How to Be Good

Will is thirty-six and doesn’t really want children. Why does it bother people that he lives so happily alone in a fashionable, Lego-free flat, with massive speakers and a mammoth record collection, hardwood floors, and an expensive cream-colored rug that no kid has ever thrown up on? Then Will meets Angie. He’s never been out with anyone who was a mom. And it has to be said that Angie’s long blond hair and big blue eyes are not irrelevant to Will’s reassessment of his attitude toward children. Then it dawns on Will that maybe Angie goes out with him because of the children. That maybe children democratize beautiful, single women. That single mothers—bright, attractive, available women—were all over London… Marcus is twelve and he knows he’s weird. It was all his mother’s fault, Marcus figured. She was the one who made him listen to Joni Mitchell instead of Nirvana, and read books instead of play on his Gameboy. Then Marcus meets Will. Will belongs to his mother’s SPAT group (Single Parents, Alone Together), and Will is cool. Marcus needs someone who knows what kind of sneakers he should wear, and who Kurt Cobain is. And Marcus’s mother needs a husband. They could all move in together! Marcus and his mother, Will and his son, Ned. Then Marcus follows Will home to his flat, where there are no toys or diapers, no second bedroom, even—and certainly no Ned. This was valuable stuff. If Marcus went home and told his mother about this right away, that would be the end of it. But something tells Marcus that he should hang on to this information until he knows what it’s worth.

High Fidelity is the story of Rob, a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend Laura has just left him for Ian from the flat upstairs. Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? This narrowly misses his list of all-time top five most memorable split-ups. Rob seeks refuge in the company of Barry and Dick, the offbeat clerks at his store. They speak the masculine language of lists, endlessly reviewing their top five films (Reservoir Dogs...); top five Elvis Costello songs (“Alison”...); top five episodes of Cheers (the one where Woody sang his stupid song to Kelly...). Rob tries dating a singer called Marie (a post-Partridge Family, pre-L.A. Law Susan Dey), who once sold a song to Nanci Griffith. Her rendition of “Baby, I Love Your Way” makes him cry. But maybe it’s just that he’s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think (as awful as it sounds) that life as an episode of thirtysomething, with all the kids and marriages and jobs and barbecues and k.d. lang CDs that this implies, might not be so bad.

In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that’s before the players even take the field.

Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young mens’ coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

New Year’s 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 family, the pad, the great career—and wasted it away. Killing himself is Martin’s logical response to an unlivable 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 his loving mum can’t cope any more.

Half-crazed with heartbreak, loneliness, adolescent angst, seven Bacardi Breezers and two Special Brews, Jess’s ready to jump, to fly off the roof.

Finally, there’s JJ—tall, cool, American, looks like a rock-star—who’s weighed down with a heap of problems, and pizza.

Four strangers, who moments before were convinced that they were alone and going to end it all that way, share out the pizza and begin to talk… only to find that they have even less in common than first suspected.

Funny, sad and deeply moving, Nick Hornby’s is a novel that asks some of the big questions: about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain, and whether a group of losers, and pizza, can really see you through a long, dark night of the soul.