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A Long Way Down | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Hornby
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $13.99 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  223 reviews
Sales Rank: 27609
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594481938
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781594481932
ASIN: 1594481938
Publication Date: May 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Product Description
The exhilarating New York Times bestseller from the author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, and How to Be Good.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 218 more reviews...
 Classic Hornby -- brilliantly funny July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Another New Year's Eve, another party...another group of four people who meet unexpectedly on the rooftop of a building they've all trekked out to so they can kill themselves.
I read the back-cover synopsis and went "What?!" out loud in the bookstore. (Though I don't recommend doing this, as people stare.) This could have been such a grisly novel, but not with Hornby. I devoured this book and loved every page. He tells the story, through four different perspectives, of an unlikely group of misfits who are desperate and unhappy with their lives, and meet each other on a rooftop. They've each come here for suicide, but they end up with so much more than they had planned on. It's darkly comic, without feeling dark. It's imaginative and creative, without exploiting the characters for the sake of an extra laugh. Hornby takes gruesome subject matter and, in his inimitable style, treats it with humanity, compassion, and humour. His characters are so real, and I laughed out loud many (many!) times. You relate with each on some level.
This is a great read, and classic Hornby. He's a master of fiction -- truly good, truly funny fiction -- and with this novel, he will not leave you disappointed.
 Kill Yourself June 16, 2008
I thought this would be a book about hope and living life to its fullest. Obviously the author has never been suicidal since a "topper" would not find validation in life the way these characters do. I read the whole book, expecting someone to die. The character, Jess, is a teenaged cliche and I ended up skipping over her chapters. Basically, these characters have no reason to live, not in the beginning nor the end of the story. Their circumstances aren't altered in any way. They have no joy. Friends. Family. Hope. Its a book about nothing but setting appointments an deadlines.
 Funny and an all around good book May 30, 2008
This book was an interesting subject since it took such a dark subject and made it amusing. It's true to life in many parts, and makes a lot of good points about life in general. This book is more about life and screweing it up than suicide, and is quite enjoyable.
Doomed by ridiculous premise, unlikeable characters. May 29, 2008
Built on the utterly ridiculous premise that four people have chosen to leap from the same building on New Year's Eve, Hornby faces some pretty tough odds from the get-go. He fails. True, he doesn't back away from the sad but true fact that depressed people are not a lot of fun to be around, and presents them to us in all their self-absorbed, angry glory, but this accuracy dooms the novel. I made it to page 1000 before I started wishing all four would jump off the damn thing holding hands.
Great book!!! May 28, 2008
I am a massive Hornby fan. I read all of his books, all of them are very enjoyable but this one tied the first place with High Fidelity. Personally, I love the way he used 4 main charactors to narrate one after another, it's a great way to alternate my own experience through the book. We have 1 middle-age man, 1 angry teenager, 1 conservative lady, and 1 young punk(not punk-as-in-punk-music). And I love them all! The plot is great too. They all met because they all one way or another found eachother on the rooftop while comtemplating jumping off it.
I do have to see that it's not funny in an American way, it is a dark-funny British story that you have to love their dark humor to get it. Be open-minded and read it, satisfaction guaranteed!!
***The worst of his book is Slam which is really for young adults but I read it anyway, it is ok but certainly his worst. Fever pitch is great, awesome for me because I am an Arsenal (English FOOTBALL team - real Football play by using your FEET) fan so (OH and the movie adaptation of this book is a TOTAL TOTAL TOTAL CRAP, why would they use it as a base at all is beyond me).
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