How To Be Good [Unknown Binding]

Nick Hornby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2001

"Hornby is a writer who dares to be witty, intelligent, and emotionally generous all at once." (The New York Times Book Review)

How to Be Good is a story for our times-a humorous but uncompromising look at what it takes, in this day and age, to have the courage of our convictions. In his third novel, Nick Hornby, whom The New Yorker named "the maestro of the male confessional," has reinvented himself as Katie-the consummate liberal, urban mom-a doctor from North London whose world is being turned on its ear by the outrageous spiritual transformation of her husband, David. How to Be Good has the ironic, funny, startlingly accurate take on our modern selves and our modern world that has become Hornby's turf as a chronicler of our popular culture-but this time he tackles it all with more richness and depth, and carries his readers beyond the comic confines of the novel to a bigger truth about themselves. It's a story about how to wreck your marriage, how to help the homeless, how not to raise your kids, how to find religion . . . and how to be good.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Nick Hornby's How to Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be. That's why she became a GP. That's why she cares about Third World debt and homelessness, and struggles to raise her children with a conscience. It's also why she puts up with her husband David, the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But one fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds parking lot, having just slept with another man. What Katie doesn't yet realize is that her fall from grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the interstate at rush hour. Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being angry. He's about to become good--not politically correct, organic-food-eating good, but good in the fashion of the Gospels. And that's no easier in modern-day Holloway than it was in ancient Israel.

Hornby means us to take his title literally: How can we be good, and what does that mean? However, quite apart from demanding that his readers scrub their souls with the nearest available Brillo pad, he also mesmerizes us with that cocktail of wit and compassion that has become his trademark. The result is a multifaceted jewel of a book: a hilarious romp, a painstaking dissection of middle-class mores, and a powerfully sympathetic portrait of a marriage in its death throes. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry as we watch David forcing his kids to give away their computers, drawing up schemes for the mass redistribution of wealth, and inviting his wife's most desolate patients round for a Sunday roast. But that's because How to Be Good manages to be both brutally truthful and full of hope. It won't outsell the Bible, but it's a lot funnier. --Matthew Baylis

From Publishers Weekly

"Good" characters in novels are notoriously hard to create, not because goodness is uninteresting, but because when it's uncontaminated by self-interest it isn't plausible, especially in a comedy. In Hornby's (High Fidelity; About a Boy) hilarious novel, the problem of goodness is dumped on Dr. Katie Carr. After more than 20 years of marriage and two children, Katie has had it: she's having an affair, feels intellectually dull and wishes her husband, David, would turn into a different person. Unfortunately for her, she gets her wish when David, a bitter, semi-employed intellectual who writes a column for a local newspaper subtitled "The Angriest Man in Holloway," becomes a secular saint. To spite her after an argument in which she suggests that they divorce, he goes to a dreadlocked faith-healer named DJ GoodNews. When GoodNews lays his hands on David, he suddenly becomes loving, concerned and utterly humorless. He gives money away, stops writing his column, organizes housing for the homeless (inconveniently enough, with neighbors whose houses have empty rooms) and invites GoodNews to move in. David donates the children's surplus toys to charity and asks them to adopt the uncool kids at school as their friends; their son, Tom, hates this, but his sister, Molly, develops an alarmingly patronizing friendship with a smelly little girl named Hope. Just how will Katie handle being surrounded by all of this horrible goodness? Hornby relies less than usual upon pop references which would be inappropriate for Katie's character anyway, although Homer Simpson is invoked a few times but he has created, without them, a very funny agon of liberalism. (July 9)Forecast: Despite, or perhaps because of, the declining popularity of the self-conscious hipness that made High Fidelity such a hit, Hornby's latest should enjoy even wider U.S. sales, bolstered by a national print ad campaign and author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 305 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (July 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573221937
• ISBN-13: 978-1573221931
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (314 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,886,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nick Hornby is the author of the novels A Long Way Down, How to Be Good (a New York Times bestseller), High Fidelity, and About a Boy, and of the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. He is also the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, and the Orange Word International Writers London Award 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not great -- but worthwhile, May 8, 2002

By 

"georgepartington" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Be Good (Mass Market Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed How to Be Good. Another great read from Nick Hornby, I thought, full of admiration for such a wonderful talent. Then I looked at the reviews on Amazon.com. I couldn't believe how mixed they were.

Then a pattern emerged. The ones that hated it usually started out with how much they loved his earlier work. Then they would criticize the two-dimensional characters and the unbelievable plot. Finally, for the more pretentious, there's an invitation to read "real" literature, like Dostoyevsky.

To sum up, how dare Hornby write a book about something other than "How to Grow Up"? And how dare he introduce characters that aren't "realistic"? (these people would criticize ET because it was unrealistic).

In answer to all those one- and two-star reviews on this page: I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Nick Hornby wrote a breezy novel about contemporary adults and their everyday problems - you know, little things like trying to find satisfaction as we get older and our lives have settled into well-worn grooves - and not about the aging, but still immature, male.

And instead of a really cool protagonist, we get a weary and confused narrator. So unrealistic to be so flawed. And who can believe in a trippy faith healer and a suddenly transformed house husband? Yet all of the characters spoke and acted in ways that seemed utterly real - in the context of the novel.

I will admit that the novel seemed more like a first draft than a fully realized work, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. The ending felt rushed, while also containing some lovely writing about the importance of reading, as well as a moving final image (perhaps a hint of the greatness Hornby may yet achieve). But that's Hornby - even his lesser efforts contain gold. Last I checked, Van Gogh's sketches were pretty highly regarded. Not that comparing Hornby to a past master is fair. But what a pleasure to read he is. And how artfully he examines the everyday issues so many of us are concerned with.

Nick Hornby has much to say. He's still young. He hasn't produced his definitive work yet. I, for one, am looking forward to Hornby's future efforts.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ehhhh... I was very disappointed..., October 8, 2001

By 

never can read enough "mom of two" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How To Be Good

I have never read a Nick Hornby before and received this one as a birthday gift. Started out with a lot of promise and then just COMPLETELY lost steam. He didn't follow through on any of the issues he raised, they all just sort of faded away.

Also- I felt like I was reading a screenplay instead of a book, that Hornby was so obviously angling to create the film that will presumably be created from this, rather than a book. It was as gimmicky as "Liar, Liar" or "What Women Want" in its plot-what happens when the crankiest guy in the world becomes a 21st century hippie? Unfortunately, nothing happens, really. I was very disappointed in this one- it was a chore to finish.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars WOW! INCREDIBLY .... FAIR-TO-MIDDLING, April 3, 2008

By 

anonymous (Rocky Mountains) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Be Good (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the selection for our book group this month. I know when it comes time to talk about the book, we'll get in a lot of discussion about what to make for dinner, what the kids are doing, etc. because no one is interested in the book.

You know the gist of the story, so I won't go into discussing that. However, I will say this -- "How to Be Good" was like reading about my neighbors or anyone I might know. The characters are typical people with typical crises in their marriage, but with what might be called atypical specifics in their problems. Big whoop. I'm not interested in reading about people much like myself.

I found myself thinking Hornby was being a bit preachy with me, the reader, trying to make me feel guilty for feeling more like Katie than like her husband, the newly sainted lover of the homeless. Well too bad, Hornby -- I still feel more like Katie when it comes to my level of compassion for those less fortunate. I'm aware of what I'm able to do to help, and I do it. I'm not dumb enough to think that putting pressure on others will solve a social problem.

To sum up, if you like reading about, well, yourself and your friends, you'll like the book. If you're a bleeding heart, you'll like the book, because you can feel vindicated for your views. If you'd rather read about interesting characters in a world not just like your own and want to come to your own conclusions about the world's woes, you'll hate this book.

I hated this book.