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  • An amusing portrait of the hypocrisy in every-day life, written with the typical Hornby style.

    A marriage on the verge of divorce is partly saved and partly ruined by a "hippy" healer, who enters the life of the two protagonists (David and Katie) and reverses their personalities.
    The ang ... Continue

    An amusing portrait of the hypocrisy in every-day life, written with the typical Hornby style.

    A marriage on the verge of divorce is partly saved and partly ruined by a "hippy" healer, who enters the life of the two protagonists (David and Katie) and reverses their personalities.
    The angry David becomes good (or at least, he thinks to), whereas Katie, who has always thought of being good (just because she is a doctor) , turns into a hideous, angry, frustrated would-be-middle-class woman.

    Hornby, through Katie's voice over, plays a subtle introspection into her psicology giving an enjoyable, amusing and sour flavour to the book.

    

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• ― Micky_Maus said on Jun 18, 2009 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

• 1 person find this helpful

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  • I am a big Nick Hornby fan and bought this the day it came out. It was a surprise - not so much the female voice which everyone has been making so much fuss about (and which Hornby pulls off very well) but the themes of the book. I had pinned Honrby down as a rather cynical writer who concentrated o ... Continue

    I am a big Nick Hornby fan and bought this the day it came out. It was a surprise - not so much the female voice which everyone has been making so much fuss about (and which Hornby pulls off very well) but the themes of the book. I had pinned Honrby down as a rather cynical writer who concentrated on relationships, so it came as a big surprise when the themes of the book deepened beyond love / marriage towards spirituality and religion, how to be good, and whether as individuals we can solve the problems of the world. The result is a fascinating novel which , as every pages turns, makes you think harder and deeper with every sentence.

    

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• ― Lunarossa said on Jul 6, 2009 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • Mi si spezza il cuore a dare una sola stella a un libro del grande Nick, ma questo davvero stento a credere che sia suo. I personaggi non mi hanno preso, la storia mi ha depresso, ma soprattutto mancava la sua "voce", quel modo di descrivere le cose che mi aveva fatto amare storie e personaggi anche ... Continue

    Mi si spezza il cuore a dare una sola stella a un libro del grande Nick, ma questo davvero stento a credere che sia suo. I personaggi non mi hanno preso, la storia mi ha depresso, ma soprattutto mancava la sua "voce", quel modo di descrivere le cose che mi aveva fatto amare storie e personaggi anche quando non erano poi così amabili.
    Pazienza, anche nelle storie d'amore più idilliache ci sono dei giorni grigi, no? :)

    

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• ― Singing Angel said on Dec 9, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • *** This comment contains spoilers! ***

  • Buono ma col consueto fondo di tristezza di Hornby. Ah, forse è uno dei suoi meno tristi. E' riuscito a farmi ridere perchè mi divertivo...

    

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• ― sono_margherita (3e5et7and9) said on Nov 5, 2009 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • "Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on."

    "Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs."

    "We have a great belief, those of us who live in this income bracket and postal district, in the power of words: we read, we talk, we write, we have therapis ... Continue

    "Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on."

    "Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs."

    "We have a great belief, those of us who live in this income bracket and postal district, in the power of words: we read, we talk, we write, we have therapists and counsellors and even priests who are happy to listen to us and tell us what to do."

    "The only way to have a guilt-free relationship with one's parents is to talk to them and see them constantly, maybe even live with them. And that can't be good, can it? So if those are the choices - permanent guilt, or some kind of Freudian awfulness involving five phone calls a day - then I have made the sane and mature choice."

    "Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable."

    "When you get in a mess like mine, your marriage is like a knife in your stomach, and you know that you're in big trouble whatever you decide. You don't ask people with knives in their stomach what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really."

    "What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day - because how could you? - is that some days you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever exchanging a word with him, let alone a ring or bodily fluids. Nor is it possible to foresee the desperation and depression, the sense that your life is over, the occasional urge to hit your whining children, even though hitting them is something you knew for a fact you would never ever do. And of course you don't think about having affairs, and when you get to that stage in life when you do (and everyone gets there sooner or later), you don't think of the sick feeling you get in your stomach when you're conducting them, their inherent unhappiness. [...] If anyone thought about any of these things, then no one would ever get married, of course they wouldn't; in fact, the impulse to marry would come from the same place as the impulse to drink a bottle of bleach, and those are the kinds of impulses we try to ignore rather than celebrate. So we can't afford to think about these things because getting married - or finding a partner whom we will want to spend our lives with and have children by - is on our agenda. It's something we know we will do one day, and if you take that away from us then we are left with promotions at work and the possibility of a winning lottery ticket, and it's not enough [...]."

    

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• ― Control Freak said on Aug 2, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • one of his best works

    

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• ― cheremone (cheremone) said on Jul 25, 2009 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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NY Times Notable Book Club (334)

CONTIAMOCI (945)

Noi del Ghetto dei Lettori (7330)

In lingua originale (361)

LA FENICE (978)

Margin notes of this book

• British/UKbookmooch outIngleseanobii swapsfictionnick hornbynarrativaletteratura ingleselett. britannica e irl.2009
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