Of course, as it turns out, many of the Hornby staples, from the clever writing to the immature adults (of both genders, this time), are still present in A LONG WAY DOWN, Hornby’s latest.

I got a chance to meet Hornby at the recent Book Expo America in New York, and he gave me a copy of his newest book. Which was really the highlight of the show—there were other good perks from being there, a galley proof of John Irving’s latest and a chance to meet F. Paul Wilson, a guy I’m working with on some things at IDW, but Hornby’s long been a favorite of mine, so I was really hoping for a chance to say hi. Even more, I wanted his latest book a couple weeks before it was released to stores.

Hornby’s writing, from HIGH FIDELITY to his non-fiction collection of essays about the number of books he buys and reads each month (never the same number), THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE, always felt like it was talking directly to me. While I felt like HOW TO BE GOOD, his last novel, was a bit of a slip-up, it nevertheless tackled themes a bit more serious than HIGH FIDELITY or ABOUT A BOY. A LONG WAY DOWN handles serious themes, too, especially in its plot about four suicidal people who “meet cute,” if that term applies to their situation. But once again, it’s like Hornby is a fighter, and he just gets shucking and jiving and delivering a solid book that makes you forget what a downer its plot really is.

The book doesn’t play “light” with suicide—as we see, at least one of the four have really good reasons for feeling that a dive off the rooftop is the only solution left. But it does allow the heaviness of the plot to recede a bit into the background once the four make their way down off the roof (and since this happens very early on in the book, it doesn’t spoil anything to tell you that they don’t jump on that New Year’s Eve night. Instead, they share their stories and become a bit of a support group for each other, even though none of them have anything in common other than the dark thoughts about ending it all. They don’t like each other, have a hard time relating to each other and constantly question whether they’d be better off if they made their way back to that rooftop.

I read a couple early reviews of the book, and they talked about how Hornby’s characters were a bit too textbook different from each other, “demographically complementary people,” who just happened to end up on the same roof on the same night, and that he cheapened the serious issue of suicide by telling an ultimately light tale. To which I say they’re missing the point, as literary critics so often do.

Hornby’s four lead characters would never associate with one another were circumstances different. There is Martin, a faded morning TV show host who was jailed for having sex with a minor, while also married with children; there’s JJ, the lone American in the group, who sees no reason to go on living now that his band has broken up and his girlfriend’s left him; there’s Jess, a teenager who’s depressed over her sister, who probably committed suicide, her parents, who seem to think the wrong sister disappeared, and who is also more than a little crazy in that teenage way; finally, there’s Maureen, a 50s-ish religious woman who had sex once, resulting in a vegetative son she’s stuck caring for all alone.

The conceit of the book is that it’s written from four points of view. ABOUT A BOY experimented with a literary device, too, switching between characters every other chapter. That honestly got a bit annoying to me, because you never want to hear about both people with the same level of interest; there’s bound to be a letdown when the character you like recedes into the background.

I expected the same thing here. And then, as I got a little into the book, it really worked, not only in presenting amusing RASHOMON-like takes on the same events as viewed through very different eyes, but also because all four personalities were so clearly defined. It made me laugh that it didn’t immediately register for me that when Maureen was narrating, all curse words were changed from, say, “fuck” to “f—.“ I just thought the people were actually saying “f—.” Anyway…

I did still have favorite characters that I liked hearing from, but over the course of the book, that became less important than just seeing the way all four interconnected and how they interpreted the situations they were in. And Jess made me laugh throughout, especially in her misguided attempts to make things better, which instead made things spectacularly worse. Ultimately, Hornby’s premise—and it’s no clear, easy path for any of the characters to arrive at this point—is that lives can be saved through connections with others. Left to their own devices, maybe all four would’ve plunged off the roof that new year’s eve, or maybe some would’ve talked themselves out of it. I was still never certain that a couple of the characters, or any of them, would survive at the end of the book, which is another way I don’t think Hornby cheapened the idea of suicide. I don’t quite understand the idea that he made it easy for the characters to talk themselves out of the idea of jumping, thereby cheapening the real struggle that some people with suicidal thoughts face.

It actually would’ve seemed cheap to me to see them just jump, no lessons learned. I doubt there’s anyone out there who, even in the dark recesses of their minds, didn’t at least mull over the idea of suicide at some point in their lives. Granted, the most messed-up I’ve been compared to these four is maybe the same situation Jess was in, young, dumb and just looking for a way to hide from problems. As sick as it is, there’s almost something romantic about the idea when you’re young and ignorant—like, you feel that you have no control over any other part of your fate, so this part, at least, you could control. And then you realize you’re an idiot and you move on. Which seems to be a much more common situation than the people that actually feel this option is their only option.

So no, I didn’t feel Hornby wrote himself into a “writer’s trap” that Entertainment Weekly referred to. Rather, he took an idea, and a writing approach, both of which could have easily fallen apart in lesser hands, and crafted it all into maybe his best novel since HIGH FIDELITY.

My major complaint? The cover of the U.S. edition. Look at the two covers here, and maybe it’ll become a bit more evident why American reviewers felt that the subject of suicide was handled a bit too lightly. Otherwise, the only real problem is that I read the book in two days, meaning it’s gonna be a long wait for Hornby’s follow-up.

/chris

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES