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Read an extract
Buy A Long Way Down
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'If Camus had written a grown up version of The Breakfast Club, the result might have had more than a little in commmon with [A Long Way Down] ... 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'
Tom Perotta, Publishers Weekly
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New Years Eve at Toppers House, North London's most popular suicide spot. And four strangers are about to discover that doing away with yourself isn't quite the private act they'd each expected.
Perma-tanned Martin Sharp's a disgraced breakfast TV presenter who had it all - the kids, the wife, the pad, the great career - but he 'pissed it all away'. Killing himself is Martin's 'reasonable and appropriate response' to an unliveable life.
Maureen has to do it tonight, because of Matty being in the home. He was never able to do any of the normal things kids do - like walk or talk - and loving-mum Maureen can't cope any more. Dutiful Catholic that she is, she's about to commit the 'biggest sin of all'.
Half-crazed with heartbreak, loneliness, adolescent angst, seven Bacardi Breezers and two Special Brews, Jess's ready to jump, to fly off the roof. Lastly, there's JJ - tall, cool, American, looks like a rock-star (was, in fact, a rock-star before his band split) - who's weighed down with a heap of problems and pizza.
Four strangers, who moments before were all convinced that they were alone and going to end it all that way, sit down together, share out the pizza and begin to talk.
Funny, sad, and wonderfully humane, Nick Hornby's A LONG WAY DOWN is a novel that 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.
'Extremely funny … cunning and wise. Hornby remains one of our most gifted comic writers'
Sunday Times
'Hornby's best novel to date, impossible to put down … how can an examination of four people's anguish be so enthralling?'
Ruth Rendell, Guardian
'A page-turning plot and rich, funny characters with several big laughs on every page … Hornby's best yet'
Literary Review
'Hornby pins down the age in which we live with precision and comic brilliance'
Guardian
'Hugely enjoyable'
Irish Times
'Masterful … some of the finest writing, and some of the most outstanding characters I've ever had the pleasure of reading'
Johnny Depp
'The finest novel Hornby has written to date'
Evening Standard
'Enjoyably readable, genuinely moving'
Guardian
'A writer of great feeling and warmth … high on charm and frequently hilarious'
Washington Post
'Highly moving and lively storytelling: Honey's gifts become more apparent with each outing'
Kirkus Reviews
'Immensely impressive and loveable'
Heat
'There are plenty of wry laughs to be had here'
Glamour
'A pleasure'
Helen Dunmore, The Times
'Stays with you. Hornby's writing is so popular because he goes straight to the moral struggle: to find the good in life. About that, he couldn't be more serious. Or engaging'
Evening Standard
'A fine book'
Sunday Express
'Hornby excels in the delineation of individual voice … the warmest and most committed of moralists'
Spectator
'Many pleasures'
Marie Claire
'Laughs on every page. A premier league effort: this is Hornby's best novel since High Fidelity … this is one treat that leave you with a satisfied smile'
Independent on Sunday
'The jolliest novel Hornby has written'
Guardian
'Perhaps the funniest and most exhilarating novel ever written about group suicide. A long way up from much modern fiction, which seems to have been written to supply us with reasons to jump'
Village Voice
'A Hornby fan's dream'
Esquire
'Hornby's most original and accomplished novel to date … there are numerous moments of old, knowing Hornbyesque humour, zeitgeisty references'
Mirror
'Hilarious yet heartbreaking'
In Style
'Generous and wise. Right from the open pages, a smile played continually across my face'
GQ
'Darkly comic'
San Francisco Chronicle
'Brilliant, smart and funny … a cello suite about how to go on living. It's hard to imagine a novel more darkly and sublimely devoted to life'
Boston Globe |
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Interviews
Laughing All the Way to the Cemetery: An interview with Nick
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1464888,00.html
Laughing All the Way to the Cemetary - the Guardian's Simon Hattenstone talks to Nick:
http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/p/polysyllabic-spree.shtml
The Powells Interview:
http://www.powells.com/authors/hornby.html
The Powells Interview:
http://www.powells.com/authors/hornby.html
Reviews
The Independent review:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article236862.ece
The Guardian review:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,1473269,00.html
The Spectator:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books.php?id=2829
The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1599351,00.html
Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/06/12/hello_cruel_world/
'Perhaps the funniest and most exhilarating novel ever written about group suicide' - The Village Voice review:
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0525,bbarra,65158,10.html
The Christian Science Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0628/p17s02-bogn.html
Blog Critics:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/07/25/112144.php
Yale Daily News:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=29749 |
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