High Fidelity- Nick Hornby

Image by Wolf Gang via Flickr

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Nick Hornby’s first novel, an international bestseller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women, and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what’s decent and what isn’t. But he’s much less good on relationships. In fact, he’s not at all sure that he wants to commit himself to anyone. So it’s hardly surprising that his girlfriend decides that enough is enough.

Review

I’ve only ever read one Nick Hornby before- The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, which is a book about books, not a fiction book. Still you can see the similarity of his writing style in both, and, maybe because the first book I read by him was non-fiction, I felt like I was reading an autobiography of Hornby most of the way through. I’m not sure if this shows the skill with which Hornby has created his main character, Rob, or if it shows that High Fidelity has an autobiographic aspect. After all I’ve heard it said that all first novels are autobiographical. Either way I really felt like a knew Rob, the character was so well constructed. I can’t exactly say I liked Rob, he was gutless and bitter, but he was real. And Laura was real too. It was no great love story- far from it- but it was realistic.

I’ve seen the film (or at least bits of the film) a number of times and did find it a little difficult to get the characters out of my head. I managed though- and even have come to not really like Jack Black as Barry, he’s not Barry at all!

4/5