Product Description

Nick Hornby's first novel, an international bestseller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women, and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what's decent and what isn't. But he's much less good on relationships. In fact, he's not at all sure that he wants to commit himself to anyone. So it's hardly surprising that his girlfriend decides that enough is enough.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1697 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This hilarious novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood. The book is in one sense a love story, both sweet and interesting; most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music. --Christine Buttery

Amazon.co.uk Review
It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This hilarious novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood. The book is in one sense a love story, both sweet and interesting; most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music. --Christine Buttery

Review
'My genius, if I can call it that, is to combine a whole load of averageness into one compact frame.' Rob Fleming, record shop owner, obsessed with pop music, compulsive list-maker (favourite American films; all-time top five favourite books; five most memorable split-ups...) finds himself in his 30s and going nowhere; even his (failed) romances seem to be a scrambled replay of his first rejection, by Alison Ashworth in 1972, at the age of 13. Nick Hornby was catapulted to media stardom with Fever Pitch, his hilarious, prize-winning account of a fan's obsession with football. There is no football in this novel, but fans may well find a kindred spirit in Rob, who narrates this funny, sad tale with intelligence, wit, and self-deprecation, plus the all-round sheer blokeishness that Hornby captures so well. (Kirkus UK)

A rollicking first novel from British journalist Hornby that manages to make antic hay of a young (barely) man's hopeless resolve not to come of age. Rob Fleming is the sort of precocious loser whose life has gone so unaccountably wrong that some deep romantic grief must be invoked to explain it. "The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking," according to Rob, "are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives." As a case in point, the 35-year-old Rob not only listens to these songs himself but peddles them - as the founder and proprietor of Championship Vinyl, a seedy vintage-record store in a quiet back alley of North London. Business is hardly booming these days, and the shop would have gone under long ago but for Rob's lawyer-girlfriend Laura, who has propped it up time and again with cash from her own very ample pool. Once she dumps Rob, however, everything is suddenly on the verge of collapse - fiscally and emotionally - and Rob is forced to ask himself how he landed in such a mess. Naturally, he has no idea, so he proceeds to look up his ex-girlfriends - all the way back to high school - and ask them why things never worked out. As a pilgrimage, Rob's quest bears more resemblance to Monty Python than Chaucer, and his own inability to put two and two together somehow endears him to the very women whose affections he seems least able to requite. Reality bludgeons him in the end, and he succeeds, as the plot is spun, in drawing a few morals that surprise him by their simplicity and point toward a happy ending - or at least a second chance. Fast, fun, and remarkably deft: a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

SPOT ON
Another double-reader. Music ever overtaken your life, or still does? Then this'll all make sense to you. Great fun=>

Laugh out loud
I really enjoyed this book. It's quite tragic but funny at the same time. Typical British humour. I couldn't put it down.

If you regularly re-organise your music collection, you'll identify with this novel
Yes, I'm willing to own up - I was once a female equivalent of Rob, well at least the side of our hero who constantly makes top 5 lists and reorganises their record collection regularly.
Anyone with slight librarianish tendencies will love the comedy in this novel in which the stories of Rob's relationships with the fairer sex are told through his record collection. Rob is no new man, which has led many women to criticize the book, but he's also too intelligent to be just a lad. I loved this novel so much I even bought some of the records mentioned!