Nick Hornby

Narrated in turns by a dowdy, middle-aged woman, a half-crazed adolescent, a disgraced breakfast TV presenter and an American rock star cum pizza delivery boy, A Long Way Down is the story of the Toppers House Four, aka Maureen, Jess, Martin and JJ. A low-rent crowd with absolutely nothing in common - save where they end up that New Year's Eve night. And what they do next, of course. Funny, sad, and wonderfully humane, Nick Hornby's new novel asks some of the big questions: about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain, and whether a slice of pizza can really see you through a long, dark night of the soul.

A Long Way Down

"You'd think this would be the story of four people who met because they were unhappy, and wanted to help each other. But it hadn't been...it had been the story of four people who met because they were unhappy and then swore at each other."

I loved this book so much. I loved it so much I asked (annoyed) all my friends to read it. I seriously did, and that was very unexpected. The plot, the characters, setting, everything.

Let me start off with the plot. I am not a fan of suicide, and I do not support it in any way. So these four people, who all have different stories but equally depressing lives, decide to ump of a building on the same day, same night, at the same time. Then it all became very awkward up there (not to mention disastrous, witty, funny and life-changing, and since they had nothing else worth doing, they decided to solve the immediate dilemma. Long story short, they find themselves stuck with each other with (honestly) just one thing in common: they have lost the will to live.

The characters are loco, unpleasant, jerks, and really lame, but are terribly endearing. Martin and Jess are always fighting (which I find massively entertaining), JJ is just lazy and Maureen is lovely (but lame, but through those 333 pages, you get to truly know and understand them. They are reluctant to be with each other while having the need to be with the only people who understand each other. The situations they find themselves in are hilarious, poignant and mostly end in fights and epiphanies for each.  

In the end, their lives are still quite sucky, there is no happy ending, and they were still stuck in the deep end. Yet the book ended perfectly for me, and the ending gave me immense satisfaction. This books showed me a a lot about depression that I didnt know about before, and the story is a perfect example of how there is so much more to life than we know. Hornby is funny, smart and incredibly poignant and I expect to read another one of his novellas.

A Long Way Down

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