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Title: Ho Hum Hornby...
Review: Let's see...I really liked High Fidelity and About A Boy was also good. I thought How to be Good was somewhat readable. Why not give the 4th Hornby oeuvre a wary, but honest try? Take four characters (including - guess what - a trash-talking teen girl and a failed rock musician), a lot of "cute" writing about 'puke' and the expected 'f' word, a couple of contemporaneous references to the politics of George Bush and Tony Blair, endless repetition of narrative and what is left? Not much to recommend.There are lots of improbable vignettes,the sorriest of which (no, not the intended New Year's Eve leap off the building) concerns an intervention brought off in the basement of a Starbucks. This is a pantheon of hokey, jokey characters. Even Maureen, whose life is filled with genuine pathos,not just the tedious whinging of the other 3 mediocrities,has been infused with scant depth by Hornby. This book pushed me over the edge. Nick can do better.
