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How to be Good
 
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How to be Good (Hardcover)

by Nick Hornby (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (128 customer reviews)

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9 new from £1.74 173 used from £0.01 24 collectible from £0.74
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Paperback (New Ed) £7.99 £5.49 883 used & new from £0.01
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 244 pages
  • Publisher: Viking, London; First Edition edition (31 May 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0670888230
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670888238
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (128 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 303,765 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #26 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > H > Hornby, Nick

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Nick Hornby's How To Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be. That's why she became a GP. That's why she cares about Third World debt and homelessness, and struggles to raise her children with a conscience. It's also why she puts up with her husband David, self-styled "Angriest Man in Holloway". But one fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds car-park, having just slept with another man. What she doesn't yet realise is that her Fall from Grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the M25 at rush-hour. Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being Angry. He's about to become Good--not Guardian-reading, organic-food-eating good, but Good in the fashion of the Gospels. And that's no easier in modern-day Holloway than it was in ancient Israel.

Mr Hornby fires his central theme at us from the title page: how can we be good, and what does that mean? But, quite apart from demanding that his readers scrub their souls with the nearest available Brillo pad, he also mesmerises us with that cocktail of wit and compassion which has become his trademark. The result is a multi-faceted jewel of a book: a hilarious romp, a painstaking dissection of middle-class mores, and a powerfully sympathetic portrait of a marriage in its death throes. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry as we watch David forcing his kids to give away their computers, drawing up schemes for the mass redistribution of wealth and inviting his wife's most desolate patients round for a Sunday roast. But that's because How To Be Good manages to be both brutally truthful and full of hope. It won't outsell the Bible, but it's a lot funnier. --Matthew Baylis

Product Description
According to her own complex moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's doctor, after all, and doctors are decent people, and on top of that, her husband David is the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But when David suddenly becomes good - properly, maddeningly, give-away-all-his-money good - Katie's sums no longer add up, and she is forced to ask herself some very hard questions...Nick Hornby's brilliant new novel offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood, and asks that most difficult of questions: what does it mean to be good?

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Customer Reviews

128 Reviews
5 star:
 (32)
4 star:
 (23)
3 star:
 (17)
2 star:
 (20)
1 star:
 (36)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (128 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars How to be average, 18 Jun 2002
This review is from: How to be Good (Paperback)
I too found this book a little disappointing! I've read all his others and was looking forward to reading this one, however it never really gripped me. The plot seemed to swing about, leaving characters like her brother and lover incomplete. The actual idea of the book, what would happen if North London liberals really began wearing their hearts on their sleeves, becoming selfless, giving away their possessions & money and so on, is an interesting one but the trigger for it all, GoodNews, just doesn't seem right somehow. As usual, apart from some duds, the dialog and set pieces were amusing but it wasn't enough in the end.
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, 18 April 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: How to be Good (Paperback)
I would like to echo the comments of the previous reviwer. I too like Nick Hornby and applaud this new direction in his writing. Unfortunately, I must also say that this is a very disappointing book. Firstly, the characters are paper thin and the plot is full of holes. Worse, the story goes knowhere. I was looking forward to an interesting examination of what it means to be 'Good'. But all the book offered were a few old ideas rehashed into a very predictable story - I got no more out of this book than if I had sat in the bath for an hour mulling over the thought 'what does it mean to be good?'. Yes, the book is wonderfully readable but by the end you just feel terribly let down by this very talented writer.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Annoying, offensive, dull, 26 Sep 2002
By sweavo (York, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How to be Good (Paperback)
I give this book 2 stars - 1 for spelling and grammar, and 1 because I am too much of a coward to give something 1 star. The tone was sanctimonious and irritating. There was not a single character who you actually wanted to do well (with the possible exception of the young son who wanted out of the story as much as I) the shallow sketches of "the disenfranchised" I found offensive, the "comedy" nothing new and the central message harmful and depressing. Recommended reading unless you are considering having a relationship with someone of either gender during the rest of your life, or holding down a career. About half way through I put it down with rage at the shallowly negative portrayal of the husband and only picked it up again because I was trapped on a 4 hour train journey with only this book or a cast-off news of the world for reading material. I had already done the alarm fine signs and usage instructions for the doors. I can only think that Hornby, by doing this crushing disservice to male-kind, is trying desperately to show his feminine side to 'get chicks'. It won't work Hornby. Let's stop driving wedges in the gender gap and write something positive.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Holiday Read
I found this book very funny and easy to read. For me, it was a pleasent distraction from the usual holiday routine.
Published 16 days ago by K. J. Dean

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Having loved Hornby's other books I was expecting great things from this. Sadly it doesn't deliver. The plot is flimsy and the characters (especially the central Goodlove) are... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Hayles

2.0 out of 5 stars Readable but leaves you hanging
It's almost worth reading this because Nick Hornby's such a nice guy. However at the tend you are unlikely to escape the odd feeling that you have been mugged. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mrs. Katharine Kirby

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining in a peculiar way
An entertainingly written account of a marriage which has moved devastatingly beyond the honeymoon period. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Cole Davis

1.0 out of 5 stars Nauseatingly Bad.
There is good writing.
Then, there is okay-ish writing.
Then there is bad writing.
Then there are books so badly written they make you want to throw up... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Splenda

3.0 out of 5 stars a disappointment
i have just finished this book and i found it very disappointing.
high fidelity is one of my favourite reads so hoped this would be as good- but no way near. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mr. M. Bounds

1.0 out of 5 stars Flimsy
1. Weak, unlikable characters, all of whom are sanctimonious and self-obsessed
2. Meandering plot
3. Unlikely relationships throughout
4. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Nt Deregowski

1.0 out of 5 stars The most pointless book I have ever read.
This novel just didn't work. The central premise is off, and that means the entire rest of the novel - no matter how well-crafted - just does not gel. Read more
Published 19 months ago by D.Salter

1.0 out of 5 stars Dismal attempt by a previously excellent author.
Hornby's prior novels were excellent, but this one is a bad premise, badly executed. Read his work prior to this but do not waste your time with this one. Terrible.
Published 19 months ago by Ralph OBE

4.0 out of 5 stars Hornby gets better and better
I didn't much enjoy Nick Hornby's first couple of books. This one I thought was superb (and also "A Long Way Down"). Read more
Published 23 months ago by BM

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