Nick Hornby

In the last month I have read two offerings of Nick Hornby's. You might say - huh - that name sounds familiar. It should. Hornby wrote both High Fidelity and About a Boy.

First, I read an adult fiction novel about suicide called A Long Way Down. I enjoyed the diary style narration, where we get the insight of each of the four people who wanted to commit suicide but then didn't.

And why didn't they commit suicide? Well, they had to go find some guy at a party. And then some other stuff happened. I don't know if I can vague that up anymore, but the stuff that happens isn't really the point. The interesting part is seeing the changes the characters go through, psychologically, from suicidal to depressed to taking it day by day.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but I didn't have an insatiable urge to devour it. It was...nice. A man on the bus chatted me up while I was reading one day and let me know that while Long Way Down was fine, other Hornby books were awesome.

Thank you man on the bus, I think I'll try another.

Which is where my desire to read more Hornby and my expedition of reading more YAL intersected. Enter: Slam, Hornby's young adult book. Slam is about teenage pregnancy.

Here is the thing: I've never been suicidal, so on the one hand part of me couldn't relate to Down; however, I have been a teenager and I have been in the thralls of infatuation. I am predisposed to like Slam.

A story about a teen skater who falls in love and gets his girlfriend pregnant might not read like my own personal history, but reading about the first time you are seriously infatuated? Yes, I do know something about that.

It was smile worthy to reminisce about that younger version of myself. Remembering how I felt the way the character felt. Isn't it lovely how words on a page can make you remember hidden away parts of yourself? How relationships almost always go wrong or doesn't last or gets really messed up, but at the time it was all you could see.

It just rang true. And kept me up Monday night reading until midnight to finish it.

"There are many differences between a baby and an iPod. And one of the biggest is, no one is going to mug you for your baby."
Nick Hornby