How To Be Good: Summary and book reviews of How To Be Good by Nick Hornby, plus links to an excerpt from How To Be Good and a biography of Nick Hornby.
How To Be Good
by Nick Hornby
Hardcover: Jul 2001,
320 pages.
Paperback: Apr 2002,
320 pages.
How to Be Good is a story for our times--a humorous but uncompromising look at what it takes, in this day and age, to have the courage of our convictions. In his third novel, Nick Hornby, whom The New Yorker named "the maestro of the male confessional," has reinvented himself as Katie--the consummate liberal, urban mom--a doctor from North London whose world is being turned on its ear by the outrageous spiritual transformation of her husband, David.
How to Be Good has the ironic, funny, startlingly accurate take on our modern selves and our modern world that has become Hornby's turf as a chronicler of our popular culture--but this time he tackles it all with more richness and depth, and carries his readers beyond the comic confines of the novel to a bigger truth about themselves. It's a story about how to wreck your marriage, how to help the homeless, how not to raise your kids, how to find religion . . . and how to be good.
The New York Times Book Review
Hornby is a writer who dares to be witty, intelligent, and emotionally generous all at once.
Library Journal
For his third novel after the male-sympathetic High Fidelity and About a Boy, Hornby hasn't merely gotten in touch with his feminine side--- more importantly, via Katie he harrowingly portrays how ambivalence attacks the heart like a virus at mid-life..... But fear not, old-school Hornby fans, for this departure is expertly tempered with flecks of humor and pop culture references.
Kirkus Reviews
Another delightful comedy from Hornby ... Hornby's quick eye and nimble observational style nail everyone's vanity.
Hello Magazine
Perceptive and funny, this is a classic slice of Hornby's humanity.
The Sunday Times
...a bitingly clever novel of ideas [How to be Good] leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or cry ... [a] profound, worrying, hilarious, sophisticated, compulsive novel.
The Independent
Hornby's prose is artful and effortless, his spiky wit as razored as a number-two cut ... his dialogue sings with empathy for the discordant voices of ordinary, struggling humanity.
The Mail on Sunday - Christopher Bray
Nick Hornby's latest novel pins you in your armchair and won't let go. Eating, drinking, bathing…all took second place while I was reading this book.
Observer
He should write for England
Daily Telegraph
Hornby's aim is true ... like all good comic writers, Hornby uses jokes to confront more deeply, not side-step
The Mail on Sunday
How to be Good? How to be bloody marvelous more like.
New Statesman
...a good, dark, espresso-strength comedy that nobody else could have written.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by tim Not a good read It's always helpful to know the author's intentions behind writing a book, but in this case it just doesn't matter. It's just an all-around unpleasant reading experience. The story is not very interesting. The humor is weak. There is just not a... Read More
Rated of 5
by hexehillary
I found "how to be good" very entertaining. At the end I was uncertain what Hornby was trying to say: that there is no God? that Katie suddenly appreciates what she has but then loses it? it seems to me very ambiguous. What actuallly... Read More
Rated of 5
by cheese borger
I have read this book twice in 3 months and absolutely love it. I am a 43 year old male "with a flat battery" and this book really hit home. Thought provoking and also very funny.
Rated of 5
by kate jones
I thought it was wonderful, thought provoking, funny, a great read.
Rated of 5
by nick
this Book is absolutley JUNK !! it's not worth the paper !
Rated of 5
by kennylee
An interesting book that examines the tension between freedom and equality in a democratic society. The plot and theme are great from begining to end; however to speak to the masses, the book is written at about a 10th grade reading level. This... Read More
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