A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby is a novel about four very different people who unexpectedly meet on the top of a high-rise building on New Year’s Eve. Great rooftop party perhaps? No. As the title might give away, all four found their way to the roof to commit suicide. Sounds depressing, but if you’ve read (or seen) any of Hornby’s work you’ll know that it will be a (dark) comic romp.
Sure enough, A Long Way Down is a hyper-glib rim-shot of a novel that uses humor to explore the topics of loneliness, desolation and loss. Nearly all of Hornby’s work has a dark, troublesome theme residing at its core. His work is about how people find their way in the world, how they deal with hardship, how they … manage, which at times seems tough at best and impossible at worst. Laughter seems the best medicine.
Hornby has a bit of real-life experience to draw upon in this arena, given that his son is autistic. It’s tough for me not to read some of that background into his portrayal of Maureen, a middle-aged single mother with a severely handicapped son who keeps her housebound most of the time. The difficulty of that love shines around the wit of the words like an aura. You can’t help but feel it there.
The three other characters are Martin, a scandalized daytime tabloid star; JJ, a rock musician who believes his life is his career and his career is finished; and Jess, a young foul-mouthed girl without an emotional filter who lives in the shadow of her missing older sister. None of the four jump from the roof that night. Don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler! The book is about how they get on. It’s about how they band together and continue to live, despite their differences and despite any real fairy tale ending.
I like Hornby’s work and picked him up when High Fidelity was in paperback. I find it notable that his work translates extremely well to the big screen. While High Fidelity the movie was good, About A Boy the movie may be better than the book given the great performance by Hugh Grant. Speaking of Hugh Grant, it might be a stretch but the character of Martin seems like it could be loosely based on the scandalized actor.
A Long Way Down also covers some of the same material as Douglas Coupland’s Eleanor Rigby and there are similarities in wit and tone. However, the plot and format of A Long Way Down is somewhat formulaic. And even the interplay and dialog, while funny, doesn’t quite encapsulate the book. In the end, it’s a mood and a determination of life that is extracted.
It feels good, and at the end of the day that’s what most of Hornby’s work seems to wish upon the reader.
