upon a chilly, London morning, eyeing himself in a foggy bathroom mirror, "an upper-middle-class, professional woman. That's the ticket." The ticket to where? What exactly is the upside here? This, it seems to me, is a guaranteed lose/lose proposition. Fail, and women readers all around the globe will blow raspberries at you. Pull it off, and... well, what are male readers gonna think? Even a guy like myself, who personifies the term metrosexual and nearly always finds machismo the least attractive of all human traits (the exception being when five-foot-nine, 180 lb Courtland Finnegan throws a six-six tight end outweighing him by 100 pounds to the turf -- I find animal aggression on behalf of the Tennessee Titans very appealing), anyway, even I would never be tempted to take this plunge. Surely, men of letters have depicted female characters for millennia, put them into all sorts of situations, and dared to guess how they might think, feel, and act. But, to actually narrate an entire story from inside the head of the opposite sex? That is some kinda risky business! I mentioned this to my wife the other day. She basically said, "So what?" I was incredulous that my smart, funny, literary-savvy better half didn't see the precariousness in Hornby's limb walk, nor did she seem to resent it a whit. She being in every way a very modern woman, I assumed she'd at least take a "we'll-see-about-that" attitude. I had to remind myself that, although Stacey has always been an avid reader, she has never written a novel, and has not-a clue (and, I'm afraid, very little curiosity) as to how we authors go about it. She, in fact, has read a scant few pages from my books (for fear she might discover something about me that she doesn't like. While her turning a blind eye to my life's work occasionally hurts my feelings, her "see-no-evil" attitude may also be contributing to the preservation of our 23-year marriage. Sad, yes; but, potentially in the end, a mixed blessing.) "I would never, ever attempt that," I equivocated, referring to Hornby writing from a female perspective. "Why not?" she queried, with uncharacteristic naïveté. "Because I have a penis," I reminded her. "You act girly sometimes," she dug. "No mammary glands, no ovaries, no menstrual cycle, no massive hormonal swings," I recounted. "Being in touch my own feminine side doesn't qualify me to speak on behalf of a woman." Stacey harrumphed the discussion closed, as if I was making a Grand Teton (pun intended) out of a chicken pock. What I'd thought would be a hot-button issue worthy of substantial discussion was of little concern to her. Too much Oprah, I pontificated -- silently. Anyway, having read and enjoyed the heck outta the book, I stand in awe of Hornby's literary cliff dive. How To Be Good is exactly what its jacket advertises: "Hilarious" and "Fearless." Never having owned a vagina, I have no way of knowing how authentic Dr. Katie Carr's voice is. However, her ultra-conflicted emotions rang completely true to me. And, as always, Hornby has created a complex human being who unabashedly shares a personal journey through uncharted territory with honesty, frankness, and an inventive sense of humor. Katie's spontaneous fling that begins the book spins her into questioning her own marriage to David, a cynical, overweight columnist. More than anything, she wishes that David would change. Then, miraculously and unexpectedly, he does; and she dislikes the new guy he's become even more than the chubby curmudgeon he left behind. In the long run, after a period of ambivalence and surrender, Katie finds solace and respite in books, accepting her lot in life by acknowledging how very hopeless, meaningless, and perfectly beautiful it all is. We all feel desperate and exhausted at times. Real life ain't easy. It wears your ass out. But, when has it ever been a piece o' cake working to support a family, being both parent and role model to one's children, and a friend/lover/partner to a spouse -- especially when they all have ideas of their own? Unfortunately, modernity allows us the time and leisure to contemplate just how futile and fragile life's brief candle flicker is. In the long run, Katie's challenge is not much different from mine (or, presumably, yours). Although her circumstances and supporting cast are unique -- and somewhat bizarre, I might add, without spoiling anything -- her quandary is universal. Finally, that one of my favorite authors is fool-hearty enough to crawl under the skin of a 40-year-old woman makes him the man for me. Rand Bishop, author of Grand Pop, Makin' Stuff Up, and the forthcoming The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success.

This is one of the best books I have ever read, by an incredible author. This book in particular poses so many questions that may be of value to anyone trying to navigate morality and attempt to find direction and purpose in life. I have read this several times, once everu couple of years, and am absolutely due for a reread. Hornsby deals with incredibly poignant and far-reaching topics, in a hilarious and realistic way. Other books by this author have all been fantastic; even if the base topic (such as skateboarding, for example in SLAM) is not of interest to the reader, the writing style and insightful perspective of Hornsby offers make it a joy to read. If you have not read this book and it interests you even remotely, I expect you also will soon count it among your favorites.

The beginning seemed to portray unlikable characters, but once Good News entered, the story became more interesting. Written about a married couple in London with two children. Woman is the main household earner and is a doctor. It did keep me reading.

How to be Good (HTBG) was my first Nick Hornby novel, a strange choice considering its mixed reviews compared to About a Boy and High Fidelity. Here's a sample of critics' promotional hyperbole on the cover-"darkly funny," "breezily hilarious," "a hoot." Other critics called it: surprising, worrisome, and thorny. It is not surprising then that this novel got mixed reviews. So what is it? A hilarious hoot? Nah- more likely it is a rigorous spiritual analysis of contemporary western society. Dr. Kathy Carr, wife, mother, professional person, takes a lover. She has become disaffected from her stay-at-home husband, a cross between Homer Simpson and Rush Limbaugh, with none of their charm or humor. On the surface, their family seems solid enough, but there is something missing. HTBG depicts their attempts to find out just what is missing and to learn to deal with it. I used the term "spiritual" to describe Hornby's work because, in every sense, the crises his characters face are produced by society's relative excess and individuals' relative narcissism. The combination of the two produces the loss of meaning and the inevitable depression that Viktor Frankl predicted in Man's Search for Meaning. Hornby tries to show some of the comic elements of the struggle, elements that anyone over forty can appreciate, albeit, at times, painfully. Enter the faith healer, GoodNews, a homeless person who received revelation and supernatural powers after dropping Ecstasy at a party. Thirty-two years old and from obscure origins, GoodNews, whose self-chosen name derives from the meaning of the word Gospel, is kind of a Christ-on-Ecstasy-figure. GoodNews sees how sadness pollutes us, making us sick. He has a supernatural ability to remove this sadness, converting the believer into a new, better person. His hope is to multiply that effect in order to create better families and communities. Not everyone buys his message of generosity and selflessness. As a consequence, with his magic comes division--within families and the larger community. This division can be internalized with in the individual (in the form of guilt), as the still imperfect individual struggles with the challenge of being good in an imperfect world. Moreover, the individual can puff up goodness and selflessness in order punish those with whom he is annoyed, making it a form of vanity. In this version of the gospel story, Christ/GoodNews is not God Incarnate. He is very, very human, sometimes laughably so. His assembly of believers falls short of the promises for which they hoped, just as has Christendom, which it lightly parallels. Today's church, the community of mainstream believers--in this case, the Church of England--is presented as a fossilized institution, not a particularly attractive alternative to the charismatic charm and power of GoodNews and his disciples, however flawed the latter is. The C of E's adherents, even its leaders, have very little hope of anything and attend out of a sense of duty, a hope of being validated without being challenged. GoodNews' characters' Road to Damascus epiphany experience, falls a little short. They are not born again, nor do they become completely new people, despite the attractiveness that a clean slate offers. They still seek answers from themselves and from other humans. The answers they get are frequently lack the voltage to get them through the lonely, sad, and empty lives they face. It's as if they are asking for data when what they need is power.

Nick Hornby has a knack for tackling some pretty dicey issues and life situations with an appropriate level of humor and serious thought. He's looked at suicide, our fascination with celebrity, adults refusing to grow up, sports obsessiveness. Sure, some have been lighter reading. Some have been written in ways that challenge his usual style (the constant shifting POV in his book regarding jumpers...) The darkness of the topic covered in "How to be Good" may touch too closely for some. It looks at the institution of marriage, religion, our purpose taken to extremes. It offers no answers, no pat ending with everything tied up in a bow. So it is very much like real life... I would give it five stars, but because of all his reference points to this time period, his books will likely not age well.

I am going to have to stop listening to recommendations from friends. I purchased this book ONLY because my good friend raved about it. Well I am also raving about it. Raving mad. What a load of ...... I tried to get into this story, and just could not get over the hump that someone would want to live with someone like that. That goes for both characters. I kept plowing away at it, cause MY FRIEND SAID SHE LOVED IT...............and you know what, the premise is so non believable, that I finally got to the 8th chapter and gave up. I was surprised that I gave it that much. First time I've read anything by this author, and I do not think I will read him again. There are just too many good books out there.

tutto bene perchè devo essere obbligata a scrivere altro se va semplicemente tutto bene, lo trovo tirannico e scocciante mi sembra che dovrebbe bastare

Perfect copy

J'ai découvert l'auteur avec le livre "A Long Way Down", livre très touchant qui donne envie de rester dans le monde de l'auteur. How To Be Good est excellent, il est très rapide à lire car c'est un livre qu'on a du mal à poser pour pour arrêter. J'ai adoré lire ce livre. Les caractères sont tous très attachant, l'humour de Nick Hornby rends l'histoire encore plus intéressante à lire.

'How To Be Good' gripped me from its opening, which plunges you straight into the breakdown of narrator Katie's unhappy marriage. From there ensues a whirlwind of events which range from farcical to deeply saddening, as husband David goes through an abrupt and shocking transformation which adds a whole new havoc-wreaking dimension to their already precarious relationship. The novel is impressively insightful, astutely illuminating the problems that come with trying to be a good person, while simultaneously handling a lot of painfully recognisable issues which arise in average families and marriages. Hornby effortlessly expresses universal thoughts and feelings that can be difficult to articulate, and this really made me connect with the narrative. He also has an excellent gift for peppering the story with wonderfully original witty metaphors and darkly comedic turns of phrase. This is a novel which is both hilarious and heartbreaking, the dark expertly combined with the light to make an immensely entertaining page-turner which managed to make me feel sympathetic and introspective as well as make me laugh out loud.

This is a very funny book. I've read, and liked, a few of Hornby's books. But for me this is his standout best, by far. It's black humor to be sure. You see that in the opening pages. It's rare that a book makes me laugh out loud. This one did to the point when, after reading it on a short flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco not one but two people came up to me as were getting off the plane and asked me for the name of the book!