Summer Books #2: High Fidelity

I’m pretty sure I’ve read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity before, as I’ve read everything else he’s written (okay, so I didn’t quite finish The Polysyllabic Spree, but I’ve got a first edition of Songbook, so that cancels out). But as is the case with most of his novels, they only get better with age - not on their part, but your own.

Hornby’s protagonists are always struggling with the particular insights that come with any given period in someone’s life. In About a Boy, it’s 12 year old Marcus’ pre-adolescent struggles; in How to be Good, it’s 40-somethings Katie and David trying to make sense of their middle aged cynicism; in A Long Way Down, it’s a little of everybody.

High Fidelity is narrated by Rob, a mid-thirties record store owner who’s just broken up with his girlfriend of some years, Laura. The novel takes us through his pits of despair in the weeks following the breakup, as well as through his “top five memorable split-ups” from throughout his life. The tone is delightfully bitter - picture Ben Folds’ “Song for the Dumped” playing throughout the first third.
There’s a big emphasis on music throughout the novel as well, as Rob boasts of his enormous record collection and works through emotional stress by reorganizing the whole thing.

But something in particular really resonated with me. At one point, as Rob is working through his introspective tour de force and considering his obsession with pop music about love and love lost, he asks himself “whether I like it because I’m unhappy, or whether I’m unhappy because I like it.”

It makes me wonder why I love books like High Fidelity, songs like Radiohead’s “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” and movies like Sideways, or Swingers, or Eternal Sunshine. Are they responsible for any natural pessimistic tendencies I might have to generally dwell in something slightly less than happiness? Or do they speak to me because of that?

I can’t definitively answer that question, and neither can Rob, but his journey is ultimately rewarding to the reader. That’s the other thing about Hornby’s protagonists - often, they’re not all that changed by the end of the book, they’ve just had the slightest change in perspective, and sometimes that’s all you really need.

High Fidelity: *****/5

Past reviews: The Road by Cormack McCarthy