A Long Way Down or Cooking Recipe For Suicides

Nick Hornby´s A Long Way Down deals with 4 people who want to commit suicide on the same building and at the same time. They meet each other and they decide not to jump, because they want to try to help each other with their difficult situations. The characters are basically different. Everyone of them reacts in an other way, has an other way of speaking and an other way to deal with somebody. The only question of that book is if they jump at the end or not.

I don´t like this book. It´s too negative for me and I don´t like the characters, because they are so predictable. After their first sentences you could tell how they would react in every situation. There are no surprises in that book and it´s quite boring too. It seems as if it´s a desperate try by Nick Hornby to tell the people how to live, something like a cooking recipe for suicides. And the story itself is not far-fetched, I mean, how big is the propability that 4 suicides meet on a building and make a pact that they don´t jump until next Valentine´s day, that´s not natural. I have the Impression that Nick Hornby tells about something which about he does not know anything. I also don´t like the way how the book is written. It´s composed of the monologues from the four main characters Maureen, Jess, JJ and martin and they alternate each other. It´s no fun to read the book and I would not recommend this book.

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