I don’t usually write about books I didn’t like, but I’m making an exception in this case because I was so surprised by how little I liked it. In fact, I didn’t like it a lot. I finished reading the story because I hate to leave one unfinished, but in this case I was no happier at the ending than I’d been at any point prior, except in the sense that having read the book I could be especially certain of its lack of redeeming qualities, thereby ensuring that I’d be unlikely to ever read it again. It’s a depressing story about depressing people who squander some miraculous opportunities and manage to learn not much of anything. On the last page, in the last paragraph, I at first misread a line and for a moment believed one of these losers had fallen out of a window. This would have made an abrupt and stupid ending, but not significantly more so than the alternative: they live ever after, just as unhappily as before. Serves them right, the bunch of wankers.
How To Be Good is told from the perspective of a joyless, deluded woman who is stuck in a bad marriage with a joyless, deluded husband and two snotty kids. She believes that because she’s a medical doctor she is a good person. We’re told this at least six times over the course of the woman’s extended internal monologues, which comprise about 50% of the text. This is the theme of Hornby’s book: exploring what it means to be “good.”
The woman’s husband, according to her, is a bitter and hateful man with a talent for complaining about, basically, everything. It’s a small talent but it got him a job writing a regular column for the local newspaper, in which he points out all the things around town that bother him and why.
He undergoes a spiritual awakening and a not-believable personality shift. Or, he becomes Ghandi, I’m not sure which. He quits his job, begins giving away the family’s food and money and possessions, invites a homeless person to live in the house, etc. Practically overnight he changes from a relatively typical middle-aged male, if an especially selfish and mean one, to a saint-in-training. He’s now sensitive enough to apologize for being a lousy husband — or even more telling, he stoically endures a face-to-face meeting with his wife’s lover, in a scene that is as well-written as it is ridiculously imagined. (Are uncomfortable confrontations a hallmark of Hornby’s work? I was reminded of the scene in High Fidelity where Rob is confronted by Ian/Ray in the record store. Both scenes were uncomfortable-making, but the one in High Fidelity was funny.) But for all that new intuitive and self-examinatory skill, does he at any point realize that he’s gone way off the deep end? that it’s quite lunatic to cook a meal and then suggest driving it across town to feed the homeless? that his rantings have split his family in two, alienating his son and wife, as well as turning his daughter into a faux-pious little turd? No, no, no, no, and no, respectively.
The best thing I can say about this book is that, unlike Hornby’s other two novels, it won’t be made into a movie any time soon. Or if it is, it will star William Hurt, be filmed entirely in someone’s living room, and it will suck.
Patronize these links, man:
posted to area: Fiction
updated: 2004-07-05 16:51:22
