Product Description

According to her own moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's a doctor, and doctors are decent people, and her husband David is the "Angriest Man" in Holloway. When David suddenly becomes good, Katie's sums no longer add up, and she is forced to ask herself some questions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12579 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-05
• Original language: English
• 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

About the Author
Nick Hornby was born in 1957, and is the author of three previous books, FEVER PITCH, HIGH FIDELITY and ABOUT A BOY, all international bestsellers and all available in Penguin. He has also edited two anthologies, SPEAKING WITH THE ANGEL and MY FAVOURITE YEAR. He is the pop music critic for the New Yorker, and in 1999 was awarded the E.M.Forster award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Highbury, North London.

Customer Reviews

How to be average
I too found this book a little disappointing! I've read all his others and was looking forward to reading this one, however it never really gripped me. The plot seemed to swing about, leaving characters like her brother and lover incomplete. The actual idea of the book, what would happen if North London liberals really began wearing their hearts on their sleeves, becoming selfless, giving away their possessions & money and so on, is an interesting one but the trigger for it all, GoodNews, just doesn't seem right somehow. As usual, apart from some duds, the dialog and set pieces were amusing but it wasn't enough in the end.

Disappointing
I would like to echo the comments of the previous reviwer. I too like Nick Hornby and applaud this new direction in his writing. Unfortunately, I must also say that this is a very disappointing book. Firstly, the characters are paper thin and the plot is full of holes. Worse, the story goes knowhere. I was looking forward to an interesting examination of what it means to be 'Good'. But all the book offered were a few old ideas rehashed into a very predictable story - I got no more out of this book than if I had sat in the bath for an hour mulling over the thought 'what does it mean to be good?'. Yes, the book is wonderfully readable but by the end you just feel terribly let down by this very talented writer.

Annoying, offensive, dull
I give this book 2 stars - 1 for spelling and grammar, and 1 because I am too much of a coward to give something 1 star. The tone was sanctimonious and irritating. There was not a single character who you actually wanted to do well (with the possible exception of the young son who wanted out of the story as much as I) the shallow sketches of "the disenfranchised" I found offensive, the "comedy" nothing new and the central message harmful and depressing. Recommended reading unless you are considering having a relationship with someone of either gender during the rest of your life, or holding down a career. About half way through I put it down with rage at the shallowly negative portrayal of the husband and only picked it up again because I was trapped on a 4 hour train journey with only this book or a cast-off news of the world for reading material. I had already done the alarm fine signs and usage instructions for the doors. I can only think that Hornby, by doing this crushing disservice to male-kind, is trying desperately to show his feminine side to 'get chicks'. It won't work Hornby. Let's stop driving wedges in the gender gap and write something positive.