What Everyone Wants To Know

There are, according to my tracking thing, two things everyone wants to know; (1) an analysis of the Keats poem When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be and (2) what is the ending of Nick Horny's novel How To Be Good all about?

You would be amazed (slightly) of the number of Google searches with these two subjects which hit my blog. Well I am amazed because I never thought that the reach of this blog could be so extensive. Unfortunately the answers to these two literary quests is a little beyond my reach. I had a stab at the Keats and ended up sounding like Brian Sewell, so much so that I had to take the piss out of myself in case people thought I was a right ponce.

Clearly though, the demand for clarification of the ending to How To Be Good impels me to give it my best shot, so here goes. By the way I know that Nick Hornby never fails to keep up with this blog so Nick, if you're there please feel free to comment, mate.

The gist of the novel is Dr. Kate Carr's struggle to hold her family together while dealing with a husband who is going through a spiritual crisis. The book begins as Kate is engaging in a bit of extra marital, more as a way of trying to obtain some warmth and loving affection in the face of a marital relationship which is already at breaking point. David, Kate's husband is a writer who earns his main income from penning a column for the local weekly paper as 'Holloway's Angriest Man'. Not to go over too much the synopsis, as this post is aimed at people who have already read the book and know fine what it is about, but Kate's affair fizzles out and she and David, for the sake of the two kids, Tom and Molly, try to come to some kind of accommodation with one another.

In the meantime David strikes up a relaitionship with a faith-healer named GoodNews. GoodNews moves in with David and Kate as he and David evolve various schemes to make the world a better place. The major scheme that the pair come up with is finding homes for homeless youngsters by persuading their neighbours to make better use of their spare bedrooms. The whole thing is told in Kate's voice and Nick Hornby deserves great credit in making this first person female narrative come off so well. Some of the narrative, such as the description of one of the homeless kids desperation to make the scheme work, is achingly tender and other parts are laugh out loud funny. It is really a good read, as you can see here

But the ending. Let me set this up and if you've not read the book, too bad. Kate and David finally have their own house to themselves (and the kids) as GoodNews has moved out. They are more tender with each other and David has come to some kind of realisation as to how he should be leading his own life. Kate has not shaken off the melancholy which events have visited upon her but she is coming to terms with herself and is beginning to enjoy a lot of the things which she has been putting aside for too long. The children, so beautifully characterised, have been through too much and it seems the family is now more together than perhaps they have ever been.

The last part of the final chapter takes place in a dark stormy night.

For the last three days, it has been raining and raining and raining - it has been raining harder than anyone can remember. It's the kind of rain you're supposed to get after a nuclear attack:

Hornby sets a scene of an almost apocalyptic storm going on outside while inside the family are safe within their solid walls, safe together after all the storms of the preceding months. This is contrasted by Kate pondering:

It feels like the end of the world. And our homes, homes which cost some of us a quarter of a million pounds or more, do not offer the kind of sanctuary that enable us to ignore what is going on out there: they are too old, and at night the lights flicker and the windows rattle.

Safe then, but still vulnerable. And just as they are eating, water starts to pour into the kitchen under the French windows, serving as a further reminder of the forces outside. David digs out a cycling cape and goes upstairs to lean out of a window and try to clear a gutter choked with leaves and rubbish. They get a broom and David leans out further to try and clear the blockage. The final chapter:

'Stop, David', I tell him. 'It's not safe.'
'It's fine.'
He's wearing jeans, and Tom and I grab hold of one back pocket each in an attempt to anchor him, while Molly in turn hangs on to us, purposelessy but sweetly. My family, I think, just that. And then, I can do this. I can live this life. I can, I can. It's a spark I want to cherish, a splutter of life in the flat battery; but just at the wrong moment I catch a glimpse of the night sky behind David, and I can see that there's nothing out there at all.

It ends right there and I wonder, why did he end it end it like that? Why didn't he stop with the phrase 'a splutter of life in the flat battery'? And David perhaps shouting out 'Its cleared.' That would have been the expected ending. In fact that's the kind of ending he was leading up to all through the book, and the only reason I can think of that makes some sense of how it finished on that last desolate note was Hornby's realisation that he was being conventional and predictable. I think he was being capricious even with his readers in not giving them what they were expecting. The result is unsatisfying, you feel cheated somehow, ultimately let down. So, Nick Hornby, explain yourself or I'll steal all the future books you ever publish.