Friday 14 March 2014

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby (2005)

4 stars

I'm not going to lie, I bought this book because I knew the movie was coming out and Aaron Paul was going to be in it, and I actually really enjoyed it.

This book is told from the four different perspectives of the main characters, which would normally confuse me but they're all so different that somehow it works really well. The whole premise of this book, that four people meet each other when they're all going to commit suicide, seemed like it would be pretty depressing but I found myself laughing a surprising amount throughout this book. I really liked how realistic each of the perspective's were and how realistic the end of the story was, I thought there was going to be a big miracle and wonderful happy ending and I was so happy that that didn't happen. My favourite character in this book was probably Maureen, I liked how soft spoken she was and how she didn't realize how much she could do when she spoke until she actually did speak. I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind frequent mentions of suicide but likes a short novel.


Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ all run into each other on the roof of Toppers' House, a popular suicide spot, on New Year's Eve. The presence of them all stops them from committing suicide and they spend the night looking for Jess' ex-boyfriend and then decide to form a sort of support group and decide to meet again on Valentine's day to see how they're all feeling. On Valentine's day JJ brings up that ninety days after a suicide attempt they aren't supposed to want to commit suicide anymore, so they have until the end of March til their ninety days are up. By the end of the ninety days they've all made some progress and feel a bit better and decide to see how they're feeling after six months.

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