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High Fidelity

By Nick Hornby

(824)

| Others | 9780241950265

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Critics

I’ve Got Your Number (Written on the Back of my Hand)

Rob Fleming is 35 years old, nearly 36. He lives in North London, in a one-bedroom conversion flat in Crouch End. His girlfriend, Laura, is a lefty lawyer who would like to be working for a legal aid firm but finds herself, to her dismay, with a flas ... (read full critics)

lrb published on Sat, 4 Sep 2010

26 Reviews

5 people find this helpful

absolutely fantastic, ironic, funny, true, it captures you from the very first page to the last!

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franciui said on Jun 1, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

3 people find this helpful

Nearly useless, sometimes entertaining thirty-something generational novel.
Not too badly written, though.
In a word: average.

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grenadier said on Nov 9, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

2 people find this helpful

Fun to read.
And it's rare to see an author who actually has good taste in music. Now that's something!

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Angel-a said on May 23, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Rob is thirty six years old, he has got a records shop in London and his relationship with his girl friend is uncertain.
For some aspects his behavior is childish, he captures the shades of time and of emotions only through the music, around which his life rotates.
His life does not satisfies him, ... (continue)

Rob is thirty six years old, he has got a records shop in London and his relationship with his girl friend is uncertain.
For some aspects his behavior is childish, he captures the shades of time and of emotions only through the music, around which his life rotates.
His life does not satisfies him, he needs a change, certitudes, solidity, stability and he finds them inside the music world.
Did he listen to music because he was miserable? Or was he miserable because he listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?
People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are
scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over.
Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain
and misery and loss. The unhappiest people he knows, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and he doesn’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but he knows that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.
And Rob cannot exclude the hit from his life, because it gives a meaning to his things, to his meetings, to his goodbyes, to his memories.
Only locating reality inside this hit, Rob is able to find a stability to time that goes on.
Through this game of writing he reduces his part of responsibility, showing his adolescence side.
But, at the same time, he is linked to the beauty and happiness of his first kiss, of the first time he made love, of his first record.
Rob cannot leave his past, because he cannot still understand that it is over now.
Even if he does not to how to become an adult, he knows that he cannot be a child for a long time, so he looks for the right thing to do.
He would like his life to be like a Bruce Springsteen song. Just once. He knows he is not born to run, he knows that the Seven Sisters Road is nothing like Thunder Road, but feelings can't be so different.
He has spent nearly thirty years listening to people singing about broken hearts, and he thinks how listening to too many records messes your life up . . . maybe there's something in it after all..
He always thinks that women are going
to save him, lead him through to a better life, that they can change and redeem him.
But it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record
collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.
He always thinks he didn't finish college, he has scruffy job, he is poor, incontinent, he
smokes and he does not have opinions, only lists.
But these things happen. They happen to men, at any rate. Or to this particular man. Sometimes.
It's difficult to explain why or how you can find yourself pulled in two different directions at once, and obviously a certain amount of dreamy irrationality is a prerequisite. But there's a logic to it, too.
He asks himself if he is going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of his life until there aren't any rocks left and if he is going to run each time he gets itchy feet.

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Cri1967 said on Apr 21, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Although the ending is quite expected, the book is quite funny and easy to read, especially on the Tube after work :)

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Vortexmind said on Apr 6, 2012 | Add your feedback

Rob was thirty-five years old and he liked to make all-time top five this and that. He was a music enthusiast and owned an old record shop.
Rob was ditched by Laura. Though this could not make its way into Rob's list of top five split-ups, he found that he wanted to stay with Laura more than a ... (continue)

Rob was thirty-five years old and he liked to make all-time top five this and that. He was a music enthusiast and owned an old record shop.
Rob was ditched by Laura. Though this could not make its way into Rob's list of top five split-ups, he found that he wanted to stay with Laura more than anyone else. He could not sort himself out so he went through his previous mates in order to know the what-does-it-all-mean stuff.
After changing job to a city firm lawyer, Laura left Rob for Ian. It was not that Ian was more charming than Rob, but that Rob always kept his options open, which was the other word for undetermined and unenthusiastic.
Laura thought splitting-up was like cutting a cord, but it was not as simple as a single cord. They had got used to each other and were not as separable as they thought. At the end they managed to made the way through, yet inevitably itchy feet sometimes aroused. I believe that would depend on the effort of both.
　
"sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time."
"you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to"
"it has prevented me from sticking with a relationship, because if you stick with a relationship, and your life becomes dependent on that person's life, and then they die, as they are bound to do,... well, you're up the creek without a paddle"

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Candy said on Jan 6, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback