Just Like You by Nick Hornby

I’ve enjoyed several of Nick Hornby‘s books over the years. Especially High Fidelity, How to Be Good and Funny Girl. So I knew I would probably enjoy his latest, Just Like You. And I did — I read it in two nights, unfortunately two very late nights because I didn’t start reading until way too late. It’s the story of Joseph, a black twenty two year old who works in a butcher’s, a gym, and a football club as a kids’ coach, and dreams of making electronic music and being a famous DJ. And Lucy, a forty-two year old white English teacher and single mom of two boys. As in many of Hornby’s books, these main characters fall in love and then struggle to figure out what to do, whether to work at being a couple of allow things to end, etc.

The age difference causes them some consternation. For example, Joseph figures out that Lucy and his mother are the same age. Their perspectives on Brexit are different, although Joseph sees both sides. And although Hornby takes pains to make clear that interracial relationships are not an issue in London, Lucy & Joseph experience some friction. For example, when Joseph plays a new song he’s working on and Lucy suggests it needs vocals and says he must know a lot of people who can sing, and he wonders whether she thinks all black people are musical. Or when her neighbor is suspicious of a young black man at her door at night. Or when a girl he took out gives him a bit of a hard time about the rumors that he’s dating a white woman, and when he takes Lucy out to a club with his friends and is afraid it will be awkward because he thinks she dances strangely (Hornby isn’t clear about why, and implies it’s a generational difference). And yet, Hornby’s enduring belief (at least in his books) in people’s underlying kindness prevails, because even when they stumble with each other (or others), Joseph and Lucy end up redeeming themselves.

Now, I have already noted I enjoyed the book. It was entertaining, and I can see it being adapted, as so many of Hornby’s books have been, into a film. There is an entire subplot about Brexit that is interesting (it gets into who is voting which way and what, if anything they know about each other’s perspectives). Hornby as always provides amusing social commentary with plenty of little details that bring the people and places to life. And as he often does, he looks at life through the eyes of people different from each other, with different backgrounds and experiences.

But, I couldn’t help but wonder about Hornby writing from a black man’s perspective — . Then I wondered, how do I feel about him writing from a woman’s perspective? And haven’t writers down the ages written from other genders and cultures than their own? Maybe because this book is well written, entirely fictional, and at its core, an entertaining love story, I feel better about this than I did when I recently reviewed a historical novel written by a white writer about a black man? And because Hornby makes both Lucy and Joseph, and their friends and families, complex people, and not “types,” who have to understand all kinds of differences about each other. Most of them are neither “good” or “bad” but whole humans who figure out what to do or say in the moment, like most of us. And Hornby also makes it clear that Lucy and Joseph share a lot: discomfort with their parents’ views, nervousness about whether their friends will be kind to their new partners, the desire to share each others’ interests, awareness of their own differences and a desire to bridge those, love for each other and for Lucy’s sons, generosity of spirit.

I kept hunting for stereotypes, and while Hornby has some fun with London liberals who think they’re so “good” (as he does in other books), I didn’t really find any. I don’t know his view on Brexit but he’s generous to both sides and makes clear that the “debate” in the public sphere wasn’t terribly helpful to actual publics, which is probably pretty accurate, if American “debates” are anything similar. I read a review that implied Joseph’s interests in football and DJing are “cultural” stereotypes, but I have a white son who at 22 was very into both. There are plenty of 22 year olds who are into some kind of sport and some kind of music, regardless of their “cultural” background. The same reviewer took issue with Hornby using urban slang. I wondered, again, if that isn’t more or less what writers have always done. And whether that is just his screenwriter’s ear for detail at work. I could see this being a good movie.

Anyway, this was a fun, humorous read, but with enough interesting materials to discuss (age differences in relationships, family dynamics, how the Brexit vote was presented to the public) to make it potentially interesting to book clubs that like love stories.

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Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

I’ve really enjoyed other books by Nick Hornby, and a patron recommended Funny Girl when he was returning it last week so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s set mainly in the 1960’s, although the end is in present times. It’s about a young woman, Barbara Parker, from Blackpool, who wants to be the next Lucille Ball. Barbara wants this so badly she is willing to leave her dad and her auntie Marie in Blackpool and go to London where she knows no one.

Hornby is respectful of Barbara’s ambition — in fact, one thing I really like about his books is that Hornby is respectful of all of his characters. Even the nakedly ambitious or the slightly mean-spirited or the completely irritating ones.  He has a a generosity of spirit towards all of them that is really endearing.

Back to Barbara, or Sophie as she is known in London. She is smart and funny and unvarnished and when she auditions for a comedy show on the BBC the writers, Tony and Bill, and the producer, Dennis, realize she’s brilliant and hatch plans for a series. But Funny Girl isn’t just about a happy young successful team and their smash hit show. Tony and Bill are gay, although Tony’s not sure if he is also attracted to women, especially after he marries one and is happy. Hornby writes about how dangerous it is to be gay in London in the 1960’s. And how society is changing swiftly but there are still people who use the word “courting” and are openly prejudiced. And how in the tumult of these changes, people mostly want what they always have.

In other words, in the framework of this funny novel about the birth of a modern sitcom in 1960’s London, Hornby talks about the ever changing, ever the same human condition. We struggle with our ambitions and hopes, and struggle to reconcile them with the ambitions and hopes of our family and friends. We hurt each other inadvertently or purposefully, we apologize and make amends or lurch off to do it again. We try to learn and be better people and be worthy of those who love us.

Hornby also notices that people have always thought the young were careless or unserious. In one scene Tony is trying to write a new show with Sophie’s friend Diane about a young woman making her way in London, and he asks ” What’s her problem?” Diane doesn’t understand his point, and he goes on to patiently explain that’s how scripts work — the characters have a problem that they work out. Diane, who is herself a young woman making her way in London, says “Yeah, but they’re all so depressing, those programs . . . . None of my friends want to watch them.” They go back and forth a bit and she tells him that only her parents and grandparents watch that kind of thing, and Tony’s appalled. It reminded me of modern conversations about which generations prefer which social media or online content.

Look for Funny Girl  if you’d like a historical novel of manners full of astute observations of human nature that has as much to say about our own world as the one it’s set in.

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A couple of novels: Lolly Willowes and The Big Rewind

At a glance, the two novels I read in the last several days couldn’t be more different. One is a classic, the other a contemporary debut that could possibly be classified as a”geek mystery.” They both fit on my book bingo card.

Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner is on the Guardian‘s list of the “100 Best Novels.” The book is set in England between WWI and WWII, and features a “maiden aunt.” Laura, known as Lolly, doesn’t leave her childhood home until her father dies when she is in her twenties, past marriageable age, and then she moves to her elder brother’s home in London.

Stifled by her limited, proper existence she one day buys a map and a guidebook and is taken with a village called Great Mop, inconveniently located according to her sister-in-law, in the Chilterns. Free, finally, she begins to notice odd things about the village, including a kitten she sees as her familiar, and is eventually invited to a Witches’ Sabbath. She doesn’t really enjoy it but does enjoy the sense of coming into her own — when she was younger she had brewed herbal concoctions and she sees now that she is a witch, in league with the devil.

It doesn’t come as serenely as all that. There’s a threat to her independence when her nephew Titus comes to Great Mop, and Laura, in a state of great agitation goes out walking and finds herself in a field, surrounded by woods, just as boxed in as her family has always made her feel. She cries out, and ” . . . the silence that followed it had been so intent, so deliberate, that it was like a pledge . . . if any grimly favorable power had had been evoked by her cry, then surely a compact had been made. . . .” Shortly after, her nephew gets engaged and heads off to London with his fiancee.

Lolly is comfortable with the devil, who appears as a gardener and a hunter (the subtitle of the book is The Loving Huntsman), a man she can sit beside and talk philosophically with, and who offers her salvation from family ties that bound her to a life she did not choose. It’s an interesting novel, which I’d never heard of until I read Helen Macdonald’s “By the Book” in the New York Times. It would be a good book club selection, and deserves to be more widely read.

The Big Rewind by Libby Cudmore caught my eye because of the cover (yes, I sometimes choose wine by the label) and because of early reviews comparing it to Nick Hornby’s work. I didn’t find it as thoughtful, but it was entertaining. It’s a mystery set in Brooklyn, with characters like Jett (the heroine) and KitKat (the murdered woman) whose “boyfriend” is really gay (and black, so he’s more easily accused of the murder) and Jett’s G.B.F. (guy best friend), Sid, who thinks he’s fallen for a stripper named Cinderella who turns out to have paid for her breast implants with a grad school research grant. A little much? Kind of, but not in an off-putting way. The thread that links Jett, her friends, and even the suspects is music.

Jett discovers the body when she lets herself into KitKat’s apartment to leave her mail, a mix tape that was inadvertently delivered to Jett. The tape evokes the rewind of the title as Jett unravels the clues in the mix so she can find the real murderer — she never buys the notion that the “boyfriend” did it —  and works her way through her own love life’s musical history, even re-entangling herself with a couple of exes along the way. The book is part romance, part coming-of-age (yes, Jett is older than most coming of are heroines but coming-of-age happens later these days), part geek noir, part playful send up of hipster Brooklyn where a vegan brunch hotspot and retro clubs are as important as Bath’s assembly rooms were in Jane Austen.

The result is pleasant enough, but I don’t know if I’m the target audience. I found the mean militant feminist stripper depressing, and the social scene alarming (most of Jett’s acquaintances don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves, and the author’s take on marriage is not pretty), but Jett herself is endearing. She takes in her dead friend’s cat, is a kind soul, keeps her word, and wants to be like her grandma, who is, I grant, hipper than most grannies, but I liked that clue to Jett’s character. Mostly I found the nonstop stream of cultural references tiresome; even though I recognized most, it was distracting to place all of them and stay with the story at the same time. I suspect that my kids’ generation, who are used to distraction in a way I’m not, will love this book.

So, looking at them again, do these novels have anything in common? Single women trying to live their lives the way they want to. Lolly has to make a pact with the devil to become truly herself — a witch — and be free of family ties. Jett gets her man (I won’t reveal which one) and solves a mystery. But Lolly feels serene and pleased about her future despite her deal, while Jett doesn’t make any progress in determining her life’s direction. That’s probably emblematic of our age — few people in their twenties or thirties today know what’s ahead. But like Lolly, Jett’s content. And in today’s multi-book deal world, I suspect we haven’t seen the end of her.

 

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High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Sometimes we read to enter into another life, an experience utterly unlike our own. I enjoyed Nick Hornby’s novels About a Boy and How to Be Good, so I decided to give High Fidelity a try, and it was just that sort of psychic field trip. Clearly, I will never know what it is like to be a thirty-something man who owns a record shop in London like Rob, the protagonist of High Fidelity. Yet Hornby’s gift is that for a few evenings while I read his book, I knew.

Rob’s recently split with his girlfriend Laura and he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll ever get over his earlier relationships and really be happy. His shop is struggling. His parents don’t seem to realize he’s grown up. He’s drifted away from many of his friends.

Rob narrates the book and we learn his thoughts on mix tapes, top five lists (episodes of TV shows, movies, songs, etc.), and all kinds of relationship theories and worries. If you’ve ever thought men aren’t as insecure about relationships or as worried about how they appear to others as women, this book should be illuminating. Rob is quirky but kind, and you can’t help rooting for him.

And Hornby has a real knack for packing emotional punch in Rob’s reflections. In a scene where Laura wants to be with Rob again after a brief stint with another man, Rob asks her about whether they had safe sex, and she cries, because “You were my partner just a few weeks ago. And now you’re worried I might kill you, and you’re entitled to worry.” In the next paragraph Rob speculates that it is unlikely Laura’s interim-lover put Laura or him at risk for AIDS, but notices, “. . . in truth it was the symbolism that interested me more than the fear. I wanted to hurt her, on this day of all days, just because it’s the first time since she left that I’ve been able to.” Just a few sentences, but they sum up all the tumult Rob and Laura are experiencing.

Still, I’ve enjoyed Hornby’s other books more. I especially recall loving How to Be Good. High Fidelity was enjoyable but not overly so. I’m curious about the movie now that I’ve read it though.

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