Amazon.com's Best of 2001
In Nick Hornby's How to Be Good, Katie Carr is certainly trying to be. That's why she became a GP. That's why she cares about Third World debt and homelessness, and struggles to raise her children with a conscience. It's also why she puts up with her husband David, the self-styled Angriest Man in Holloway. But one fateful day, she finds herself in a Leeds parking lot, having just slept with another man. What Katie doesn't yet realize is that her fall from grace is just the first step on a spiritual journey more torturous than the interstate at rush hour. Because, prompted by his wife's actions, David is about to stop being angry. He's about to become good--not politically correct, organic-food-eating good, but good in the fashion of the Gospels. And that's no easier in modern-day Holloway than it was in ancient Israel.
Hornby means us to take his title literally: How can we be good, and what does that mean? However, quite apart from demanding that his readers scrub their souls with the nearest available Brillo pad, he also mesmerizes us with that cocktail of wit and compassion that has become his trademark. The result is a multifaceted jewel of a book: a hilarious romp, a painstaking dissection of middle-class mores, and a powerfully sympathetic portrait of a marriage in its death throes. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry as we watch David forcing his kids to give away their computers, drawing up schemes for the mass redistribution of wealth, and inviting his wife's most desolate patients round for a Sunday roast. But that's because How to Be Good manages to be both brutally truthful and full of hope. It won't outsell the Bible, but it's a lot funnier. --Matthew Baylis
From Publishers Weekly
Kate, a doctor, wife and mother, is in the midst of a difficult decision: whether to leave or stay with her bitter, sarcastic husband David (who proudly writes a local newspaper column called "The Angriest Man in Holloway"). The long-term marriage has gone stale, but is it worth uprooting the children and the comfortable lifestyle? Then David meets a faith healer called Dr. Goodnews, and suddenly converts to an idealistic do-gooder: donating the children's computer to an orphanage, giving away the family's Sunday dinner to homeless people and inviting runaways to stay in the guest room (and convincing the neighbors to do likewise). Barber gives an outstanding performance as Kate, humorously conveying her mounting irritation at having her money and belongings donated to strangers, her guilt at not feeling more generous and her hilarious desire for revenge. Barber brilliantly portrays each eccentric character: hippie-ish Goodnews, crusading David, petulant children and, poignantly, the hesitant, halting Barmy Brian, a mentally deficient patient of Kate's who needs looking after. Barber's stellar performance turns a worthy novel into a must-listen event. Simultaneous release with Riverhead hardcover (Forecasts, June 25). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"I'm not a bad person. I'm a doctor," says Katie Carr, liberal 1990s North London mother of two. This is her hollow mantra, the only comfort that she can feign while her 20-year marriage to surly David falls to pieces. Just when she is about to be kicked out of the house after confessing to an affair, David returns from a visit with an ecstasy-dropping club kid-turned-faith healer named DJ GoodNews a changed a good man. For his third novel after the male-sympathetic High Fidelity and About a Boy, Hornby hasn't merely gotten in touch with his feminine side (though Katie's violent emotionalism, surgical introspection, and perverse romanticism are all on the mark); more importantly, via Katie he harrowingly portrays how ambivalence attacks the heart like a virus at mid-life. Nothing, not even her children, it seems, is completely deserving of Katie's love or her disgust. Readers will see themselves in all of Katie's flaws especially her selfishness. But fear not, old-school Hornby fans, for this departure is expertly tempered with flecks of humor and pop culture references. Essential for all contemporary fiction collections. Heather McCormack, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In a departure from Hornby's trio of recent best-sellers, which positioned him as a wise and funny spokesperson for the Modern Male, this new novel features a woman protagonist, and it is every bit as charming and effective. Katie Carr, mother of two, is a doctor in a small London practice; she thinks of herself as a good person--good, despite the affair she's been having, which is justified because her husband, David, is such a sourpuss. David is, in fact, professionally cynical. He writes a newspaper column called "The Angriest Man in Holloway," in which he shoots arrows at any popular subject he can think of. Into their fractured family comes GoodNews, a charismatic, multipierced Generation X-er who displays miraculous healing powers. Under GoodNews' tutelage, David reforms his ways to the extreme; he starts giving away material possessions, attempts to make reparations for decades-old wrongs, invites a homeless teenager to live in the spare bedroom--all to Katie's increasing alarm. What does it mean to be truly good, anyway? Breezy without being shallow, truth seeking (and, egad, spiritual) without being sentimental, Hornby's novel explores the theme of goodness with tremendous fun. The novel's final message seems to be the potentially deadly "There's no place like home," but Hornby succeeds, in large part because he's got the heart, the brain, and the courage to prove it quite convincingly. James Klise
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