Review by Booklist Review
Journalist Hornby's very funny first novel has already hit the best-seller lists in London and with good reason. In a candid, engaging narrative voice, 35-year-old pop-music fanatic Rob, the owner of a vintage record shop who has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, attempts to ease his misery by giving an account of his top-five most memorable split-ups. He also consoles himself by coming up with a new filing system for his vast record collection (arranging them according to the order in which he bought them) and by engaging, with his two Wayne and Garth^-like employees, in endless rounds of list making, including best music to play at a funeral ("Many Rivers to Cross," Jimmy Cliff . . . ), top-five dream jobs (producer, Atlantic Records, 1964^-71 . . . ), and five favorite records of all time ("So Tired of Being Alone," Al Green . . . ). Hornby's amazingly accomplished debut should definitely appeal to music fans (and snobs), but it's his literate, painfully honest riffs on romantic humiliation and heartbreak that make the book so special. A rare, touching glimpse of the masculine view of affairs of the heart. --Joanne Wilkinson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British journalist Hornby has fashioned a disarming, rueful and sometimes quite funny first novel that is not quite as hip as it wishes to be. The book dramatizes the romantic struggle of Rob Fleming, owner of a vintage record store in London. After his girlfriend, Laura, leaves him for another man, he realizes that he pines not for sexual ecstasy (epitomized by a ``bonkus mirabilis'' in his past) but for the monogamy this cynic has come to think of as a crime. He takes comfort in the company of the clerks at the store, whose bantering compilations of top-five lists (e.g., top five Elvis Costello songs; top-five films) typify the novel's ingratiating saturation in pop culture. Sometimes this can pall: readers may find that Rob's ruminations about listening to the Smiths and the Lemonheadspop music helps him fall in love, he tells usare more interesting than his list of five favorite episodes of Cheers. Rob takes comfort as well in the company of a touring singer, Marie La Salle, who is unpretentious and ``pretty in that nearly cross-eyed American way''but life becomes more complicated when he encounters Laura again. Hornby has earned his own place on the London bestseller lists, and this on-the-edge tale of musical addiction just may climb the charts here. First serial to Esquire. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Rob Fleming is the kind of person whose mindset is clearly shown by his top two career choices: journalist for the New Musical Express, 1976-79, and producer for Atlantic Records, circa 1964-71. Owner of a small London record shop and musical snob of a high degree, Rob finds his life thrown into turmoil when live-in girlfriend Laura suddenly leaves. He embarks on a journey through the past, tracking down old lovers while finding solace with Marie, an American folk/country singer living in London, even as he yearns for Laura's return. Told in an engaging first-person voice that blends sarcasm with self-deprecating humor, High Fidelity presents a painfully funny take on love, music, and growing up. Already a best seller in Britain, this stunningly assured first novel should be a hit here as well.Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A rollicking first novel from British journalist Hornby that manages to make antic hay of a young (barely) man's hopeless resolve not to come of age. Rob Fleming is the sort of precocious loser whose life has gone so unaccountably wrong that some deep romantic grief must be invoked to explain it. ``The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking,'' according to Rob, ``are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.'' As a case in point, the 35-year-old Rob not only listens to these songs himself but peddles themas the founder and proprietor of Championship Vinyl, a seedy vintage-record store in a quiet back alley of North London. Business is hardly booming these days, and the shop would have gone under long ago but for Rob's lawyer- girlfriend Laura, who has propped it up time and again with cash from her own very ample pool. Once she dumps Rob, however, everything is suddenly on the verge of collapsefiscally and emotionallyand Rob is forced to ask himself how he landed in such a mess. Naturally, he has no idea, so he proceeds to look up his ex-girlfriendsall the way back to high schooland ask them why things never worked out. As a pilgrimage, Rob's quest bears more resemblance to Monty Python than Chaucer, and his own inability to put two and two together somehow endears him to the very women whose affections he seems least able to requite. Reality bludgeons him in the end, and he succeeds, as the plot is spun, in drawing a few morals that surprise him by their simplicity and point toward a happy endingor at least a second chance. Fast, fun, and remarkably deft: a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured.
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