Book Review: How to be Good

Yes, that is the title of the book and no, it is not what the kindergarten teacher or a harassed parent wrote! My favourite movie is About a Boy, based on a novel by Nick Hornby and I was actually hunting for that book when I saw this one. The title was a bit intriguing, as it did seem quite the stuff of juvenile earnestness, but the blurb read interesting and so I got it and how I loved it!!

Actually, as the title suggests, the book is about how all of us do try to be good. But being good is quite tiring, not to mention boring and sanctimonious. And thatz what Hornby has given to us packaged with humour and wit. The protagonist is Katie Carr, a GP who chose her profession because she wanted to be good. She is now in her forties, married to a guy who is `The Angriest Man in Holloway' and has two children. She is tired of being good, being married to a cynical and bitter guy and tired of being a mother. But at the same time, she is criminally uninclined, not to say inept. She tries to divorce her husband, who patently ignores it and she is too scared to tell the children. She tries adultery and finds it too complicated and mundane and not at all fun and sinful.So really she doesn't know what to do.

And then her husband, this angry cynical guy, suddenly decides to turn good, with the help of a character who calls himself GoodNews. Katie can't decide now who she hates more - her sanctimonious husband who tries to get homes for the homeless and to improve the world through noble thoughts/deeds or the bitter, angry man he was before. She sometimes prefers the latter, simply because that is normal!!

True Brit style ( I always have been honest about being an Anglophile) of great humour, this is really a very contemporary story of how we want to be good, but find it difficult to without being abnormal! I really loved it when Katie goes to church and then finds the vicar(ess actually) turn up at her hospital to be treated for stress and the origin of the stress is the preaching.

The end finally makes it back to Katie's husband David dropping his `goodness' and he returns to normal - minus the bitterness and anger. And so life goes on....

The book is very insightful in the sense that if one is deeply unhappy or angry or bitter, it is easy to turn a leaf and become `GOOD'. But if you a decent person normally, wanting to do that bit of good for the world without wanting to reform it, life can be uncomfortable and confusing sometimes.

The best bit is of course, all this is said in a thoughtful, self-deprecating, humourous style which makes for absolutely great reading, but still leaves you thinking about it.

Contemporary, funny and amazing.I love Nick Hornby, (sigh but he is 50!!)