Nick Hornby, the British novelist and professional music fan who folks love to hate will have a new novel out in the US in June. Though Songbook is good bathroom reading, Hornby’s books are just too fluffy for me. At Yossarian’s Diary they’ve already had a look at the new book, and the prognosis isn’t good:
April brings A Long Way Down, a new novel from Nick Hornby, and sadly I don’t think the showers will wash it away. Yossarian so wants to like Hornby’s fiction, but each book seems to be so much poorer than the last (although his non-fiction is always enjoyable to read)–and How to Be Good was a very poor work from such a high profile author. However, if you liked that book, then you’ll undoubtedly like this tale (known around here as The Pizza Suicides) of four strangers who meet on a roof as they all decide to end it all by jumping off. One of them, a pizza delivery boy, is an American. You can tell this by the way he says “man” a lot. Hmmmm.
