A long way down door Nick Hornby

Beoordeling 5.1
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Boekcover A long way down
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  • Boekverslag door een scholier
  • 4e klas vwo | 1819 woorden
  • 14 februari 2011
  • 54 keer beoordeeld
Cijfer 5.1
54 keer beoordeeld

Boek
Auteur
Nick Hornby
Taal
Engels
Vak
Eerste uitgave
2005
Pagina's
272
Oorspronkelijke taal
Engels

Boekcover A long way down
Shadow
A long way down door Nick Hornby
Shadow
Expectation in advance

I chose this book because you advised me to read it. So I went to the library and got the book. It looked like the book was full of humor when I read the summary. The only thing I knew about this book was that it is about 4 people who want to commit suicide and ended up meeting each other.


Summary

Part 1:

Martin Sharp a disgraced TV presenter, Maureen a lonely housewife with a disabled child, JJ a Rock N Roll failure and the vulgar teenager Jess meet at the top of a roof in London at New Year’s Eve. They meet up with each other because they all want to commit suicide, but they end up chatting with each other instead. Each of them tells why he/she wanted to put an end to his/her life. They decide not to jump.

They first try to help Jess with finding her ex-boyfriend. They take a cab and they drive to the party where Jess’ ex-boyfriend is supposed to be. They find him and they talk to him, but after a while they decide to go to Martin Sharps home. When they are at Martin’s place they find Martin’s girlfriend, Penny. She blames Martin of cheating on her because he left the party without an explanation.

Part 2:

The next day the newspapers are claiming that Martin Sharp has slept with Jess. She doesn’t deny it because she doesn’t want her father to know that she wanted to kill herself.

Martin ends up talking with Jess’ father and he denies that he slept with Jess. After the conversation Jess’ father gives Martin money to protect his daughter.

The group decides to organize a meeting. Jess suggests that they profit from the scandal in the newspaper. She wants to tell the press that they saw an angel who prevented them from jumping. Martin, JJ and Maureen don’t like the idea and don’t want Jess to talk to the press. They find out the next day that Jess told a reporter that they saw an angel that looked like the actor Matt Damon. She promises the reporter an interview with the rest of the group. They decide to do the interview for the money. After the interview Martin gets fired from his cable TV-show. Jess finally admits that the angel story was nonsense in another interview on television.

A couple days later JJ suggests to go on a holiday. A couple days later they’re in a plane headed to Tenerife. The next day Jess gets drunk and the police have to take her back to the hotel the group is staying. JJ meets a girl and ends up having sex with her. Martin leaves the hotel.

They decide to plan a meeting for Saint Valentine’s Day.

When they meet up at the same roof as the first time they met, they see a man who wants to jump of the roof. They try to stop him but they fail. They all go home and decide to meet the next morning at Starbucks.

Part 3:

Maureen and Jess try to convince Cindy (Martin’s ex-wife) to get back with him. Cindy however has a new partner. After this event, Jess organizes a meeting at Starbucks. She invites all the relatives of Martin, Maureen, JJ and herself. The meeting is a disaster. Jess gets in a fight with her parents about her sisters earrings. JJ is going outside with his ex-bandmember to fight and Martin gets in an argument with Maureens nurse’s because he accuses him of flirting with Penny. Only group member present at the meeting is Maureen. She talks to Jess’ parents and tells them that maybe Jen came back and took her earrings.

Maureen’s nurses help her to bring her disabled child home and they ask her if she’s interested to join a quiz team. During the quiz, someone offers Maureen a small job.

Jess’ mother apologizes to jess, and she accepts the apology.

Martin gets a new job too. He teaches kids and wants to start a new life with a fresh start.

JJ is in a band again. After a while they decide to meet again at the place they met each other for the first time. They realize that their lives could be a lot worse and they postpone their death for another six months.

Reading Experience

I liked this book, but sometimes I was getting bored. So it wasn’t great either in my opinion. After like 150 pages I was getting tired of all those metaphorical jokes. They were funny sometimes, but sometimes they were very useless. Well, this book definitely fulfilled my expectations, it was very funny.

This book is well written, but it is not very hard to read.

Title

I think this book suits the title ‘A Long Way Down’ perfectly.

First they’re at the top of the building ready to jump, but slowly they go down and eventually they pick up their lives. I think the title is meant to be metaphorically, because it took a lot of time to change their minds about killing themselves. It was ‘A Long Way Down’ to pick up their lives.

I think it also refers to jumping of a building. After all, it is a long way down to get crushed on the concrete.

It is very hard for me to come up with a new title for this book because the original title suits this book perfectly. But If I have to make up a title, I would say something like Road to Salvation. I came up with this title because it is a long journey for them to get over their depression and find something worth living for. At the end of the road, they’re rescued from death because they found something worth living for. That’s their salvation.

Impressive Parts

A long time ago, when I was eight or nine, I saw this programme on telly about the history of the Beatles. Jen liked the Beatles, so she was the one who made me watch it, but I didn’t mind. (I probably told her I did mind, though. I probably made a fuss and pissed her off.) Anyway, when Ringo joined, you sort of felt this little shiver, because that was it, then, that was the four of them, and they were ready to go off and be the most famous group in history. Well, that’s how I felt when JJ turned up on the roof with his pizzas. I know you’ll think, Oh she’s just saying that because it sounds good, but I’m not. I knew, honestly. It helped that he looked like a rock star, with his hair and his leather jacket and all that, but my feeling wasn’t anything to do with music; I just mean that I could tell we needed JJ, and so when he appeared it felt right. He wasn’t Ringo, though. He was more like Paul. Maureen was Ringo, except she wasn’t very funny. I was George, except I wasn’t shy, or spiritual. Martin was John, except he wasn’t talented or cool. Thinking about it, maybe we were more like another group with four people in it. – Jess [page 27]

I think this fragment is hilarious, it really made me laugh out loud. And me laughing out loud because of a book is very rare.

This fragment takes place when JJ shows up with his pizza at the night they all wanted to commit suicide. There are a lot of these metaphorical jokes in this book and they’re very funny most the time. Why this fragment is so funny to me is because Jess is trying to be metaphorical but she fails miserably. That makes it so hilarious for me.

I’d spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests on the Internet, just out of curiosity. 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…Hello, Mr Coroner? Anyone at home? I’m sorry, but there’s no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I’d say he got it just right. – Martin [page 7]

This fragment takes place at the beginning of the novel, and it is used as some kind of introduction to Martin’s chapter. He is talking about his life 2 years ago, when everything was fine. Actually he is babbling about all kind of stuff.

I think this quote is rather funny, because the humor is very dry. (Is that how you say ‘droge humor’ in English?) Martin is the kind of dude that is hilarious sometimes, without trying to be funny.

‘Tell us what the problem is,’ I said. ‘I mean, we’re all fucking experts in the field. – JJ [page 178]

This is what JJ said to the man they saw on the roof before he jumped. This was a really impressing moment, because Martin, Maureen, JJ and Jess were thinking about killing themselves, but they didn’t really do it. But those things really happen, and it shocked them. When they saw the man jump of the roof they realized that they weren’t capable of committing suicide.

I don’t know, maybe I just wish that I wasn’t such an arsehole.’ – Martin [page 199]

This is one of the things Martin said when JJ asked him to say 3 things he wanted to change.

I really like this part, because it’s like a moment of honesty. Martin is finally looking in the mirror, because he really is a jerk sometimes. I think this is important for the character growth of Martin.

So, I have learned not to sleep with sixteen-year-olds, or attractive young women? No. And yet just about everyone I’ve ever interviewed has told me that by doing something or other – recovering from cancer, climbing a mountain, playing the part of a serial killer in a move – they have learned something about themselves. And I always nod and smile thoughtfully, when really I want to pin them down. What did you learn from the cancer, actually? That you don’t like being sick? That you don’t want to die? That wigs make your scalp itch? Come on, be specific.’ – Martin (again) [page 208]

This is what Martin is thinking when they have a gathering with relatives and friends because Jess said something about learning things. I think this is rather funny because Martin is very ignorant sometimes and his limited point of view makes me laugh all the time.

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