Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19910 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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, self-styled "Angriest Man in Holloway". But one fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds car-park, having just slept with another man. What she doesn't yet realise is that her Fall from Grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the M25 at rush-hour. Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being Angry. He's about to become Good--not Guardian-reading, 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.

Mr Hornby fires his central theme at us from the title page: how can we be good, and what does that mean? But, quite apart from demanding that his readers scrub their souls with the nearest available Brillo pad, he also mesmerises us with that cocktail of wit and compassion which has become his trademark. The result is a multi-faceted 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

Synopsis
According to her own complex moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's a doctor, after all, and doctors are decent people, and on top of that, her husband David is the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But when David suddenly becomes good - properly, maddeningly, give-away-all-his-money good - Katie's sums no longer add up, and she is forced to ask herself some very hard questions. Nick Hornby's brilliant new novel, a No. 1 bestseller in the UK and Ireland, offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood, and asks that most difficult of questions: what does it mean to be good?

Customer Reviews

Entertaining in a peculiar way
An entertainingly written account of a marriage which has moved devastatingly beyond the honeymoon period. Also of interest to the author is the balance between liberal attitudes to society's unfortunates and individuals' desires for fulfilment. The themes are put together by one partner's change of heart, induced by the deus ex machina of a spiritual healer whose treatment actually works. Although concepts that challenge individuals' views is part of the author's reckoning methods, this takes the reader into dubious territory. How does it reconcile with the author's musings about the difference between reality and Hollywood-inspired dreams and aspirations. Thought-provoking nevertheless.

Nauseatingly Bad.
There is good writing.
Then, there is okay-ish writing.
Then there is bad writing.
Then there are books so badly written they make you want to throw up.

This book is in that last category.

Pointless characters, unconvincing story, badly-written, with a central moral that does not hold any water and is hopelessly misconceived.

Avoid at all costs, except to wipe your bottom on it.

a disappointment
i have just finished this book and i found it very disappointing.
high fidelity is one of my favourite reads so hoped this would be as good- but no way near.characters that were hard to like, parts of the plot were quite ludicrous. goodnews who has jesus like healing qualities and i bet i couldnt find six people in the whole of the town i live in to give up a room to the homeless let alone six of my immediate neighbours.it is the magical healing hands of goodnews that have turned david into a good person ,but by the end of the book the novelty has worn off and david's enthusiasm has all but evaporated, why? if he was magically healed.kate has an affair with stephen but disgards him as easily as throwing away litter. he is gone and never really features in kates mind through out the book. to be fair parts of the book were qute amusing and i have given up on books worse than this. it was a good idea for a book but it could of been alot better, if you want to read a good hornby book read high fidelity