Shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Narrated in turns by Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ, four strangers with absolutely nothing in common - save where they end up that night - Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down is a funny, sad and deeply moving new novel which 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.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE __________________________
'Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?'
For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer's pretty simple: he has, in his own words, 'pissed his life away'. And on New Year's Eve he's going to end it all . . . but not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin's private party. They've stolen his idea - but brought their own reasons.
Yet it's hard to jump when you've got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices if cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?
Shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, A Long Way Down is a darkly hilarious and moving novel by bestselling author Nick Hornby. __________________________
'Hornby's best yet' Literary Review
'Impossible to put down' Ruth Rendell, Guardian
'Some of the finest writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading' Johnny Depp
Nick Hornby was born in 1957, and is the author of Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy and How to be Good. He also edited the collection of short stories Speaking With the Angel. He is the pop music critic for the New Yorker. In 1999, he was awarded the E.M.Forster award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Highbury, North London.
