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A Long Way Down
by Nick Hornby
The author of About A Boy and High Fidelity returns with a novel about four strangers who encounter each other one New Years Eve on top of a building, where they are planning on leaping to their deaths.
Riverhead, 352 pages
06/07/2005
$24.95
ISBN: 1573223026
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Joanne Wilkinson
The true revelation of this funny and moving novel is its realistic, all-too-human characters, who stumble frequently, moving along their redemptive path only by increments. [15 Mar 2005, p.1246]
Kirkus Reviews
Highly moving and lively storytelling: Honey's gifts become more apparent with each outing. [1 Mar 2005, p.249]
Publishers Weekly Tom Perrotta
If Camus had written a grown-up version of The Breakfast Club, the result might have had more than a little in common with Hornby's grimly comic, oddly moving fourth novel. [4 Apr 2005, p.41]
Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
Hornby has long since proven his hilarity; what this novel confirms is the depth and generosity of his grasp of the tragic.
Los Angeles Times Samantha Dunn
OK, so the plot's construction is on the level of a Quonset hut.... What Hornby does veddy, veddy well... is to convey an earnest, sincere belief in the humanity of others without becoming a sentimental cornball or creating fake, tidy solutions for the messy, all-too-human failings of his characters.
Village Voice Allen Barra
Only a cynic would not see A Long Way Down as a long way up from much modern fiction.
Chicago Tribune Claire Dederer
Few other writers could delight us by attacking us, but Hornby blows charm like dandelion fluff through this novel. [26 Jun 2005]
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Hornby knows how to write dialogue that comments on human experience without drowning in a vat of sap.
Daily Telegraph Christopher Tayler
It's true that the plot runs out of steam a bit somewhere around the middle, and that the autopilot humour can grate. But with the best-seller lists dominated by the likes of Dan Brown and Dave Pelzer, the Hornby enterprise seems more than nice: it seems noble, even necessary.
The Guardian Joanna Briscoe
A Long Way Down is a good novel struggling to find a way out of the limitations of its own gimmick, but ultimately the conceit is so off-beam that one can almost ignore it and flow with the farce.
The Independent D J Taylor
In the end, A Long Way Down looks to be one of those transitional novels in which the interest lies in the spectacle of the novelist trying to break new ground.
The Spectator Philip Hensher
Hornby excels, as ever, in the delineation of individual voices.
San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen
It's not a completely successful book, but it marks a significant advance over 2001's "How to Be Good" in Hornby's perennial quest for a subject worthy of his unmatchably ingratiating voice.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Ken Babstock
Nick Hornby does social misfits exceedingly well. He does misfits interacting with other misfits near perfectly. [11 Jun 2005, p.D3]
The New York Times Book Review Chris Heath
If, as a result, there's a sort of aimlessness as the book tapers toward its end, maybe it is the price of Hornby's refusal to offer either cheap, grand, sentimental reasons to choose life or a retreat into a lazy bleakness, a wallowing in the pointlessness of it all.
The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps
The fact that the protagonists are stuck in place might explain why the book never seems to go anywhere, but Hornby's ability to write rut-dwellers with wit and insight remains intact.
Entertainment Weekly Mark Harris
His appetite for kindness results in a novel that could not feel less like a matter of life and death, one in which the buoyant tone often seems to be apologizing for the content.
Daily Telegraph Bharat Tandon
If he wanted us to care so much about his characters' journeys back up, he should have made us more afraid of the drop.
Slate Stephen Metcalf
When Hornby gives up the pretense to a larger demographic canvas and lets himself be Hornby, the kill is as clean as ever.
Washington Post Paul Murray
Although it pulls its punches, A Long Way Down is high on charm and frequently hilarious.
New York Observer Suzy Hansen
The good bits get lost in a lot of other lazy stuff. Mr. Hornby knows he needs to serve up a happy, glowy cheap ending, and he can’t even bring himself to make his characters’ journey to choosing life remotely tortuous or daring. [13 Jun 2005]
LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard
On the subject of misery and depression Hornby talks a good game, but the novel’s most serious failing is that he rarely succeeds in conveying unhappiness, or of making the reader feel it in his bones.
USA Today Donna Freydkin
I found myself wishing they'd all just jumped.
Flak Mark Hayes
A promising and ambitious but ultimately disappointing book.
The New Republic Sacha Zimmerman
Hornby's real talent is for dialogue, which is sharp, funny, and dripping with sarcasm. Take out the inner discourse, the ill-conceived group vacation, and the bewildering circular rants in between, and you've got a pretty salty bit of black humor. That is, take out all the bits that make A Long Way Down a novel, and you've got a tidy little comic screenplay.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Sean O'Brien
At times the experience is like reading television, while the "high-concept" premise of the novel could be transferred straight to film, where it would join that repertoire of sentimental, faintly liberal films dominated by Richard Curtis. It might look a bit edgier than Love, Actually, but it isn't, because style has become a prison to the author.
Sydney Morning Herald Mark Tewfik
He litters the work with paradoxes and epigrams that are supposed to shed light on the human condition, and provide reasons for living, but fall well short.
Wall Street Journal Steven Zeitchik
Mr. Hornby remains skillful at showing the humorous side of the male-female dynamic, but that's hardly enough here.
Atlantic Monthly John Zobenica
As the characters noisily learn to care less, the reader quietly does the same.
Library Journal Heather McCormack
A surprisingly tedious read. [15 Apr 2005, p.73]
PopMatters Steve Shymanik
The comical elements of A Long Way Down are surprisingly ineffective and the pathos is, well, pathetic.
The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
This cringe-making excuse for a novel takes the sappy contrivances of his 2001 book, "How to Be Good," to an embarrassing new low.
 The average user rating for this book is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
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