I wrote a very long retrospective of Nick Hornby's books and then the computer ate it. Such is the life of Optimator ingestors. Let me sparknote it- His first three books did a gently insightful job of capturing the emotional retardation of the middle age man due to football fandom, music obsession, and commitment fear. I'm happy to have read each and every one. His last two books have been utter tripe because he's delving into areas he doesn't have the synaptic power to explore in enough complexity- ethics and the existential dilemma of finding meaning in an uncaring universe. His newest novel, A Long Way Down, is particularly bad, because he never gets past the blatantly contrived set up- 4 folks meet on a London rooftop, each intending to jump until they kinda sorta intervene. From there, we get the answer that we got in the previous work- folks muddle through the best they can, and that's about the best we can expect. Suicidal? Wait a season and maybe you'll feel just a tad better and can settle for meaningless work and a spot of sherry and the quiz show down at the pub. His "answers" are that banal. And while I suppose you could argue for realism in the smallness of each failed suicide's response to that suicidal failure, the aftermath lies flatter than a Nicole pancake, the Dutch variety that fails to measure width on any ruler I've ever seen.

Nick, go back to depressed middle-aged dudes. Continue to explore their longings and their failures. You don't have the intellectual chops to enter the philosophical arena. Really. But you have given us compelling stories about shallow men who can't quite get it through their heads that domestic bliss is better than a World Cup victory or a transcendent concert. We know those dudes. We like 'em while we cringe at them. It's OK. Write what you know, they say. Write what you know.