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A Long Way Down

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A Long Way Down

Written by: Nick Hornby
Narrated by: Scott Brick, Simon Vance, Kate Reading
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About this listen

 In his eagerly awaited fourth novel, New York Times best-selling author Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line.

Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year's Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives.

In four distinct and riveting first-person voices, Nick Hornby tells a story of four individuals confronting the limits of choice, circumstance, and their own mortality. This is a tale of connections made and missed, punishing regrets, and the grace of second chances.

Intense, hilarious, provocative, and moving, A Long Way Down is a novel about suicide that is, surprisingly, full of life.

©2005 Nick Hornby (P)2005 Penguin Audio and Books on Tape, Inc. Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Psychological Fiction Heartfelt Witty Funny
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What the critics say

"One New Year’s Eve, four people with very different reasons but a common purpose find their way to the top of a fifteen-story building in London. None of them has calculated that, on a date humans favor for acts of significance, in a place known as a local suicide-jumpers’ favorite, they might encounter company. A Long Way Down is the story of what happens next, and of what doesn’t." (The New York Times Book Review)

“It’s like The Breakfast Club rewritten by Beckett.... What makes the book work is Hornby’s refusal to give an inch to sentimentality or cheap inspirational guff." (Time)

"A dramatic, sad and thoroughly side-splitting novel." (Newsday)

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Thoughtful but not to heavy, with Hornby's signature wit

An appealing premise, almost a thought experiment: four very different characters with very different reasons for coming to the same place. Hornby does not glamorize or romanticize depression, and resists sentimentality and melodrama; instead he finds humour and pathos in mundanity. I don't find ALWD as compelling as About a Boy or High Fidelity, but if you liked those, this one is worth a shot.

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