Rating: Not rated
Tags: Contemporary, Lang:en
Summary
New Year’s Eve at Toppers’ House, North
London’s most popular suicide spot. And four strangers
are about to discover that doing away with yourself isn’t
quite the private act they’d each expected. Perma-tanned
Martin Sharp’s a disgraced breakfast TV presenter who had
it all—the family, the pad, the great career—and
wasted it away. Killing himself is Martin’s logical
response to an unlivable life. Maureen has to do it tonight,
because of Matty being in the home. He was never able to do any
of the normal things kids do—like walk or talk—and
his loving mum can’t cope any more. Half-crazed with
heartbreak, loneliness, adolescent angst, seven Bacardi
Breezers and two Special Brews, Jess’s ready to jump, to
fly off the roof. Finally, there’s JJ—tall, cool,
American, looks like a rock-star—who’s weighed down
with a heap of problems, and pizza. Four strangers, who moments
before were convinced that they were alone and going to end it
all that way, share out the pizza and begin to talk… only
to find that they have even less in common than first
suspected. Funny, sad and deeply moving, Nick Hornby’s A
Long Way down is a novel that asks some of the big questions:
about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain,
and whether a group of losers, and pizza, can really see you
through a long, dark night of the soul.