Ana V.

The second book in a row I read of Hornby's work, and the second one in order of liking. I liked his High Fidelity work some more, thus the 5 star rating on that one and the 4 star on this one.

The writing is beautiful. I really dig his style. I find him to be a nice blend between a few other authors and a good writer in terms of characters.

What Nick gets right are the differences between humans. Many times across the books I've read I found two characters or three characters in a book to be, at the core, the same. Yes they had different traits and of course you could identify them separately, but at its most basic level, they were the same. Hornby created 4 characters that had something different. Of course, all humans, all two-legged two-handed one-headed and infinitely-stupid humans, but still different. It's very hard, I think, to get it in writing - this depth of character, this understanding of different human natures, but this particular writer managed it.

I did get a lot of different opinion on this work, however, so when I decided to read it, I already had an opinion about it. Which is dumb, I know. So, to be sure, I am going to someday read the book again, in order to see how I feel about it then. I also saw a theater adaptation of this book with a good friend of mine, which I kind of liked and I sorta remembered afterwards.. Of course it wasn't as detailed as the book.

Four star rating, it is. Good pacing, nice conflict scenes and of course, from my point of view, good character building.