karenika - books - how to be good

How to be Good

I am in a car park in Leeds when I tell my husband I don't want to be married to him anymore. David isn't even in the car park with me. He's at home, looking after the kids, and I have only called him to remind him that he should write a note for Molly's class teacher. The other bit just sort ofslips out. This is a mistake, obviously. Even though I am, apparently, to my immense surprise, the kind of person who tells her husband that she doesn't want to be married to him anymore, I really didn't think I was the kind of person to say so in a park, on a mobile phone. That particular self-assessment will now have to be revised, clearly. I can describe myself as the person who doesn't forget names, for example, because I have remembered names thousands of times and forgotten them only once or twice. But for the majority of people, marriage-ending conversations happen only once, if at all. If you choose to conduct yours on a mobile phone, in a Leeds car park, then you cannot really claim that it is unrepresentative, in the same way that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.

Later, in the hotel room, when I can't sleep - and that is some sort of consolation, because even though I've turned into the woman who ends marriages in a car park, at least I have the decency to toss and turn afterwards - I retrace the conversation in my head, in as much detail as I can manage, trying to work out how we'd got from there (Molly's dental appointment) to here (imminent divorce) in three minutes. Ten, anyway. Which turns into an endless, three-in-the-morning brood about how we'd got from there (meeting at a college dance in 1976) to here (imminent divorce) in twenty-four years.

To tell you the truth, the second part of this self-reflection only takes so long because twenty-four years is a long time, and there are loads of bits that come unbidden into your head, little narrative details, that don't really have much to do with the story. If my thoughts about our marriage had been turned into a film, the critics would say that it was all padding, no plot, and that it could be summarized thus: two people meet, fall in love, have kids, start arguing, get fat and grumpy (him) and bored, desperate and grumpy (her), and split up. I wouldn't argue with the synopsis. We're nothing special.

I am one of the hugest fans of Nick Hornby. I have not read anything by him that I didn't enjoy and I love his voice and his characters and his unique cynicism. How to be Good, while not received well by the critics, was wonderful. The first part was funny and the second part gave me a lot to think about. He wrote from a female point of view gracefully and raised some important issues without preaching at all.