If you are reading this – if you are a human being with free will – you have thought of suicide. Obviously, you haven’t committed it. Odds are, you only thought of it for a few seconds every now and then when someone you knew or someone in the news committed suicide. At the risk of sounding insane, there is nothing wrong with wondering what would happen if you jumped off the top of a building. Four people in Nick Hornby’s latest novel “A Long Way Down” consider just that.
From the author of “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy,” “A Long Way Down” is a fictional account set in England of a group of people who decide to end all their woes on New Year’s Eve by jumping off a roof known to be a hotspot for suicides. The catch is, none of these four plan on running into each other. It is mere coincidence, or depending on your standpoint, it is a subconscious cry for company.
Martin, a former television star of his own breakfast show, is cynical and sick of being seen as the celebrity who slept with a 15-year-old. His life is in shambles and prison did something to his spirit he thinks is permanent. Maureen, a 50-year-old Catholic, has lost her faith in God because he has yet to help her cope with being the mother of a son who will never grow mentally but will instead sit in a wheelchair and stare into space. JJ, the only American in the bunch and a former rockstar-to-be, yearns for his band and ex-girlfriend. He cannot accept that he may spend his life “flipping burgers” because he played music instead of graduating high school. Jess, an unpredictable teenager who has a penchant for profanity and attention, is heartbroken that her boyfriend won’t return her calls. The answers to their problems, so they think in the novel’s opening, can only be answered by plummeting several stories into the ground.
At first, I wondered if this novel would turn out to be some cheesy, “We are Tuesday people” fluff about living life to the fullest – a happy and predictable ending included with originality sold separately. As I leafed through the first few pages, I saw something different in this book. I could not place why it was so addictive to turn each page until I realized that each of the characters were drawing me into their world, into their problems, and into their haphazard attempts at redemption.
Jess especially captured my complete attention. Granted, I imagined her character to be played by Natalie Portman with a British accent, she still undoubtedly had the best lines. Martin’s sarcasm is scathing but it shows he is still human. Maureen’s silence ebbs away as she spends more time with these people who understand something about her no one else can. Jess and JJ are young, but their reasons for being at the top of the building can be empathized with, even in the company of a convicted sex offender whose family has apparently deserted him and a heavyhearted mother who cannot bear another day giving her love to someone who can never return, need or understand it.
Hornby has successfully created a work with four separate and distinct voices telling their sides of the story from their perspectives.
At the top of this building, they decide to go back down until Valentine’s Day, perhaps the most suicide-inspiring day of them all, to see if their problems have become more bearable or if their lives have in some way improved. As they meet and share their secrets, they wonder what will happen on Valentine’s Day as it nears. Perhaps the deadline will be extended. Perhaps they will jump together. Who knows? (Well … I do.)
Read Hornby’s novel. You will laugh, come close to depression, and you will laugh again. I was content with the end of the novel.
It made me think about my own end, and how selfish it would be of me to jump off a building. If you are so miserable that you are considering offing yourself, I can’t guarantee this book will change your mind.
The same can be said of James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” to all you drug addicts out there. All that can be guaranteed is that “A Long Way Down” is not long enough, and that taking the long way down is better by far than taking the easy way.

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