High fidelity door Nick Hornby

General information The book I read was written by Nick Hornby. The name of the book is High Fidelity. High Fidelity, Indigo, London, 1995, first print, 253 pages. The book is a novel. First opinion I decided to read this book because a few people I know told me that is was a very nice book to read. I do not know a lot about English books so I trusted them. I really liked High Fidelity. It is a story about a man called Robert. He tells you about the relationships he had with women. He tells you about his first girlfriend, about the ones that put him aside because of another boy, about the ones he still likes and about the relationship he is having now. High Fidelity an easy book to read because the language that is used is not very difficult. I also liked the book because it never bored me. Something's always happening. Getting in depth -Summary The story starts when Robert begins to tell us about his ex-girlfriends. Robert is a man and about 30 years old. He owns a record shop called Championship Vinyl. The shop is not running very well but Robert earns just enough money to keep the shop open. Two other men work at his shop. They are Robert's friends but they are not very important to the story. When Robert finished telling about the past a new chapter starts called Now. Laura, Robert's girlfriend, is about to leave him. Laura is a woman from Robert's age and she lives together with Robert in a apartment. The relationship between Robert and Laura is not very well at the moment and Laura falls in love with another man, the neighbour. Laura‘s new boyfriend has just moved to another house and she is going to live there too. After Laura left Robert, Robert does not feel very good. At his shop he does not talk a lot and he cannot stop thinking about Laura. He starts calling her daily. Laura gets the creeps of Robert and tells him to call the police if he does not stop. Then, at a night when Robert is drinking a beer with his friends at the local pub he sees Marie. She is a woman from New York and she sings songs at the pub. Robert thinks she is a good singer and buys a tape with her songs on it. They have a little chat and she asks him if he knows a record shop in the neigbourhood. He tells him about his shop and she decides to visit it at one of the upcoming days. After Marie visited the shop, Bary, one of the two other men who also work in Robert‘s shop, tells Robert that they are invited to Marie‘s show at a bar called ‚The white lion‘. At ‚The white lion‘ Marie sings her songs and when she is finished they drink some beers together. Robert likes Marie and she likes Robert. Robert takes Marie to his home and they talk a bit and listen some music. Later that night Robert and Marie have sex. Robert is happy with Marie but he still can not forget what Laura did to him and he doubts if it is good to have a new relationship when he still has not forgotten the other he had before. Then Robert gets a call from Laura, she is not very happy, her father just died. Laura invites Robert to come to the funeral. After the funeral all the people go to the home of Laura‘s parents. Robert joins them. He is still angry with Laura and they get a little quarrel. Robert cannot stand it any longer and runs out of the house and wants to go home. Laura decides to follow Robert but Robert sees her and hides himself. Finally Robert ends up by sitting together with Laura in her car. They talk about how they feel. Laura says she is not very happy with her new friend and Robert tells about Marie. Robert and Laura still have special feelings for eachother and they decide to give their relationship a second try. -Which techniques used the author? The author wrote the story in a very ‚fast‘ way. There is not one moment of boredome in the story. Everytime there happens something or someone makes a very nice joke. A big part of the story consist of Robert‘s thoughts. These were sometimes a bit difficult for me to understand but they were interesting and kept the story ‚alive‘. The place and time of the stroy are very important I think. This story is about feelings and the writer expressed the feelings by describing a place. When the writer described a rainy day, with a grey sky, fog and everything beïng dark, wet and cold you knew that the person in the book was not very happy at that moment but a bit depressed and/or sad. You do not get to know much about the characters in the book like what they often do, what their hobbies are and that kind of things. You get to know their feelings, how they think about love and their relationships. Robert for example thinks that his relationship with Marie was too quick after the one with Laura. -Themes

This book, „High Fidelity“, is about love and the difficulties of love. I think that the main theme of the book is that love is a beautifull thing but when you are not carefull with it you could easily hurt someone with it. I think it is hard to find a lesson or a meaning the author wanted to make clear in this story. Maybe this book was a little too difficlut for me to understand. -Placing the book in the history of literature
I think that this book has a lot to do with the time it was published in. It is a very new book and I recognized the style of writing. Everything happens fast and the story does not have very long conversations or describings of things. This is what most people want today. It is just like the movies, everything has to be fast and with a lot of action otherwise the main public will not like it. I think a story does not have to be fast written, but I liked the way it was used in „High Fidelity“. Final opinion
Most times when I read a book about love I get bored. Not because I think love is boring but because I do not like the way the story is written. Often it is like: two people quit their relationship, afterwards (ofcourse) they regret it but unfortunatly one of them has a new girl- or boyfriend. Then you get the part when they are both feeling sad and want eachother back. Then finally they are together again and everything is good and there is a big party with the two lovers kissing eachother. „High Fidelity“ was sometimes a bit like this but not too much. The story kept me interested and there was not one moment when I thought of stoping to read the book. In most love stories the reader is hoping that the two persons where the book is about get back together. In ‚High Fidelity‘ I did not have that feeling. I think that was because Laura cheated on Robert, she was in love with the neighbour for one month before she told Robert about it. I hoped that Robert found another woman that would not have done something like that to him. When Laura did not want to know anything anymore about Robert I really started to hate her because Robert could not live without her. But at a moment I started to like Laura, I do not understand why but she seemed a lot nicer. Maybe it was because she invited Robert to the funeral and not her new boyfriend. I think that was a sign she still loved Robert. I liked this because the writer succeeded to suddenly change my feelings for a person and I found that realy nice. I think something like that must be pretty hard to do.