Loved this book! I didn't think I would, actually, because it opens with the decaying of a marriage between two Brits with kids. The subject just doesn't grab me much, I mean, as escapist reading why would I want to read about an unhappy marriage? Before I knew it, though, I was sucked in by the marvelous writing and witty humor of Nick Hornby.

I had no idea where this book was going. There are so many unpredictable twists and turns and just when you think it couldn't get any crazier, it does. And it's lovely. Rather than give away any of that loveliness, the surprises and twists and delicious ridiculousness of it all, I will just say that while it starts out as a story about the failing of a marriage what it becomes is much deeper and personal and provoking and circular than you would otherwise imagine.

I realize that I'm being very vague, but you would be happier discovering the plot twists for yourself. You'll just have to trust me.

how to be good

As long time readers know (or maybe you don't) Maria and I read to each other. One of the joys of "naked Sunday" is the fact that we don't have to get up, spend the day wandering around the flat in our pyjamas (just 'cos it is called "naked Sunday" doesn't necessarily mean that we spend the day nekkid!), basically just slob about.

This Sunday we spent the whole morning (and a bit of the afternoon) in bed. We ate cereal, we drank cokes and we ate our way through a huge box of Runts. While we were doing this I read to Maria.

I love Nick Hornby. A lot of what he writes speaks to me directly. I can understand everything he goes through in "Fever Pitch" - hell, replace the word Arsenal for Sheffield United and it is probably my story. I know the characters in "High Fidelity", really know. But in this case I was reading "How to be Good".

I am a bleeding-heart, yoghurt-eating, tree-hugging, grauniad-reading liberal (I draw the line at sandal-wearing). The book is very funny, the book is very clever, the book points out all those little problems that we b-h, y-e, t-h, g-r liberals have to face. How in the 21st century do I come to terms with driving a car, owning property, earning more than the minimum wage when there are starving people in Africa? Well, the fact is I give the odd 50p (peso) to a homeless person, I phone in my credit card donation to Live Aid, some of my best friends are not white. The book asks the hard questions - what if you actually did become a fully-fledged b-h, y-e, t-h, g-r liberal - what if you actually took a homeless person in - what if you tried to solve all the big/global problems but in a small/personal way. Many of the ideas made me cringe - but in that way that "The Office" makes you cringe.

'Twas a jolly good read. Gotta lurve Nick Hornby.

Okay, I can probably guess why this book is considered one of Nick Hornby's lesser works by fans of the author & yet it found a place on the Man Booker Prize longlist. Speaking for myself, I pick up a Hornby novel primarily for the laughs. Besides that, he gives you those warm, fuzzy moments & some observations about humankind in general that are worth their weight in gold. But do I go in expecting endless self-introspection & whining? Not really.

The protagonist of 'How To Be Good' is Katie Carr, a medical practitioner living with her husband David & her two kids in a London suburb. She is unhappy with her marriage, she is having an affair & has just called David to tell him that she wants a divorce. David refuses to accept that, but Katie is just as confused about her own decision. She thinks she's a good person & so she believes her husband should be one too instead of being the angriest, cynical & most sarcastic man in Holloway. Then one day, David meets faith healer DJ GoodNews who cures his bad back and out of the blue, David becomes a good person - one who cares about his wife, his children & everything that's wrong with the world out there, with GoodNews as mentor. And then Katie realises that one needs to be careful about what one wishes for - after all, charity begins at home...

Talking about what I liked about this book, the men win the arguments here. Okay okay, I'm not being anti-feminist here but one gotta see the funny side of it. The plot is inconsistent in its pace, sometimes gliding along while at times just not going anywhere, which brings me to the excessive self-introspection bit I wrote about earlier. It seems like Hornby is trying too hard to be different, after having written two books that are essentially coming-of-age stories. Hornby has this gift of creating impossible situations & then effortlessly finding his way out of it, but it seems he dwells upon these situations longer than necessary, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste.

Still, there is no dearth of genuine laughs in this book nor is there anything lacking in terms of characterisation. This is perhaps Hornby's most realistic novel till date, for one can recognise a bit of oneself & people they know in each of the characters one encounters.

So that's 3 stars for 'How To Be Good' by Nick Hornby. It certainly isn't one of Hornby's best, but it's just good enough to merit a read.

This book came to me in the most wonderful of ways - as a first gift from a new friend. It was a goodbye gift of a sort and I hope, a hello of a different nature. This is my first Nick Hornby and people whose book opinions I value seem to regard him greatly.

'How to be good' has a shocking everydayness about it. Given that the title sounds like it's parodying a gushing, pontificating self-help book, I guess that's par for the course. Dr.Katie Carr is coasting along, dissatisfied with her marriage, jaded beyond measure with the burdens of her profession, distracted by motherhood and bogged down by all of it happening at once. She falls into an affair with someone she doesn't even like all that much but that isn't the most shocking thing to happen to her life. Her acerbic husband 'The Angriest Man in Holloway' decides to turn over a new leaf and become nauseatingly GOOD.

Moral dilemma, self-loathing and suburban angst are finely blended together in a concoction that ends up being horrifying and funny in equal measure. The reviews praise Hornby's depiction of a female character and I agree. Women don't feel mystifying, sexy, put-together or irrational from inside. We just feel overwhelmed and confused by life, sometimes, just like everyone else. Hornby's Katie Carr brings this out well.

The book seemed to drag in the second half, not so much because the plot didn't move but perhaps the weariness of the key character started to get to me as well. Yes, it was depressing and the wit, negative and poisonous. So if you're looking for a pick-me-up, this book is not it. But complex emotions and mundane situations are brought out with equal aplomb and you really feel the way the characters do. If that's not a good book, I don't know what is.

"How To Be Good". Mixed feelings on this one. Our renown author has always had a talent for expressing emotional situations can ask relate to but can never say in words. "Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play," Doctor Katie Carr says. And this book lays it out for its readers illustrating this truth beautifully.

"How To Be Good" actually refers to a book that David Grant, the protagonist's husband, decides he wants to co-author with GoodNews, a spiritual healer who moves in with Katie Carr and their two children Molly and Tom. David used to be quite the opposite-a naysayer for a career (he writes a column in which he chooses something to have a problem with), having conversations consisting of nothing but gossiping about others. When his back goes out on him, he decides to take a chance in the dark with this man who days he can heal him. Lo and behold, he does. Thus begins David's quest for "goodness", beginning with suddenly wanting to better his marriage with Katie, acknowledging that he had not shown her love for many years now. He takes her a play, something the old David would bitch about for hours, and Katie can almost visibly see the struggle between her old and new husband as he watched. On the way back, he gives 80 quid from Katie's purse (he does not have his wallet with him, he claims) to a homeless person.

Strange, new, but overall positive, Katie thinks he is at first playing another manipulation game. Something this drastic its apparently not out of character. But then things move from strange to extreme. Like taking away the children's toys because they already have enough, to spontaneously giving away the dinner they were about to eat with Katie's parents because he simply "could not do it", and his crusade to get all his neighbors on Webster Street to take in a homeless child. (Six agree, including themselves. One robs his hosts, another forces the return of said goods by violent means. These two disappear, along with one other. The three others, all girls, are a success.)

I will say that this book will inevitably get the reader thinking. Thinking about moral issues. Thinking about the one present, the GDP. There is the apt portrayal of how David, neglecting his family to "save the world" on a more macro scale, does not necessarily make him a "better", more "good" person than Katie, who is "selfishly" not willing to take in more homeless people, nor want to give up her magazines and books and technology; her surplus, unnecessary, frivolous good that, to her, keep her sane.

A few things that I learned.

Apparently, no-fault divorce is still not possible in England. Amazing. Especially when you consider the fact that this entire story would have gone differently. By Katie's admission, the divorce would have been finalized. In fact, she finally puts aside her shame and pride to confess her adultery, but David does not seem phased. And according to https://www.gov.uk/divorce/grounds-fo..., this means nothing. Unless Katie makes David so miserable that he no longer wants to live with her and files for divorce.

Secondly, "charity" has the same root as "love", so in the King James version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13 is written: Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

I far prefer the more common interpretation (pretty much every other version): "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

These two opposing interpretations are representative of (New) David and Katie's philosophies on this, respectively. Molly, their daughter, chooses sides with David and Tom their mother. With your new-found charity, Molly invites someone to live with their family. Understandably, her mother vetoes this. After telling their guest that he will have to go home eventually, she realizes that Molly will have a much harder time accepting her decision. "That is the thing with this brand of charity. It is all about what it does for us, not for them."

Katie's determination to remain in the marriage, despite her own happiness (and what I could easily deduce would be her children's happiness in the long term) frustrated me immensely. Despite David's open admission that their marriage was dead. It is clear that this decision is based on her need to feel like she is "good". One of the most grating things in this book was the frequent referral to how a doctor is automatically more "good". Katie even says, as fact rather than opinion, that fixtures go into it with good intentions, they must be better, etcetera. I vehmenently disagree. I know as many doctors that have told me themselves that they pursued medicine for the money and stature. And I do not believe in true altruism. Even the most altruistic feel better about themselves by being altruistic. Infuriating.

My favorite insight from the book, referring to sleeping with someone you have known for years and a lover:

"The difference between sex with David and sex with Stephen is like the difference between science and art. With Stephen it's all empathy and imagination and exploration and the shock of the new, and the outcome is... uncertain, if you know what I mean. I'm engaged by it, but not necessarily sure what its all about. David, on the other hand, presses this button, then that one, and bingo! It's like operating a lift- as romantic, but also as useful."

Funny, I especially enjoyed the line describing a wacky vicar as “one wafer short of a communion”!

I seen this book on my sister's shelf and asked her about it and her replay was:"It's horrible, characters are so annoying I wanted to torture them".

So as Calvin said, that piqued my curiosity.Can it really be that bad?Turns out that it can be as I found no redeeming part.

This is a audiobook review of the book. I had the Penguin audiobook abridged version, read by Frances Barber.

Katie Carr is a doctor, a GP, who is in all intent and purpose someone who is trying to be a good. She is unhappy with her marriage and asks her husband David for a divorce. Meanwhile she is having an affair with someone called Steven, whose only significance in the story is the man whom Katie had an affair with.

David is described as an angry person by Katie but we don't see much of this side of his character throughout this book, instead we see a rebuilt man, someone who wants to be good and does good deeds. We later find out the reason why.

Katie's lack of security with herself had put me off. It read almost as if Katie was the victim and David was some kind of psychopath. The humour in the story was washed away by its eerie optimism. I was half expecting a death somewhere in the story to bring about a change in the tone.

Throughout the book Katie carries a lot of guilt, painfully so. There were times when I wanted so much for David to fail, or at least have someone punch him in the face.

It's a shame that this story didn't have a saving grace, I'm sure it could have, without it I would mark this a 2.5 stars, but I like Nick Hornby so I'll round this up to a 3.

Potentially an all-time favourite, I’ve never read anything like this that keeps so engaged and hungry for more but equally anxious and paranoid while reading. This will stick with me for my whole life - chock full of lessons and parables.

Minus one star for the ending but boy does Nick Hornby know how to make a girl chuckle

محشره
ديدي كه راوي داستان -يه زن چهل و خرده اي ساله-نسبت به زندگيش داره
كنار اومدنش با شرايط سخت و عجيب و غريب زندگي
قابل درك بودن احساساتش نسبت به همسرش كه طي يه ملاقات با يه غريبه ي به مراتب عجيب غريب تر از داستان تغيير شديدي ميكنه و از يه ادم وحشتناك تبديل به بزرگترين خير دنيا ميشه
همه چيز اين كتاب عاليه
به جز خود اصل داستان...و اينكه اصن توضيح نميده اين ديگه چيه ؟؟؟؟ دست شفابخش؟!؟!شوخي!!!!!!!ا
ولي خوب كلا خيلي كتاب جالبي بود و بعضي جيزايي كه خانمه(اسمش يادم نمياد...دييييي) ميگفت به شدت تو فكرم ميبرد
كنجكاو شدم كتاب هاي معروفتر نويسنده رو بخونم
پ.ن : اين كتابو از جنگل پنج تومن خريدم چون يه گوشش تا شده اندازه يه سانت...اكر تهران هستيد حتما بهش يه سري بزنيد خيلي عاليه

2.5 stars rounded up, because I enjoyed Hornby’s prose and pervasive wit despite his story not really going anywhere and ending with a jarring abruptness, completely lacking closure or resolution. Taken as an exaggerated satire of marriage, it’s easier to enjoy, especially since the characters are all varying degrees of unlikable; but one wishes Hornby would’ve gone full War of the Roses if he was giving us no one to root for. If I had to pick a side, it would be with adulteress Katie; even though she's a bit sanctimonious in her narration (I must be good--I'm a doctor!), she feels the most like a real person. Husband David, on the other hand, goes from being a completely insufferable, petulant asshole with anger issues to a completely insufferable, self-righteous prig with a Polyanna complex; and neither side of his character’s 180 is believable in the slightest as an actual human being. And don't even get me started on "DJ GoodNews" (eye roll). This was a fast read but ultimately a frustrating one, because Hornby has an abundance of clever insight and salient points about marriage, goodness, humility, etc., but it’s muddled by people and plotlines that never feel authentic. Still, I enjoyed the writing itself, so I’ll gladly give the accomplished Hornby another chance—most likely with About a Boy, as the film adaptation has long been a favorite.