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HIGH FIDELITY

INTRODUCTION
Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films (Reservoir Dogs…); top five Elvis Costello songs (”Alison”…); top five episodes of Cheers (the one where Woody sang his stupid song to Kelly…). Rob tries dating a singer whose rendition of “Baby, I Love Your Way” makes him cry. But maybe it’s just that he’s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think (as awful as it sounds) that life as an episode of thirtysomething, with all the kids and marriages and barbecues and k.d. lang CD’s that this implies, might not be so bad.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why is Rob so conflicted about remaining in the relationship with Laura? Does it have more to do with his age or his particular eccentricities? Do you think many men—and women—go through internal struggles similar to Rob’s when it comes to commitment?

2. What issues are at the center of Rob’s dissatisfaction with his life? If he had to make a list of the top 5 reasons he was dissatisfied, what would they be?

3. Why is it so important for Rob to contact and meet the women who have dumped him? Does he find what he was hoping to discover? What does he learn that surprises him?

4. Why does Rob turn to familiar songs in times of crisis? What solace do they provide? What does the book reveal about the ways in which popular music affects our lives? What role does popular music play in memory and emotional attachments? Can you think of an example from your own experience, where a pop song provided an uncanny soundtrack for your life at a particular time?

5. Rob, Barry, and Dick have an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. What are the benefits and liabilities of this particular talent? How do they use that knowledge in social situations?

6. Why doesn’t Rob stay in regular contact with friends? What is behind his emotional distance from friends and family?

7. What is the significance of lists in Rob’s life? Why are they used as a recurring motif in the book?

8. On page 247, Rob says “I saw, for the first time, how scared I am of dying, and of other people dying….” What role does death—and the fear of death—play in fidelity and infidelity? Is that fear a crutch for Rob, an impediment, or another matter entirely?

9. In what ways do Barry and Dick represent different parts of Rob’s personality? In what ways are they completely unique individuals, different than Rob? How does each one help him as a friend? What, if anything, does Rob learn from them?

10. Compilation tapes—collections of different songs on the same tape—carry a special significance for Rob. What meanings do they embody for him, and what does it mean when he gives someone a tape he’s compiled? What is he really giving to a woman when and if he gives her a new compilation tape?

HOW TO BE GOOD

INTRODUCTION
Katie Carr is a good person. She recycles. She’s against racism. She’s a good doctor, a good mom, a good wife…well, maybe not that last one, considering she’s having an affair and has just requested a divorce via cell phone. But who could blame her? For years her husband’s been selfish, sarcastic, and underemployed, writing the “Angriest Man in Holloway” column for their local paper.

But now David’s changed. He’s become a good person, too—really good. He’s found a spiritual leader. He has become kind, soft-spoken, and earnest. He’s even got a homeless kid set up in the spare room. Katie isn’t sure if this is a deeply-felt conversion, a brain tumor—or David’s most brilliantly vicious manipulation yet. Because she’s finding it more and more difficult to live with David—and with herself.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In what ways are the notions of what it means to be “good” explored in this novel? How do Katie and David Carr each represent—or defy—these notions? Discuss the role of “goodness” in the couple’s relationship to each other, their children and their community.

2. Vocation plays a central role in the characterizations of both Katie and David. Compare his work at the outset of the novel (“The Angriest Man in Holloway” columnist) to her job (Katie Carr, GP). To what extent is each defined by what they do? How does their relationship to their work change as their marriage stumbles?

3. In what ways does economic class play into the theme of the novel? Compare the Carr family’s economic status to that of DJ Good News, their neighbors, and the homeless kids. In what ways does each defy or exemplify class stereotypes? Is the meaning of “goodness” reliant upon these social and economic class distinctions?

4. The idea of guilt arises a number of times in the course of Katie’s thinking about her marriage and her parenting tactics. Does the novel suggest that “good” behavior stemming from guilt is something less than true goodness? Why or why not?

5. Discuss GoodNews’ position in the Carr household. Is he an example of “goodness”? Why or why not? What challenges does he offer them as someone who lives outside of the societal norms they’ve built their lives upon? Do you agree with his description of the “possessions game” as something that makes people “lazy and spoiled and uncaring (p. 127)?” Why or why not?

6. The private and public lives of the Carrs are considered in some detail by both of them. Katie muses, “One of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was that I thought it would be a good—as in Good, rather than exciting…thing to do. I liked how it sounded…I thought it made me seem just right. (p.8),” while David demands the right to “spin my version before you spin your version.” Discuss ways in which the characters’ concerns for their public personas impact their personal lives.

7. “When he’s asleep, I can turn him back into the person I still love,” Katie says of her husband (p.11). “I can impose my idea of what David should be, used to be, onto his sleeping form…” Contrast the Carr’s marriage before and after David’s ‘conversion.’ In what ways do both partners judge the evolution of the other? Is her desire for an opportunity to “rebuild myself from scratch” realistic, or is it illusory?

8. How do Katie’s decisions—as a wife, mother, and woman—reflect her struggle to maintain her identity as the threads of her marriage begin to unravel? Identify the factors that lead to her infidelity. Is there a “kind of person” who “conducts extramarital affairs”? Who “moves out without telling her children?” Why or why not?

9. Discuss the role of spirituality in the novel. How is the family dynamic changed by David’s conversion to “goodness?” Why are the Carrs inclined to identify David’s new persona with religiosity (p. 95-97)? Why does Katie approach organized religion only after David has taken on his new persona?

10. Why does the act of reading and listening to music become a matter of spiritual survival for Katie? She states, “Can I be a good person and spend that much money on overpriced consumer goods? I don’t know. But I do know this: I’d be no good without them (p. 304).” What does she mean by this?

SLAM

Praise for SLAM
“An accomplished teen novel…We know exactly how Sam feels – even when he feels differently from the beginning of a sentence to the end – and it feels just right: a vertiginous mix of anger, confusion, insight, humor, and love.” -Booklist, starred review

About SLAM
Fifteen-year-old Sam is an avid skateboarder and fan of the legendary American skater Tony Hawk, whose autobiography HAWK-OCCUPATION: SKATEBOARDER he has read “forty or fifty” times. In fact, whenever Sam is troubled, he talks to the poster of Hawk that hangs in his bedroom. And, believe it or not, the poster talks back – in appropriate passages from the autobiography!

As if this weren’t weird enough, when Sam’s girlfriend, Alicia, announces that she’s pregnant and the boy once again consults the poster, it not only offers the usual (fairly obscure) advice, it also “whizzes” him into the future! How weird is that?

Worse, the future proves no less confusing than the present. For the fact is, neither Sam nor Alicia is prepared to become a teen parent (though Sam himself was born when his parents were only sixteen) and both will soon be called on to make some very adult decisions about their lives.

While Nick Hornby respects the seriousness of these subjects, he also manages to write an irresistibly funny, heartfelt book that is filled with quirky, engaging, and believable characters struggling to make sense of lives as suddenly bumpy as a ride on an out-of-control skateboard.

About Nick Hornby
Born in Redhill, Surrey, England, Nick Hornby graduated from Cambridge University and worked for a time as a book reviewer and a teacher of English to foreign students. His first book, a collection of critical essays on American novelists, was published in 1992 and was quickly followed by his celebrated soccer memoir FEVER PITCH. The first of his internationally bestselling novels, HIGH FIDELITY, was published three years later in 1995. Three others have followed, including ABOUT A BOY (1998), HOW TO BE GOOD 92001), and A LONG WAY DOWN (2005). SLAM is his first novel published for young adults, though virtually all of his work – including his many writings about music – has had widespread appeal to teen readers. He is a recipients of the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his work has been shortlisted for both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and he is a New York Times bestselling author. Nick currently lives in North London with his wife and three sons.

For additional information on Nick Hornby and his other titles, visit www.nicksbooks.com

Point of View
The New Yorker magazine has called Nick Hornby “the maestro of the male confessional.” Why? Because in such earlier novels as HIGH FIDELITY and ABOUT A BOY he has written – candidly and comically – about thirty-something men who are finally forced by circumstances to confront their emotional immaturity. In SLAM, his first young adult novel, his protagonist Sam Jones has a more legitimate reason to be immature: he’s only fifteen-going-on-sixteen! Yet once again circumstance – his girlfriend announces she’s pregnant – forces a Hornby “hero” to examine his innermost self and to share, with the reader, all the stuff – both light and dark – he finds there.

Like twelve-year-old Marcus in Hornby’s ABOUT A BOY, Sam is a brilliantly realized younger character with a wonderfully conversational voice, whose musings and confessions are both hilarious and poignant.

Sam talks not only with the reader but with his hero, legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, whose autobiography he has read “forty or fifty” times. Not surprisingly, then, the birdman – well, the poster of him hanging in Sam’s bedroom, anyway – replies almost ironically in words taken directly from his book. In an otherwise realistic novel, this is – as Sam puts it – a “weird part,” but Hornby introduces an even bolder element of magic when Hawk then “whizzes” Sam into the future to show him what might – or might not? – be in store for him. This narrative strategy cleverly invites Sam – and his readers – to think about the junction between fate and personal responsibility, between destiny and choice, especially when Sam reflects that “the story of my family is always the same story, over and over again…Someone…do[es] something stupid and they spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for the mistake they made.”

Will Sam repeat the pattern? Does he even have a choice? And what impact will his working class circumstances have on his hope to be the one to break the pattern? “The whole world is on its way up,” he thinks ruefully, “but in our family, people always slip on the first step.”

Is it too late for Sam to make a plan or is his life already over because he’s facing the possibility of becoming a father at sixteen? But, then, what does “sixteen” mean? The more Sam thinks about it, the more convinced he is that “age isn’t a fixed thing…you slide around, in my experience. You can be seventeen and fifteen and nine and a hundred all on the same day.”

Age is relative, Sam realizes, and the story of a life is more than the simple facts of what happens. In fact, “there comes a point where the facts don’t matter any more, and even though you know everything, you know nothing, because you don’t know what anything felt like.” (Emphasis added)

If Sam’s story, like Hornby’s earlier novels, is a “male confessional,” it is because, when all is said and done, Sam has held nothing back, and, thus, his readers know not only what happened but also what it felt like, and that makes all the difference.

These are heavy literary considerations, but Hornby’s greatest gift to his readers is his lightness of touch and the wonderful, unforced humor he brings to Sam’s point of view and the telling of his story.

As a result, Nick Hornby’s first young adult novel is a tour de force – of both fact AND feeling – that leaves readers with much to consider about their own futures as well as those of Sam, his family, and his friends.

Questions For Discussion
1. How does the author make legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk a character in this novel?

2. Sam says, “…telling a story is more difficult than it looks, because you don’t know what to put where.” How has Hornby decided what to put where?

3. Do you believe the “weird” parts; i.e., is Sam really transported into the future and why do you think the author uses this device?

4. Would you like to have Sam’s experience of seeing the future?

5. How does Sam’s experience with each of his own parents affect what kind of parent he hopes to be?

6. What does the story tell you about the British class system? Would the book have been dramatically different if it had been set in America?

7. What kind of person is Sam? He says, “I can’t be bad.” Is he being honest with himself? Does he change over the course of the novel? If so, how?

8. Does Alicia make the right decision in keeping her baby?

9. Will Sam still be in touch with Roof fifteen years from now?

10. What does this book tell you about the modern meanings of “family” and “home”?

11. What does Sam mean when he says, “I hate time. It never does what you want it to.”

12. Sam thinks he might believe that “you have to live your life over and over again until you get it right.” What do you think?

13. Twice Sam asks his mother to give him “marks out of ten” for “how he’s doing.” How many points would you give him? Why?

14. Sam says, “If you don’t know how something feels, then you don’t know anything.” Does Hornby let you know how things feel for Sam? How does he do this?

15. Is this a hopeful and optimistic book? Should it be regarded as a work of humor or as something darker?

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