Introduction

Katie Carr is a good person. She recycles. She's against racism. She's a good doctor, a good mom, a good wife....well, maybe not that last one, considering she's having an affair and has just requested a divorce via cell phone. But who could blame her? For years her husband's been selfish, sarcastic, and underemployed, writing the "Angriest Man in Holloway" column for their local paper.

But now David's changed. He's become a good person, too—really good. He's found a spiritual leader. He has become kind, soft-spoken, and earnest. He's even got a homeless kid set up in the spare room. Katie isn't sure if this is a deeply-felt conversion, a brain tumor—or David's most brilliantly vicious manipulation yet.

Nick Hornby is the author of the bestselling novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, as well as the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the editor of the short story collection Speaking with the Angel.

In 1999, Hornby was awarded the E.M. Forster award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a graduate of Cambridge University and was a teacher before turning to writing full-time. Before turning his attention to fiction, Hornby was a regular contributor to Esquire, the London Sunday Times, and The Independent. He has also written for GQ, Elle, Time, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Premiere.

Two of Nick Hornby's previous books were number-one bestsellers in England: the 1995 novel High Fidelity, a critic's favorite on both sides of the Atlantic; and his first book, the memoir Fever Pitch. Film rights for High Fidelity were bought by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, and the major motion picture starring John Cusack was a hit both in the U.S. and abroad. A film version of Fever Pitch, with a screenplay by Hornby, was released in England by Channel Four Films. Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Films and New Line recently produced About a Boy, starring Hugh Grant, to great critical and commercial success.

Nick Hornby lives in North London, within walking distance of his favorite football (soccer to us Yanks) team, the Arsenal.

I'm always rather amazed when people talk about your books as being jolly accounts of popular culture. There are a lot of potential disasters for your characters and they're hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

NH: Somebody said that it was the "comedy of depression." I think it is why a certain group of people respond so strongly to the books, all the characters are depressed.

I think you actually use the word depression in all the books?

I guess there are an awful lot of people out there who do feel depressed and don't find that low level depression reflected in many books that they read. Literature is usually much more crisis-focused.

You wouldn't describe your books as "domestic," but you write about daily lives and ordinary things, which maybe one doesn't get in a lot of books.

I don't mind my books being described as domestic at all. It was very much an impetus when I started writing. I read a lot books by women and identified with them much more because I lived a domestic life — and most of us do — and that really wasn't reflected in any of the books written by men. It seemed odd to me that most of us bring up families and go to work and yet the books our male representatives are writing about huge things in history and people on the edge. Of course we have a need for those books, but there did seem to be a bit of a hole where no one was writing about what actually happened.

Was that reflected in your own reading? Who are the writers you admire most?

At the time that I started writing I had just discovered the books of Anne Tyler and Lorrie Moore. I'd never read a book that more precisely articulated what I wanted to do than Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. There were some depressed and lost characters and a lot of humour, and I just felt this is what I want to be when I grow up. I had read two Lorrie Moore books, Self Help and Like Life, just before Fever Pitch came out. Again they had very sharp humour but were incredibly accessible and I think it was something particularly at the time that had been lost from contemporary British fiction.

Do you feel much more at home with American contemporary fiction than British fiction?

Yeah, I feel much more at home. I think there's always been that strain of American writing that wants to write simply and accessibly, but intelligently. I think in this country we are much more hung up on demonstrating that you are writing a book and being clever about it, and consequently people weren't reading them much here.

Were not reading the British writers' books?

Yes. If you have a short-list of six Booker Prize books, people read the one that wins. Because it won the other five are completely disregarded and this is somehow supposed to be representative of our literary culture. I do think in the 1980s there was a huge gap between best-selling books and literature, and there really wasn't anything in between.

For me Roddy Doyle was an important part of that. When I read The Commitments it was simple and funny. It was about things I understood and you could see a great rush of identification with Roddy's books.

You've mentioned the Booker Prize. Do you think that awards such as this misrepresent literature and the kinds of books that are out there?

I think that the Booker Prize sets a tone of a certain kind of literary writer. As a young writer you're looking at two polarities that you don't really like the look of. There was the Jackie Collins stuff on one side, and there was this very difficult, dark, inaccessible literature on the other.

I think there is a general desire to read good books. People read books on the way to work and before they go to bed. We've all had that terrible feeling that you're making no impression on a novel at all and you're 30 pages in and there's 472 pages left and you've been reading it for three weeks already. I think the Americans have always understood that once you have a price on the back of your book there is some kind of contract you're entering into.

Yes, and American authors do have that pop-culture feeding in too.

It seemed obvious to me that popular culture is an important part of all our lives and it should have some kind of reflection in the books we are reading. I've never understood why people didn't describe or just mention what TV programmes people were watching, I've always suspected it's something to do with having an eye on posterity.

Take us through an average day in the life of Nick Hornby.

I wander to my office, a small flat just round the corner from home. I smoke, mess round on the Internet, email, and, eventually, start writing — usually just when it's time to pick up my son from school.

What's on your bedside table?

Back copies of The New Yorker, Andrew Rawnsley's book about New Labour, the new Michael Chabon novel and indigestion tablets.

What was the last film you saw?

At the time of the interview You Can Count On Me, which I loved to bits.

You are now the pop critic for The New Yorker — could you see yourself ever living in New York?

My domestic circumstances wouldn't allow it at the moment, but I'd love to live in the US for a while at some stage — San Francisco is the place I'd choose.

1. In what ways are the notions of what it means to be "good" explored in this novel? How do Katie and David Carr each represent—or defy—these notions? Discuss the role of "goodness" in the couple's relationship to each other, their children and their community.
    
2. Vocation plays a central role in the characterizations of both Katie and David. Compare his work at the outset of the novel ("The Angriest Man in Holloway" columnist) to her job (Katie Carr, GP). To what extent is each defined by what they do? How does their relationship to their work change as their marriage stumbles?
    
3. In what ways does economic class play into the theme of the novel? Compare the Carr family's economic status to that of DJ Good News, their neighbors, and the homeless kids. In what ways does each defy or exemplify class stereotypes? Is the meaning of "goodness" reliant upon these social and economic class distinctions?
    
4. The idea of guilt arises a number of times in the course of Katie's thinking about her marriage and her parenting tactics. Does the novel suggest that "good" behavior stemming from guilt is something less than true goodness? Why or why not?
    
5. Discuss GoodNews' position in the Carr household. Is he an example of "goodness"? Why or why not? What challenges does he offer them as someone who lives outside of the societal norms they've built their lives upon? Do you agree with his description of the "possessions game" as something that makes people "lazy and spoiled and uncaring" (p. 127)? Why or why not?
    
6. The private and public lives of the Carrs are considered in some detail by both of them. Katie muses, "One of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was that I thought it would be a good—as in Good, rather than exciting...thing to do. I liked how it sounded...I thought it made me seem just right. (p.8), while David demands the right to "spin my version before you spin your version." Discuss ways in which the characters' concerns for their public personas impact their personal lives.
    
7. "When he's asleep, I can turn him back into the person I still love," Katie says of her husband (p.11). "I can impose my idea of what David should be, used to be, onto his sleeping form..." Contrast the Carr's marriage before and after David's 'conversion.' In what ways do both partners judge the evolution of the other? Is her desire for an opportunity to "rebuild myself from scratch" realistic, or is it illusory?
    
8. How do Katie's decisions—as a wife, mother, and woman—reflect her struggle to maintain her identity as the threads of her marriage begin to unravel? Identify the factors that lead to her infidelity. Is there a "kind of person" who "conducts extramarital affairs"? Who "moves out without telling her children?" Why or why not?
    
9. Discuss the role of spirituality in the novel. How is the family dynamic changed by David's conversion to 'goodness?' Why are the Carrs inclined to identify David's new persona with religiosity (p. 95-97)? Why does Katie approach organized religion only after David has taken on his new persona?
    
10. Why does the act of reading and listening to music become a matter of spiritual survival for Katie? She states, "Can I be a good person and spend that much money on overpriced consumer goods? I don't know. But I do know this: I'd be no good without them (p. 304). What does she mean by this?