On New Year’s Eve four people inadvertently converge on the same London rooftop at the same time for the same purpose – to jump to their deaths. But as they get in each other’s way, no one winds up committing suicide. A tad farfetched? Well, the premise is not the only aspect of Nick Hornby’s latest novel that is difficult to swallow.
These four individuals could not be more different. Martin Sharp lost his job and his family and wound up in prison after having sex with a 15-year-
old girl. Before all this happened, Martin was a morning show host, the Regis Philbin of British TV, but now he’s pegged the “sleaziest man in Britain” by the tabloids. He is by far the most interesting character of the novel.
The others are: Maureen, a middle-aged woman who has spent the past 19 years as a caretaker for her profoundly handicapped son and can no longer take the misery of her daily existence; Jess, a young woman with some sort of personality disorder who is “very unhappy and very nuts”; and JJ, a young failed rock musician from the United States whose band has broken up and his girlfriend has left him.
A bond quickly forms among the four desperate people and they decide to share their experiences and look after one another. In doing so, they constitute their own dysfunctional support group.
All characters take turns in telling the story. They have distinct personalities and voices, as well as different views of the events. The problem is that they are not very interesting, at least not often enough. They all ring true, but are inclined to clichéd thinking, as well as making blah references to popular culture and offering so-what comments.
Martin is creepy, but at least he can be clever. Jess, however, is little more than a nasty lunatic who annoys every other character in the novel – and chances are she’s going to have the same effect on many readers. JJ, for his part, is a faux intellectual who thinks he’s deep and superior because he’s read “The Catcher in the Rye” and a few other novels. As for Maureen, she is so unsophisticated she makes a poor literary character.
Another problem with the novel is that many of its subplots peter out. For example, JJ tells the group a major lie about himself, without suffering any consequences. Also, Jess tells the media an absurd story about the group’s failed suicide attempt that involves an angel looking like the actor Matt Damon in the hope of making some money, but nothing really comes out of it all. The scam makes for a couple of entertaining scenes, but it feels more like narrative padding than anything.
And at one point the group witnesses an actual suicide, and for a few pages the novel takes on a depth that it lacked before and cannot, unfortunately, sustain for long.
Hornby is a highly successful novelist (it doesn’t hurt that movie producers have snagged his books, including “About a Boy” and the recently released “Fever Pitch”), and he’s an inventive and energetic storyteller. In spite of the seriousness of the novel’s main theme – suicide – “A Long Way Down” contains many funny moments. Hornby also has a few tricks up his sleeves and loves to surprise his readers.
This novel probably has set a world record for number of plot twists. To the point where Hornby has invented a new genre of fiction: hyperactive lit. Often the novel reads like a burlesque play, with characters spewing outrageous lines in rapid-fire dialogues while rushing from place to place nonstop, in a series of improbable situations and coincidences. That these characters aren’t able to stay put makes sense considering their agitated frames of mind, but this is a jittery, manic novel.
With “A Long Way Down,” Hornby has written one of those books that if you get into it, the ride is wild and enjoyable. If not, you want off that ride pretty soon.
Jean Charbonneau is a freelance writer in Baltimore.
A Long Way Down
By Nick Hornby
Riverhead, 333 pages, $24.95
