How To Be Good - by Nick Hornby

I've just finished reading this. A truly great book. I love Nick Hornby and just devoured Fever Pitch when I read that some long time ago now. This novel is written in the first person, the narrator being a woman doctor, Katie Carr. I was a wee bit disconcerted with this initially as I cannot help myself from, in a first person narrative, half identifying the narrator with the author. I know this is silly but I always feel that although the assumption may not always be true for my purposes as a reader it may as well be. In any event Nick Hornby's narrator soon assumes a life quite separate from the maleness of her creator. It is superbly written.

The story hinges around the marital crisis of Katie Carr and her husband David. They have two children, Tom at ten years od and Molly, eight. The ideal 'nuclear family' to all intents and purposes until Katie becomes less and less in love with David, and David becomes so self-absorbed that he fails to notice. Katie embarks on a brief and regretted affair which becomes a catalyst, rather than the cause, of the marital breakdown.

The voice of Katie is brilliantly presented. Her journey through frustration, anger, grief, rebellion, and resignation is told with humour, wit, and heart-rending honesty. There are piercing arrows of truth spoken throughout. I'd love to just cut and paste it on to here so that you can all enjoy it but instead I'll give you a snippet from towards the end. Katie has reverted into a world of her own. She has become a reader again after a long time away from reading for leisure. She has chosen a biography of Vanessa Bell, the artist sister of Virginia Woolf. According to the blurb on the cover Vanessa Bell has lead a 'rich and beautiful life'. Katie buys the book to see how this is done. Here is what Katie discovers about reading:

It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already. Janet's bedsit seemed enormous when I moved into it, enormous and quiet, but this book is so much bigger than that. And when I've finished it I'll start another one, and that might be even bigger, and then another, and I will be able to keep extending my house until it becomes a mansion full of rooms where they can't find me.

There is such a sadness in these lines but the book is leavened throughout with the humour that you would expect from Nick Hornby. That is what makes it so successful. The characters of Katie and her odd 'nuclear family' and their strange lodger who heals the sad people of Holloway by laying on his hands, these people come to life and pull you into their story until you cannot tear yourself away. You will love it too.