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| A Long Way Down | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Hornby
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (41) Collectible (2) from £0.40
Avg. Customer Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 29328
Media: Paperback
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0140287027
EAN: 9780140287028
ASIN: 0140287027
Publication Date: April 6, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A superb read January 13, 2008
This novel was recommended to me by a knowledgeable colleague who works in fiction. I absolutely loved it, and was very sad to come to the end of the book. A funny book about four people about to jump off the top of a building doesn't sound like it would be the best read, but it is wonderfully written, full of humour and truth about human life and circumstances. There is something to recognise in all the four protagonists, yet it is clever how you go from liking to disliking them and back again, and the subject certainly makes you think. I read it very quickly. Highly recommended.
 Whats the point? December 16, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
That's exactly it, I just didn't get the point. I took weeks reading it, because I kept getting bored after two pages as nothing of note happens. I didn't like the characters; however it did make me guffaw in places, particularly the odd witty, and rather cutting one liner's. The book is about four people who meet each other by chance at a common suicide spot, and then talk each other out of jumping to their doom. Then the book seems to just bumble along for about 250 pages, and I finished it thinking, "did anything happen?" It has actually left me feeling lethargic, I'm going off to write 250 pages (slowly) about why I feel lethargic, and endeavour to find a few laugh out loud one liners, throw them in, stir everything up and I will have a my very own version of this book, but with rubbish jokes.
A very interesting and engaging book November 1, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am not a Nick Hornby fan and found his other books only quite o.k., but this book is simply brilliant. The best book I have read in a long time. At the beginning it is quite funny and all the way it's very interesting, one cannot guess what might happening next.
 Thank God It's Not Mawkishly Sentimental October 11, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I didn't think I would like this book as the write up seemed both macabre and held the promise of neat happy endings and mawkish sentimentality. Then I pulled myself together and remembered it was Hornby writing and that we were unlikely to find either. Luckily I was right. This is a great book, funny in a noirish way, and hugely unsentimental. It shines light on four widely disparate people who inadvertently meet one New Year's Eve as they're attempting to commit suicide. That they survive is obvious from the off, as the book is written in the first person by each of the characters in turn. How they survive is really the theme of the book, and why they might want to. I enjoyed every page and I want to know why, of all his books this one hasn't been made into a film yet, as it's absolutely crying out for it.
Sub-standard Hornby September 23, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Not as good as the other Hornby books I've read (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, How to Be Good) - a bit contrived and forced. The characters' motivations and behaviour don't seem right.
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