From Powells.com
"Hornby is adept at the humorous everyday observation, and there are enough wry grins to be found here. However, where his previous narrators have been hapless but not altogether hopeless, here Hornby is saying 'There are no happy endings, there is just making do.' Where Rob Fleming's (High Fidelity) progress is coming to terms with what it means to commit to a relationship, Katie and David appear to have lived out Robs fears of what that commitment may lead to. He was right to be afraid!" Georgie Lewis, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"How To Be Good is replete with Hornby's trademark wisecracks, apercus, and put-downs. His incisive portrayal of a mad cleric who draws spiritual sustenance from the King and I soundtrack is a godsend, as is the transgenerational indictment: 'Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on.' But in the end, this oddly retro novel is hamstrung..." Joe Queenan, The New York Times Review of Books
Review
"Hornby is a very funny and very clever writer, and How to be Good is packed with wit and brilliance." The Spectator
Review
"Hornby is a writer who dares to be witty, intelligent, and emotionally generous all at once." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"For his third novel after the male-sympathetic High Fidelity and About a Boy, Hornby hasn't merely gotten in touch with his feminine side (though Katie's violent emotionalism, surgical introspection, and perverse romanticism are all on the mark); more importantly, via Katie he harrowingly portrays how ambivalence attacks the heart like a virus at mid-life....Readers will see themselves in all of Katie's flaws, especially her selfishness. But fear not, old-school Hornby fans, for this departure is expertly tempered with flecks of humor and pop culture references." Library Journal
Review
"Another delightful comedy from Hornby....rendered with an entertaining mix of humor and delicately suggestive questioning....Just what does it mean to be 'good'?"
Kirkus
About the Author
Nick Hornby is a graduate of Cambridge University, and a former teacher. He is the bestselling author of Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy, and the editor of the new anthology Speaking with the Angel. High Fidelity was made into a successful film. Hornby was the 1999 winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E.M. Forester Award. He lives in north London.