Out of all the great Hornbys, it's my very fave, this one.

Probably because it's exactly what I spend most of my waking hours thinking about: what is "good" or perhaps, what is "correct"? What are the limits and limitations of morality and ethics (or altruism)? Is a "my family first" (or country or religion or whatever) attitude legit or egotistical in the extreme? How does one act appropriately in all situations?

There are no easy, or maybe even right, answers to any of that. Especially not in the self-referential, spiritually barren (but all to familiar) modern society Hornby holds a mirror up to through the characters of the Carr family.

And he gets in some really great scenes, too. Esp the one towards the end that takes place at a C of E Sunday service. Religion, or belief of any kind, being viewed as a public embarrassment and the only decent thing a vicar could do is apologise profusely and hide their face in shame for their job in today's England.

"Pfffftttt....God," sayeth the modern Englishman.

How to be Good by Nick Hornby

I picked up this book as part of my “I am going to read people who aren't dead” series. I can see Hornby's appeal. He is a good writer. And if I were the kind of kid who was to wear really tight black jeans, over-sized white tee-shirts, and knit caps with brims and spend my time riding my one gear bike through the mission looking for cheap Mexican food, Hornby would be my man. He epitomizes “Gen Y” (God I love those “Gen” labels). If you are apathetic, directionless, like to analyze your emotions until they are beaten to ground, and struggling with the fact that secular humanism means death (and therefore to a certain degree life) are pointless, then this is a book for you. It is about some upper middle class British wankers. They are horrible. He is a columnist who is the “angriest man in London” and she is a doctor who cheats on him. For the first third of the book they treat each other and their kids like shit (by page 100 I almost gave up on the book in disgust). Then the husband literally meets the GoodNews (a “Gen-whatever-is-after-Y) kid who has Jesus like healing hands. Through GoodNews the husband has a spiritual conversion. The story is the first person account of the wife's affair and then reaction to her husband's conversion and finally her own “realistic” version of the same conversion. Like I said, Hornby isn't a bad writer and there are certain truths of his criticism of secular humanism and the boredom that is everyday life. That's what kept me reading. And the husband is an interesting character. For example, he and GoodNews figure that on their rich ass street that there are at least a dozen houses with spare bedrooms that just aren't being used. After figuring that out, they plot to fill each of those bedrooms with a homeless kid (their plot to be good). The book does a good job of making this successful for some kids and a total failure for others. In addition, I can't argue with the characters. It's a good idea and there is really nothing keeping people from doing something like that other than themselves. The wife/narrator becomes the voice of “reason.” She argues that they need their houses and consumer goods to take care of themselves first—they must conqueror their boredom and the difficulty that is life in general. Like I said very Gen-Y. My biggest criticism of the book and the reason it gets two rather than three stars is that the narrator doesn't sound like an authentic woman. I paraphrase and exaggerate but at one point she winds up summing up her life something like this: “God, all I need out of life is a big dick, a doughnut, the ability to evacuate my bowels, and bunch of video games to keep me occupied.” I can see a woman feeling and saying this, but I couldn't imagine a married woman with kids summing up her entire existence as such. That's the sense the narrator espouses and I feel it to be a very masculine mid-life crisis sentiment rather than a feminine. Its my sense of the character and I feel it lacks authenticity. In sum, Hornby is a good writer and this is a book with interesting points. And at the same time his spiritualism is idiotic and his narrator is lacking. I can image another book and topic, such High Fidelity, being executed much better. I could say I admire his bravery to write a woman and take on a social topic, but I don't really. He winds up embodying the very things he is critiquing. (I know it's a bit harsh of a review, but that's the blow back you get for preaching at me poorly.)

I read this entire book hoping that the author would eventually get around to posing an answer to the question that the title offers. It did provide some interesting food for thought, even though I thought he took the conceit (what if angry husband becomes extremely altruistic overnight) too far. (Why, for example, does this mean that the guy no longer even comprehends humor? It seems to be implying you have to be something of a bad person to be funny, which is so untrue that it annoyed me.)

The ending was utterly abrupt, and apparently relies on a metaphor, which the author did not do at any point prior to the last paragraph. I found both the tonal shift and the sudden ending to be jarring and unsatisfying. I feel as though the author wrote How to Be Good as a kind of narrative exercise without bothering to come up with any conclusions to the premise.

All that being said, How to Be Good is okay. It can be entertaining, and even occasionally thought-provoking. Just don't expect to find any useful sort of philosophy inside.

Well, this book proves that I can hate a book solely because of the protagonist. I'm disappointed because this was my first time reading a book by Nick Hornby and I wasn't impressed with the book or the writing.

The plot focuses on a woman called Katie who is unhappy with her life. Then her husband goes through a radical change and becomes " really good". Its not a bad premise for a plot but there was nothing extraordinary or original about the book's execution. Katie is absolutely unbearable. She is a horrible mother, a crappy wife and a despicable person. All she does is judge people 24/7 and she also blames all her problems on other people. The most despicable thing she did was tell her 8 year old daughter (8 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER!!!!) that they wouldn't be getting a divorce, if she was good. I hated listening to her inner monologue and the conversations she had with other people. She kept referring to herself as a "good person" but trust me, she wasn't.

The whole magical healing hands thing didn't appeal to me. I don't believe that someone can heal you with hot magical hands. David's personality change was insufferable. He went from being aggressive and annoying to preachy and annoying and I don't know which one I preferred because they were both intolerable. I disliked ALL of the characters (probably because of the way Katie described them). There was nothing good about this novel. It posed a good question: "how would you react if your husband (etc.) became 'too good'?" but I believe that Katie was the wrong type of wife to feature in this novel. The book was basically just Katie complaining and it was so depressing! The writing was meh, it didn't impress me. And I won't even get started about that horrible closing sentence!!!!!

The cover said the book was hilarious, sophisticated, compulsive, very funny, very clever, witty, brilliant and marvellous but it was none of these things. In fact, it was the opposite. I would not recommend this book to anyone and I won't be in a hurry to read another book by Nick Hornby.

Este libro solo podía haberlo escrito Nick Hornby, eso lo tengo clarísimo. No solo es que a mí me encante él, cómo escribe, los personajes esperpénticos (y, al mismo tiempo, tan reales) que se saca de la manga, las situaciones inverosímiles (y, de nuevo, al mismo tiempo reconocibles para cualquiera) que les hace vivir y ese humor suyo inglés diluido en pragmatismo americano que tanto me gusta. Es que, para escribir bien esta historia y que te haga reír y sentirte culpable al mismo tiempo, tenía que hacerlo él. Y es que con esta novela te ríes hasta que se te saltan las lágrimas, te sientes miserable, egoísta y superficial (y acompañado en tus defectos), empatizas con un cínico odioso y te entran ganas de abofetear a los oficialmente adorables. Un torbellino de emociones que te dará que pensar y luego te dirá que no merecía la pena comerse tanto la cabeza. LA RESEÑA SIGUE AQUÍ: https://elbuscalibros.com/c%C3%B3mo-s...

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.

I started this in the morning and could not put it down. Finished in one day. A good use of a nice Sunday.

Nick Hornby is a favorite and after this experience I may go ahead and read all of his books, I’ve liked every book of his that I have read. I also like music and sports and his take on relationships is also something to behold.

Read the reviews on this and we can all decide that this has inspired strong emotions, many people love it and it seems an equal number of readers have rang it up with one and two stars. He’s got a lot going on.

While reading I thought of the Biblical quote from Matthew 19:21-22. “Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.”

Hornby describes a family in London where a wife, mother and doctor is having some serious marital problems. She and her husband, kind of an underemployed angry crank, may be going through a divorce. She worries what this will do to their two young children and her internal monologues comprise most of the body of the text.

Then the husband meets a faith healer - DJ GoodNews - and all hell breaks loose. First of all, GoodNews heals the husband’s back problems as well as some other ailments. Husband actually tries to be a better person, making some real changes. Wife wonders if they can make the marriage work after all.

And that’s where the meat and potatoes are served up. GoodNews wants them to give away their possessions, give to charities, invite homeless people to come live with them, etc. Wife, who considers herself a “good person” and can talk the talk, is sorely tested with walking the walk. Hornby examines her real struggle, wanting to pay back to society, wanting to help the less fortunate, but also needing to provide for her own family. The children’s reactions to the changes are golden.

This is a post-modern work in that it does not follow a recognized template and the ending is … cumbersome. If you’re looking for a Lifetime movie with an all smiles happy ending, its not here, but Hornby has put together a modern morality play that asks some difficult but relevant questions and provides some delicious moments for us to consider.

The reason I really liked How to Be Good can be summarised with the following sentence: I don't know what people who think they're going to save the world are hoping to accomplish.
So I liked it. Lots of funny sentiments expressed by the main character. [Slight spoilers ahead, though with this book I don't think it matters] Even in the second to last chapter she does things like telling her daughter, when she asks if her parents are getting divorced, "Not if you'll be good". I laughed out loud quite a few times, the wit is really sardonic and sarcastic.
I also liked that there isn't really a clear resolution to the initial dilemma of how the hell can we live with each other. One of the few things I didn't like was the main character's constant flimsiness. In most scenes, she would start out feeling one way, then having been challenged finds some reason for thinking completely the opposite. It became a little too obvious towards the end.
However, altogether How to Be Good was a surprisingly enjoyable read.

zeer muah

3.5 This novel was easy to read but, for me, it's going to take a little time to digest it.

What's it about? Well, it's partly about power struggles in marriages and about how, when we get what we think we want, we often don't want it after all. And it's about how we can thoroughly despise a spouse or a child in one moment, then want to embrace them in the next moment.

The novel's also about sadness as a human condition. Here's a quote from the female narrator about her daughter:

"What has happened to Molly in her first eight years? More or less nothing. We have protected her from the world as best we can. She has been brought up in a loving home, she has two parents, she has never been hungry, and she receives an education that will prepare her for the rest of her life; and yet she is sad, and that sadness is not, when you think about it, inappropriate. The state of the relationship between her parents makes her anxious; she has lost a loved one (and a cat); and she has realized that such losses are going to be an unavoidable part of her life in the future. It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone."

And, of course, the novel is about how to be good, and this is the part I'm going to have to think about. There's lots of humor here. These are the narrator's thoughts when she attends church:

"I decide, on the spot, to let God into my heart, in the hope that my newfound faith can somehow be used as a vicious weapon in the marital war. It is true that not everyone discovers the Lord in this way; some would argue that it is distinctly unChristian, in fact, to become a convert in the hope that it might really upset somebody. But God, famously, moves in mysterious ways."

You may immediately realize what the book is saying about how to be good, but I'm still thinking it over.

wow. it was very funny, pretty abrupt ending but it was quite fitting for the moral of the story. will be reading more from Nick Hornby

Probably more like 3.5 stars.
The novel is incredibly ugly as far as aesthetics go. The language is so pedestrian it depressed me at times, as well as the story itself did. But I liked this book much more than I did High Fidelity for its lack of cuteness, its courage, its intellectually complex and deep, wry and dark engagement with the big questions of morals versus moralism, and the essence of goodness. I almost wanted this to be an essay, because of the narrator’s dull mind and voice… But the dilemmas, the dilemmas and the social critique so brave and astute… Yes, it is a confusing book. And a book I’m glad to have read.