Summer Reading #3: A Long Way Down
Great book, terribly banal title.
Overview
Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down begins with a simple, almost high concept, premise – four radically different people meet on the roof of Topper’s House, a popular London suicide spot, on New Year’s Eve. Shenanigans ensue. It’s a ridiculously neat concept that is almost screaming out to be slapped onto the back of a yellowing paperback, along with a handful of superlative quotes on Horby’s finesse as a writer and a pricetag that’s too small to turn down. You’d never guess that inside is a novel of incredible weight, humour, depth, wit and magnitude, which only adds to its charm.
The book is divided into three parts, and is narrated in first person alternatively by all four protagonists. The beginning of the book reads like a pre-title sequence of an indie film. We open scenically (and ironically so) on the roof of Topper’s House with Martin, a wise-cracking middle-aged British man who is loaded with shameful past. There he meets Maureen, a soft-spoken old woman who sounds like she’s never been outside her parish. Next up is Jess, a sweary and petulant teenager to whom nothing is ever serious. And to round up the four we have JJ, a disgruntled American in London, filled with righteous anger at his lot in life.
Elements of each protagonist are drawn from stock characters, which at first helps the reader to acclimate to these not-entirely-likable bunch. But before they can get boring, Hornby quickly combines usually disparate character traits, and then adds in dashes of flavour to each personality. The genius in his writing, though, is in how well he embodies each character. From the simple and funny (Maureen puts in dashses to bleep out swear words) to almost unnoticeable (at one point about two-thirds in, I realised that Jess’s bits read faster and snappier simply because of Hornby’s deft use of punctuation), his writing adapts to each character seamlessly. It’s as if we are being told this story by four actors rather than one writer. It’s a simple technique, but it works brilliantly. It also guarantees that any insight we as readers receive is insight that one of the characters has gained, which adds a great deal to both the realism and weight of the novel.
But this is no mopey book about suicide, filled with dark brooding and essential life lessons. It often plays out as a comedy of errors, and Hornby doesn’t hesitate to play with clichés and expectations for laughs, shocks, or both. From page one, there is a refreshing frankness to how these characters speak, reflecting their desperation and sense of loss.
There’s a lot more to be said about this book, but I don’t think I could do it justice without talking about the way it ends, so I’ll have to put in a spoiler section for this one.
Arbitrarily Decided Grade: A-
Spoiler-filled discussion
A Long Way Down‘s ending demonstrates the nuance and honesty with which Hornby’s handles its themes. There is no neat, clean ending. It’s not even a question of whether or not the ending is happy, something which Martin mocks Jess for expecting. It’s an ending for the book, and for us, but not for the characters. And that alone says so much about what these four have been through. All we need to know is that no one is going to be killing themselves that night. For all intents and purposes, we’ve known this at the very least from the end of part one. The drop in exhilaration as we end the rush of part one and fade into the slow meandering of part two was a little disappointing at first, but as we got to know the characters more and more, it made sense. It’s not really about plot;, and thinking that is a mistake that leads some of the characters to the roof in the first place.
The world of this book is one in which people aren’t afraid to halt the flow of the narrative by going “what the fuck?” when something they’re not accustomed to happens. And it works perfectly. Because people don’t learn from each other through kindness and caring when they are as different and despondent as these four. They learn by arguing, fighting, clashing and being forced to see themselves in a different light – not because they want to, but because they have to. Hornby manages to convey the drama that goes on in these people’s heads without overdramatising their lives, because he realises that they are the last people who have any idea how their heads work. Some of these characters are fairly mundane, and some have frankly stupid reasons for trying to jump off the roof of a tower block, but a wider perspective isn’t really part of this deal, is it? They don’t really know why their lives are unworthy of continuing, or worthy of ending. And that’s the journey they’re on, not to solve all the difficulties of their lives in heartwarming stroke, but to try and understand themselves a little better. And that’s the journey we’re on, too. Convenient coincidence, that.
This is the kind of stuff that should be studied in high school literature classes. The Great Gatsby is great and all, but this is exhilarating and exciting literature. It’s accessible, but never talks down to you. It almost reads like four different books, but hangs all of its threads together as a singular, powerful and downright funny idea. It walks so many tightropes and hardly makes any missteps, and yet it breezes by so fast. This isn’t one of those books that makes you slow down in the last pages because you don’t want it to end; this is a book that you want to burn through, partly because you’re enjoying it so much and partly because you find yourself in the predicament that these characters are in. In short, it’s damn good writing, and it makes for damn good reading. And all of this in an honest and lighthearted book on suicide.
