HOW TO BE GOOD…
BY NICK HORNBY

Who is it by?
This is Nick Hornby's fourth novel, and from early sales figures is set to be as popular as his previous ones. His first three books very much reflected the particular concerns of Hornby, 30-something, male, and fun-loving. "High Fidelity" was to men and music what Bridget Jones is to women and diaries, and "Fever Pitch" combined a laddish addiction to football - in Hornby's case Arsenal - with that sinking feeling that commitment to one woman might not actually be such a bad thing as all. "About a Boy" took a slightly different tone, clearly showing something of a transition in the author's own thinking, and got more into the realms of meaning and meaningless, through the eyes and life of 36-year-old Will and his encounter with 12-year-old Marcus and his suicidal mother.

What's it all about?
"How to be Good" continues exploring the issue of meaning and pointlessness, but arrives at even bleaker conclusions. The story is fairly simple. Katie and her husband David have two children but are clearly having marriage problems; Katie has recently had an affair, and has asked for a divorce. David is sobered by this and finds himself asking very deep questions, reflecting on the point of marriage.

By chance David meets a Faith Healer - Goodnews - and he cures his daughter of eczema and David of his chronic anger. David embarks on what is described as a spiritual journey in which he reappraises every aspect of the middle-class existence which they have lived in up to now. Toys, food, computers are given away, and then they begin a scheme to re-house homeless teenagers.

Katie can hardly stand David's turnaround. She hates the fact that she hates what she ought to love. She begins to see the hypocrisy of her own life, and its hollowness. As part of her spiritual journey she takes a trip to church, clearly one of the most amusing passages of the book.

After a period of moving out of the family home, the book ends with Katie being at home with her family, but the final sentences leave Katie's future desperately uncertain.

So what's the big issue?
There are a number of important issues this book covers. I have chosen just four which I hope shed some light on the issues and bridge-building which might be done in the light of Hornby's book.

(1) Marriage and Relationships. We see in the book a marriage under pressure, the burden of busyness, separate lives, lack of communication and adultery. At the end of the book David says to Katie "We've both got flat batteries, but we've still got to drive the car somehow. And I haven't got a clue how to do that....." (p225) The book ends on a note of pointlessness, with Katie being uncertain that her future will ever bring the satisfaction she longs for.

(2) Being Good. Both David and Katie struggle with what it is to 'be good.' Does this mean, as Katie seems to believe, that being good is about small acts of charity and 'doing the religious thing' What is the link, as Katie discovers when she goes to church, between charity and love? Does being good mean social action of the sort David commits himself to? Equally if not more importantly, what room is there for the divine in this quest to 'be good'?

(3) Being Bad. The book also vividly describes what it is to be bad. David goes from writing a weekly newspaper column called "The Angriest Man in Holloway" through what appears like a spiritual rebirth. Katie, the saintly-looking GP moves from adultery to deception, anger, cynicism and materialism. She realises that she can no longer hide behind her job as a doctor to pass the test of goodness - she's an adulteress, she doesn't know the first name of her longest-serving patients, she resents giving money to those who need it, and hates having someone living in her un-used spare room.

(4) Guilt. Kate comes across in the book as a person riddled by guilt. For example, when she moves out of home into a bedsit, without telling the children, she wake uup at 2:25 exactly feeling guilty. (p172) She is someone who recognises the need to be forgiven and start over again, but cannot see a realistic way that this can be achieved. Interestingly, at this stage she grasps something amazing about the gospel. "When I look at my sins (and if I think they're sins they are sins) I can see the appeal of born-again Christianity. I suspect that its not the Christianity that's so alluring; its the rebirth. Because who wouldn't wish to start all over again?" (p181)

Best Bits?
Must read the family trip to church towards the end of the book. If it wasn't so true it would be funny. Fantastic stuff! I'll never forget Gareth Robinson trying to read it out @ New Wine 2001 in a seminar and loosing it half way through…

Starts on page 186, and includes great lines like:

* "If you are the kind of person whose choice of entertainment is governed by ease of parking, then I thoroughly recommend Anglican Sunday services. You can arrive at five to ten for a ten o'clock service, and you're away by two minutes past eleven. Anyone who's had to wait for an hour in the Wembley car park after a Spice Girls concert may find this attractive…"

* I just hope that it's warmer there [in heaven] than here, and there is more hope, and youth, and there is no need for bring-and-buy sales, and the choir of angels isn't singing elsewhere that day, but you rather fear it might be; C of E heaven is in all probability a quarter-full of unhappy old ladies selling misshapen rock cakes and scratched records. Every day of the week, for all eternity.