The Leap Not Taken
KAMINE, MARK
The Leap Not Taken A Long Way Down By Nick Hornby Riverhead. 333 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by Mark Kamine Contributor, "TLS, New York "Times Book Review," the "Believer" Nick Hornby's previous...
...I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend...
...Inexplicably, Martin agrees...
...Reviewed by Mark Kamine Contributor, "TLS, New York "Times Book Review," the "Believer" Nick Hornby's previous novel, How to Be Good (2001), took an improbable premise-the conversion of a thoroughgoing cynic into an equally thoroughgoing do-gooder via encounters with an Ecstasy-taking faith healer-and spun it into a surprisingly sustainable exploration of the limits of liberal sentiment...
...We might see a way out, kind ofthing...
...Beyond the occasional beatnik space-filler "man," American JJ sounds roughly like the others, even using the very non-American phrase "pissing rain" at one point...
...as a consequence, they have smart jobs and I have a scruffy job, they are rich and I am poor, they are self-confident and I am incontinent, they do not smoke and I do, they have opinions and I have lists...
...Hornby's humor-he is essentially a humorist-arises more from voice than situation...
...Surely the coroner's report should read, 'He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the f-ing shambles it had become.' "Not once did I read a newspaper report that convinced me that the deceased was off the old trolley...
...He was, after all, a founding father of lad lit, wherein adolescent-tinged men cling to youthful pastimes such as soccer (Fever Pitch, 1992) orpopmusic (High Fidelity, 1995), while strenuously avoiding commitment (About a Boy, 1998) to the women they can't or won't understand...
...Given his humorist bent, it is hard to fault Hornby's opting for jokiness rather than precision...
...I'd say he got it just right...
...His success, therefore, has invariably been partial, but his works have always had their pleasures...
...When High Fidelity's loser-narrator Rob finds himself in the stylish home of ex-lover Charlie, surrounded by Charlie's stunning friends, his internal commentary on the evening's events takes precedence over what actually occurs: "The difference between these people and me is that they finished college and I didn't (they didn't split up with Charlie and I did...
...JJ provides an opportunity for comments on pop music, rock'n'roll, and books (he's a reader...
...Once Chas is dismissed, Jess wants to go to Martin's for tea...
...And his use of metaphor ranges from unfortunate ("Jess felt about long words the way that racists feel about black people: She hated them, and wanted to send them back where they came from") to labored ("If my words became any wearier, they would no longer have the energy to crawl up my throat and out of my mouth") to baffling ("JJ could have put a sort of ramp up to my sentences to help people skateboard down from them...
...A Long Way Down opens with fallen British TV personality Martin Sharp explaining why he wants to kill himself...
...Hornby's new novel is something of an exception...
...No one succeeds in making the leap...
...Still, the problem with this author's novels has been a lack of complexity and sweep in the worldview of his narrators...
...OK, it's terrible, but it's not...
...Even at his best-in High Fidelity and How to Be Good-we understand all too soon where the narrators are coming from...
...The storyline is passed along more or less chronologically...
...Jess' sister has disappeared...
...What is left, then, for Nick Hornby fans...
...Jess finds a good man and a reason to reconcile with mother and father...
...Finally, there is always the interesting sport of guessing what actors will be cast in the leading roles-an inevitability, it seems, given Hornby's track record...
...Consequently, their frequent ruminations on life and love give the books a static quality, however subtly and inventively Hornby turns his plots...
...All have sad stories...
...This is the glue that holds the group together...
...And I always nod and smile thoughtfully, when really I want to pin them down: What did you learn from the cancer, actually...
...That wigs make your scalp itch...
...An overly schematic narrative structure doesn'thelp...
...No need for painsharing...
...Hello, Mr...
...But it is a lot of effort for a small reward, diminished further by the joke's doubling in the next paragraph, where the idiomatic "off the old trolley" follows the more formal locution, "the deceased...
...We might learn something...
...That How to Be Good's female physician had a self-deprecating, no-nonsense outlook a lot like her man-boy predecessors was forgivable, even enjoyable...
...JJ similarly hedges his elation: "Busking isn't so bad...
...What is mildly worrying in these early passages is how Hornby belabors the point...
...And nearly every single time, the coroner says the same thing: 'He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' And then you read the story about the poor bastard: His wife was sleeping with his best friend, he 'd lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some months before...
...Surely that's fair enough...
...The premise and Hornby's choosing a woman to narrate came as something of a surprise...
...Maureen has a disabled son...
...Repeating the idea of the suicide's reasonableness, it might be argued, is cumulatively effective, especially leading as it does to the jokey contrast between the Latinate "contemplation" and the good old Anglo-Saxon "f-ing shambles...
...Then a future meeting date is set...
...Why the other three care is anyone's guess...
...The rest of us can wait for the movie...
...Cynical Martin volunteers as a kind of Big Brother...
...Coroner...
...Periodically, excuses for future encounters and adventures are put forward, none of them compelling...
...The faithful may find this reason enough to read A Long Way Down...
...Then it's rebellious, foulmouthed, 18-year-old Jess' turn...
...A tabloid story about the foursome is cause for another meeting, as is a 90-day suicide "crisis period...
...Hollywood could not have turned a tale of suicide more fully around...
...Just, you know, our names and why we're up here...
...The gang of four gets down off the roof because Jess wants to find her ex-lover, Chas...
...Small distinctions in voice surface...
...Hugh Grant is the obvious choice for Martin...
...The author's voice seems in form-friendly, direct, good with a punch line: "I'd spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests on the Internet, just out of curiosity...
...In each case Hornby, as if embarrassed, tries to play down the neatness of it all...
...Shut-in Maureen gets a social life...
...Hornby's references to the Twin Towers, meant perhaps to lend gravitas to proceedings, feel gratuitous...
...Because it might be interesting...
...That you don't like being sick...
...Their tales are abond, of sorts...
...JJ takes up music again...
...And Maureen's naivete might strike some as humorous: "I don't know how these jet-set people who have to fly once or twice a year cope, I really don't...
...It wasn't as good as I'm making it sound, to tell you the truth," Maureen cautions...
...OK, it's bad, but it's not terrible...
...Worse is the gimmicky articulation of the plot...
...That you don't want to die...
...Teenaged Jess quickly turns it into a suicide encounter group: "Oh, go on, let's talk, I said...
...Maureen's sections, for example, feature an extended dash after the first letter of any curse word used by another character: She goes to church and therefore doesn't curse...
...TV celeb Martin injects a good dose of the truth-telling familiar from past works: "And yet just about everyone I 've ever interviewed has told me that by doing something or otherrecovering from cancer, climbing a mountain, playing the part of a serial killer in a movie-they have learned something about themselves...
...JJ's dream of music stardomhas collapsed...
...The others will require some thought...
...Anyone at home...
...Martin has gone to jail for sleeping with a 15-year-old...
...Rob is not sexually, socially or functionally "incontinent," but rhyme and contrast make the word's use undeniably funny...
...A Long Way Down begins interestingly enough with a couple of people about to commit suicide...
...Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing until you can't take any more, and then it's off to the nearest multistory car park in the family hatchback with a length of rubber tubing...
...When Jess hatches the idea of a group reunion, inviting friends and family to a Starbucks, happy endings follow for all...
...They all end up at the top of the same London building, on New Year's Eve, with the same thought in mind...
...The four principals take turns telling the story in sections headed with the name of the one about to speak in boldface...
...The appearance of a pizza delivery man, an American named JJ, rounds out the suicidal foursome...
...Jess curses a lot...
...Churchgoing Maureen, in a more roundabout way, makes a similar confession...
Vol. 88 • May 2005 • No. 3
