A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Oh happy day! Oh happy joyous day! Oh wonderful, beautiful, marvelous day when Nick Hornby releases a novel that doesn't suck. Anyone who's read High Fidelity and subsequently any of Hornby's other novels will know exactly what I'm on about. High Fidelity was a revelation, a celebration, an infatuation and so many other things to anyone who first laid his/her eyes on it. Just like the subject of the book, this was love. And just like the book prophesied this love was in for a disappointment. About a Boy left an aftertaste of lacking but was sufficiently entertaining to preserve the flicker of hope for Nick Hornby's return to form. Unfortunately for all, his next novel How to Be Good ruthlessly stomped that flicker of hope out. And with that disaster of an ironically titled book, all eyes turned away from Hornby to seek new loves to heal the wound of High Fidelity. For me and many others, Hornby was finished, he was through, a fleeting fling that only led to heartbreak. But now A Long Way Down makes me reconsider my affections. It's not High Fidelity but it's up there. Hornby has a penchant for naming his novels in a most ironic manner with regards to his own career, and yes, as banal as it is to say, A Long Way Down marks a long way up on Hornby's literary trajectory.
Hornby's talent lies in his ability to create characters that feel as familiar and real as your friends and family. Here this talent is on full display with four narrator-characters taking turns in furthering the plot line along. These characters are not new. JJ, the American, is Rob from High Fidelity; Martin, the talk show host, is Will from About a Boy; Maureen is a strange combination of Katie from How to Be Good and Fiona from About a Boy; Jess...well Jess is new. Jess is pretty much new to literature, not just Hornby's repertoire. A psychotic 18 year old girl with absolutely no social skills or anything approaching manners. And she gets to narrate too! The context or these characters being brought together is their desire to commit suicide on New Year's eve. Sounds "emo" doesn't it? But Hornby's realistic, no fuss approach makes you look at suicide from a whole bunch of new angles, making you reconsider why anyone would commit suicide and why someone would change their mind. Just like in any other Hornby novel, you should not look for any bombastic resolutions or clear cut conclusions to take with you. What make him special is that his novels always describe a process. A process that doesn't start with the first words of the book and doesn't end with the last, but the glimpse that you are bestowed with is at once depressing and uplifting and all together profound.