A Long Way Down


Nick Hornby’s latest actually took me a little while to get through, and I really couldn’t put my finger on why that was. But, much as I always seek out the latest Hornby fiction (must admit to giving 31 Songs a miss), I’m not enjoying his books as much as I did when he was in High Fidelity mode.
A Long Way Down begins with four disparate people meeting on the top of “Toppers House” a well known suicide spot with regular jumpers. They all run into one another on New Year’s Eve and essentially talk themselves into all coming down.
Little by little we learn about their lives from the hum-drum Maureen who looks after her disabled son, and has done for about 18 years, to Martin, the breakfast TV presenter who did time for sleeping with an underage girl (he didn’t realise) and consequently saw his career ruined overnight.
The story jumps forward in fits and bursts, and the four unlikely characters remain close. It’s an interesting premise if not quite carried off to as satisfactory a conclusion as the reader might like. That makes it more realistic I suppose, but then I never feel that realism is really entering into the scheme of things.
Some of the details are lovely, and the details about the shoddy satellite TV channel that Martin now works for suggest that Hornby is spending far too much time in the outer reaches of his Sky system. I could probably have done with teenage tearaway Jess not being the daughter of a politician. It didn’t really add anything to the story, and two people linked to fame in one story about four random souls, is one too many.
Worth persevering with, but I fear that I did need to persevere to the end of this book.


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