How to Be Good - Softcover

Hornby, Nick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573229326 ISBN 13: 9781573229326

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2002

Synopsis

A wise and hilarious novel from the bestselling author of Funny Girl, High Fidelity, and About a Boy.

A brutally truthful, compassionate novel about the heart, mind, and soul of a woman who, confronted by her husband's sudden and extreme spiritual conversion, is forced to learn "how to be good"--whatever that means, and for better or worse...

Katie Carr is a good person...sort of. For years her husband's been selfish, sarcastic, and underemployed.

But now David's changed. He's become a good person, too--really good. He's found a spiritual leader. He has become kind, soft-spoken, and earnest. Katie isn't sure if this is deeply felt conversion, a brain tumor--or David's most brilliantly vicious manipulation yet. Because she's finding it more and more difficult to live with David--and with herself.

About this title

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

Review:

"Hornby is a writer who dares to be witty, intelligent and emotionally generous all at once."--The New York Times Book Review"

A darkly funny and thought-provoking ride."--USA Today

"A bitingly clever novel of ideas...[a] profound, worrying, hilarious, sophisticated, compulsive novel."--The Sunday Times (UK)

"Daringly different."--New York Daily News

"How to be good? How to be bloody marvelous more like."--The Mail on Sunday(UK)

"Breezily hilarious and thought-provoking at the same time."--New York Magazine

"Seriousness spiked with humor...a page-turner."--The Washington Times

"A thorny parable...very funny and shrewd."--Salon.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1573229326
• ISBN 13: 9781573229326
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336