How to Be Good by Nick Hornby Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of How to Be Good
Book Review: A thought-provoking humorous read.
Summary: 5 Stars
I enjoyed the way Nick Hornby managed to get you to think about some important issues -- how do you manage to do good in the real world, which often frustrates your best efforts, or turns them in unexpected directions -- while managing to be laugh-out-loud funny at various points. I read most of this while relaxing outside this summer and it was perfect for that purpose.Book Review: A waste of time
Summary: 1 Stars
I picked up "How to be Good" from the bargain shelf at the bookstore. After reading it, I now know why it was there. "How to Be Good" tells the story of Dr. Katie Carr and her husband David, a writer who write the column and lifes the life of "the Angriest Man in Holloway." The book opens as Katie, fed up with her husband's caustic manner, calls her husband from a parking lot to tell him she wants a divorce. Katie, we find is having an affair. Katie is not very passionate about it either way (and we find this is a common theme with her), and winds up back home, still living with David. David goes to a local faith healer and undergoes a complete change. Suddenly, he's the husband Katie has always wanted. He's kind, he's considerate, he's no longer the "Angriest Man in Holloway" and he even forgives her affair, citing his own failings as a husband. However, there's always a twist. Katie doesn't like this new David. In her way, she was used to his sarcasm and furthermore, now he's obsessed with doing good. When the faith healer (GoodNews) is evicted, he moves in with the family and he and David are always concocting different ways to be good. A few of the exhuastive examples of these include convincing everyone in their neighborhood to take in a homeless teenager, and giving away their belongings.
What began as a depressing look inside an unhappy marriage becomes a redundant exploration of what it means to be "good." Katie became a doctor so that she could help people and be good. But is that enough? David and GoodNews argue that it isn't and the book is filled with examples of them plotting schemes to be "good." Katie struggles with what it means to be good. lather, rinse, repeat. The reader is beaten over the head by this concept in chapter after tiresome chapter.
The book's characters might be interesting were they not all reflected through the jaded eyes of Katie, the main character who can't seem to find much positive in her life, aside from the excuses she makes for her own behavior. Katie herself is rather tiresome and deporessing to be with for all of those pages. Furthermore, the voice does not seem to ring true for that of a woman. The sense of a male narrator was so strong that in early chapters, I had to keep reminding myself that the narrator was a woman. Even the most colorful of the cast of characters, GoodNews, the faith healer is not that interesting or believable. He seems more like a cartoon or a caricature than an actual person. He's just a plot device. The same can be said of David, as well as Tom and Molly, the couple's children.
The central struggle, which sometimes gets lost in the endless repetition, is whether Katie should stay in her marriage, once unhappy because he husband was angrey and uncaring, now because he's too caring and shows too much concern for others. Toward the end of the book, Katie compares her marriage with having a knife in your stomach, do you take it out and risk bleeding to death, or leave it in. By that point, finishing the book seemed like that kind of decision. My advice: take the knife out. it's not worth it.
Book Review: A worthwhile book to read
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an excellent read. The idea of that the narrator is a female never fits quite right (There are several jarring moments when there is no way you can believe it is a female speaking.), but when you set that aside, there is so much to enjoy.
The book constantly questions the idea of 'good'. It never answers the question satisfactorily; I think I would have been disappointed if it had. It doesn't retreat into mouthing what the Bible or the New Age'er would consider good, though both subjects are addressed.
How does a sane person try to do good in this world?
How has the idea that a person must be good affected us?
It's not a likeable book, but it is a book you would read when you're feeling out of sorts and cynical(and have no real, single, solid reason to be)with the world because you can look at these characters trying to sort themselves out in life and see that you're not the only one.
Book Review: Also known as how to be mediocre
Summary: 3 Stars
The narrator of this story, Kate, finds herself in a precarious position of deciding whether to stay in her marriage or break things off and make things awkward for her children and home life. She feels guilty about wanting to leave her husband David since, as a doctor, she is the primary breadwinner in the family. By asking for a divorce she will leave her husband, who makes signifantly less money writing a droll newspaper column titled "The Angriest Man in Holloway," in a rather difficult place. Their marriage is shaky at best, with Kate resenting David for his constant choice of sarcasm over honesty and his stubborn refusal to go after his own dreams. When he's made aware of Kate's feelings, David does a complete 180 and decides to see a healer named Goodnews who promises to teach David "How to Be Good." Complicating matters is Kate's recent affair and the fact that the man in question fancies himself in love with her.
I've been told that if I'm going to read Nick Hornby that High Fidelity is the place to start, but I figured I should read something that I haven't already seen on screen so as not to cloud my judgment. This book was interesting... not awful, not great but somewhere in the gray area in between. At times, I just wanted David to admit that you can't save the world and it really isn't always worth it to try. On the same token, I wanted Kate to admit that at least David was trying to do something different with his life, which is what she appeared to want from the beginning. I think the journey was worth it, but the end result was not. I will, however, try High Fidelity and see if I like it better.
Book Review: Am I good?
Summary: 3 Stars
Katie Karr looks upon her self as a good person. She is a doctor, which for her proves that she is doing good. She is married to David, who is not good, and they have two quite normal kids.Katies life changes the day she finds herself calling home from a car park telling her husband that she wants a divorce.
This makes both Katie and David look at their lives with new glasses. And suddenly Katie finds she is married not to the angry, cynical, negative David, but to the David who is good, doing good deeds whenever he can, even giving away the kids' toys, the family meals, their spare bedroom.
The plot in the story focuses on our ethical values. And the way this is done gives me mixed feelings. The values Hornby tries to point out as the positive and important ones (at least that's what I think he means) is the values of my life. I try to be good, I try to spend less to have more to give, I try to give of my time to people, I go to church. But the way Hornby writes about all this makes it look silly and somehow ironical. The book makes me feel bad, like Katie feels bad when she tries to look back on the life she has been living. And at the same time I feel that Hornby makes fun of me, and of people like me.
Having said this I also want to say that this is an important book. It is a book people should read, not as an easy, leisure time book, but as a book giving help for the reflections about our lives. What is it to be good, what is it not to be good. And at the same time the book is funny, really funny. I have laughed alot reading about the predictable lives of Katie and David.
This will not be my new bible, but I know that this book will live with me for some time. And may be even make some changes in my life for myself and for other people.