A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

I’ve decided that this week will be Disappointment week. It’s happened to all of us: an author we love has a new book out. Despite having almost a hundred books on the TBR pile, we rush out and buy the book in hardcover and start reading it the moment we arrive home, ignoring the other three books in progress at the moment. And it turns out to be a Disappointment.

Yesterday’s disappointment, as you can see, was Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito. Today’s disappointment is Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down. The premise of the novel is intriguing: a group of strangers meets one New Year’s Eve on the roof of an apartment building. What do they have in common? They were all thinking of ending their lives that night by plunging to their deaths.

Actually, on second thought, that premise isn’t really that interesting after all. If you give a few moments, you suddenly realize that it’s an almost trite setup-- a setup that practically writes itself. But still, you read it anyway because there might be something there—Hornby might pull off some grander statement about our lives and our shared humanity.

But no. Though each individual character is portrayed realistically and with some depth, pretty much everything that happens to them as a group is unrealistic and shallow. I never believed in them as a group. The development of each character from a suicidal person to a person at peace with who they are depends so heavily on the dynamics within the group that without my emotional investment in the group, the whole story falls apart. It becomes too simplistic to be real.

It’s very odd to me that I would have such an opposite reaction to this book as the critics, such as Publisher’s Weekly, who gave it a starred review and thought that, “This is a brave and absorbing book. It's a thrill to watch a writer as talented as Hornby take on the grimmest of subjects without flinching, and somehow make it funny and surprising at the same time.” School Library Journal writes, “The novel is so simply written that its depths don't come to full view until well into the reading… Tough questions are asked–why do you want to kill yourself, and why didn't you do it? Are adults any smarter than adolescents? What defines friends and family?”

I didn’t think it was any of those things, and I didn’t think the questions addressed made me think about anything on a new level. And don’t you think it’s interesting that A Long Way Down is now considered a YA crossover book?

In honor of Disappointments week, feel free to share yours in the comments.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Tags: book+reviews disappointments suicide Nick+Hornby