How To Be Good

Nick Hornby

So I finished the new Nick Hornby, "How to be Good," last night. I'm not sure what to make of it. It's better than "About a Boy" and, I think, better written than "High Fidelity." (Though "High Fidelity" will always remain closest to my heart.)

The story concerns Dr. Katie Carr, a physician whose marriage to a curmudgeonly writer is falling apart. Then the writer, David, meets with a bizarre healer named DJ GoodNews. GoodNews fills David with love, to the point that David wants to help others more than his family. GoodNews also moves in. Katie manages to hold together, but it's not easy -- is her "good" husband any better than her curmudgeonly husband? And what does being "good" mean?

I give Hornby many points for having a somewhat unsympathetic narrator. After awhile David starts wearing on KAtie and she becomes more curmudgeonly than he was. She picks fights, is constantly exasperated, and pricks holes in her children's dreams just so they know what reality is all about. This could have been a whimsical, flighty book, but Hornby insists on weighing exactly what doing good means to people, especially when it appears to be at the expense of others.

It's that grimness, however, which makes me wonder. Sometimes you want a book to have a happy ending. Be forewarned: Hornby doesn't take the easy way out. I don't know if the ending is supposed to be happy or not; I think it's realistic, but -- and I surprise myself -- that's not what I wanted.

Worth reading.