For our July issue about choices, I turned to one of my favorite contemporary authors, Nick Hornby. Hornby is an English writer and lyricist.

His books are bestsellers, and he has received two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay – An Education (2009) and Brooklyn (2015).

In addition to writing, Hornby has been directly involved in the creation of the charity, Ambitious About Autism, and he co-founded Ministry of Stories, a writing charity that offers young people the opportunity to develop writing and literacy skills and strives to encourage them to develop a love of reading and writing for pleasure.

Hornby has many successful novels, but How to Be Good resonates with this month’s theme. 

Katie Carr is a physician with the National Health Service in England. She chose to go into medicine because she wanted to be a good person and help people.

For Katie, her choice automatically made her a “good” person. She never really worried about other aspects of her life. Being a doctor insulated her from reproach. It was important to her.

When she married Dave Grant, Katie assumed they would be happy and have the perfect life because she was a good person. Several years into their marriage, they have a lovely home, two beautiful children and all the bells and whistles that go with being  successful. Dave writes a column for the local newspaper and is working on a novel that never seems to go anywhere.  He has been dubbed the “Angriest man in Holloway,” and his column focuses on anything he finds annoying such as the elderly who don’t move quickly enough for him. He complains and people love it, but it tears away at him until he becomes a bitter “slub” of a man. Because of Katie’s job, Dave is the primary caregiver for the children who have come to value possessions more than human contact. Because of the failings in her marriage, Katie feels justified in taking a lover. Afterall, she’s a good person in an unhappy situation. What could be the harm?

Everything seems to be leading to separation and divorce until Dave goes to a faith healer, D.J. Goodnews, for his chronic back pain. After visiting Goodnews, Dave is no longer angry and wants to become a better person to the point of being “too” good. When Katie starts to lose her moral superiority in the marriage, she starts to examine what it really means to be good.

Dave becomes insufferable in his desire to be good leading him to open their home to Goodnews and a homeless teen. He gives away many of his children’s possessions and even tries to give away the special dinner Katie makes for her parent’s visit. He and Goodnews conspire to get everyone in the neighborhood to take in a homeless teen. Their seemingly noble, but poorly planned efforts are humorous at times, but strangely infuriating for Katie.

How good is too good? What does it mean to be a good person? Can we force or coerce other people to do good? Does one definition of good cover everyone? Who gets a free pass?

These are all questions Hornby raises with tumor and honesty.

It’s an interesting twist for Hornby’s main character to be a woman, and he does it well. Katie is believable and we don’t see her through a man’s perception of how a woman would/should act.

Other works by Nick Hornby:

Novels:

High Fidelity (1995)

About a Boy (1998)

A Long Way Down (2005)

Slam (2007)

Juliet, Naked (2009)

Funny Girl (2014)

State of the Union (2019)

Just Like You (2020)

Short Stories:

“Faith” (1998)

“Nipple Jesus” (2000)

“Not a Star” (2005)

“Small Country” (2005)

“Otherwise Pandemonium” (2005)

“Everyone’s Reading Bastard” (2012)

Non-fiction:

Contemporary American Fiction (1992)

Fever Pitch (1992)

31 Songs (2003)

The Polysyllabic Spree (2004)

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (2006)

Shakespeare Wrote for Money (2008)

More Baths Less Talking (2012)

Ten Years in the Tub (2013)

Stuff I’ve Been Reading (2013)

Dickens and Prince (2022)

Screenplays

Fever Pitch (1997)

An Education (2009)

Wild (2014)

Brooklyn (2015)

Love, Nina (2016)

State of the Union (2019)

Photo image of Nick Hornby:

By Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75005522

Book Jacket image:

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10852964