Books: A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

I am a big Nick Hornby fan. I have read all his novels (High Fidelity and About a Boy being my favorites), the The Polysyllabic Spree (Housekeeping vs. Dirt is on my list of things to read next), his first football centric memoir Fever Pitch, and most of Songbook (I need to finish that one, but I like to listen to the song he is writing about while reading and need to hunt a couple more down). Up until this point the only book I was disappointed in was How to Be Good; it just didn’t work for me. I think Hornby is absolutely brilliant when he is channeling his own experiences into his writing which is evident in High Fidelity and About a Boy (as well as his memoirs Fever Pitch, Songbook, The Spree, etc). This is where How to Be Good failed, and this is where A Long Way Down suffers.

A Long Way Down is a story about four individuals who after preventing each other from jumping off a rooftop on New Years Eve form a group to help make sure none of them do themselves in tomorrow, next week, etc. The premise is slightly interesting, and the book definitely isn’t boring, but it doesn’t have the same authentic feel as Hornby’s other novels. This book didn’t bore me, but it didn’t impress me. Much of the book seems too far-fetched and to convenient; it didn’t feel real. The writing wasn’t bad, but I found throughout the book that I didn’t really care about the characters much. At some points I wish they had just jumped off the building which at least takes some character to go through with.

To make a musical comparison I think Hornby is very similar to Ryan Adams. Not that he is cocky or anything, but in that their careers are following similar paths. Ryan Adams first album was Heartbreaker (ok, he was in Whiskeytown, but ignore that for now). Heartbreaker is one of my favorite albums of all time, it’s authentic, it’s a rainy day, bottle of Jack Daniels, smoking cigarettes while sitting on the curb kind of album. It was pretty much universally admired (Pitchfork even gave it a 9.0). The problem is that every future album of his will be compared to Heartbreaker, and they have all fallen short. Ryan Adams went through Rock N Roll, Love Is Hell, and a number of other albums that weren’t necessarily bad, but compared to Heartbreaker they were total crap. Only now years later is he starting to put out material even close to Heartbreaker (Jacksonville City Nights is good).

Hornby’s first novel was High Fidelity. (He wrote Fever Pitch first, but that is a memoir so lets just call that the Whiskeytown years) High Fidelity is a ridiculously good book. It’s fun, it’s authentic, it speaks to a generation of men like very few books have. High Fidelity is Hornby’s Heartbreaker. But unlike Ryan Adams, Hornby came back with a second novel just as good as the first. About a Boy is a great book about how a boy and a immature mid-30s guy bond and get along. I think a big part of About a Boy is founded in Hornby’s own interactions with his autistic son, and I believe I read that he said this as well, but I can’t find the quote now. Now their paths join. Hornby came out with How to Be Good and now A Long Way Down. Two books that if by some other mediocre author might be passable as a fun beach read, but for the man who wrote High Fidelity and About a Boy they are disappointments. I will continue to read Hornby books though, I still enjoy his non-fiction work quite a bit and look forward to Housekeeping Vs. Dirt (the next installment of Polysyllabic Spree). I will keep reading and wait until he puts out his own Jacksonville City Nights.

-James