'How to be a good author': A Narratological and Thematic Approach to Nick Hornby’s Writing PDF Free Download
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‘How to be a good author’: A Narratological and Thematic Approach
to Nick Hornby’s Writing
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Diplomarbeit
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Zum Erlangen des akademisches Grades !
einer Magistra der Philosophie
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an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
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vorgelegt von
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Andrea HIRT
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am Institut für Anglistik
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Begutachterin: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Maria Löschnigg
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Graz, 2017"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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I am indebted to my advisor Dr. Maria Löschnigg for taking time out of her extremely busy
schedule to correct and support me throughout the process of writing my thesis.
Furthermore, it was her who suggested this interesting topic that was very gratifying to
investigate.
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Additionally, I would like to thank my friends who were incredibly supportive over the last
few months, providing me with useful advice and motivating me when I needed that extra
push. I want to mention Martin in particular since it was him who, although I was not
always very kind to him, stood by me and supported me the whole time.
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Finally, I want to thank my mother and father who never hesitated to provide me with
everything I needed in order to improve my language skills and without whom my studies
would not have been possible; my sister, whom I have looked up to ever since I was young
and who continues to inspire me everyday and lastly, my grandparents who always took the
time to listen to my renderings about university and gave me great advice when I needed it.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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1. Introduction 1
2. Narratological Aspects 2
2.1 Narrative Perspectives 2
2.1.1 First Person Narration 3
2.1.2. Authorial and Figural Narration 5
2.1.3. Focalization 6
2.1.4. Multiperspectivity 8
2.2 Characterization 9
2.3 Representation of Time 11
2.4. The Semanticization of Space 15
3. About The Author 17
3.1. Nick Hornby And His Works 17
3.2. Pop literature, its common themes and the relation to Nick Hornby 18
4. About A Boy 21
4.1. Plot 22
4.2. The General Structure of the Novel 29
4.3. Themes 39
5. How To Be Good 42
5.1. Plot 42
5.2. Narrative Perspective 51
5.3. Themes 55
6. Juliet, Naked 58
6.1. Plot 59
6.1. General Structure of the Novel 66
6.3. Narrative Frame 69
6.4. Themes 72
6.5. Multimedial Aspects of The Novel 75
7. Conclusion 78
8. Bibliography 80
8.1. Primary Literature 80
8.2. Secondary Literature 80
8.3. Online Sources 82
1. Introduction
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“In reality, Hornby’s apparent simplicity has an inimitable genius all of its own. His talent is that
the apparently unremarkable experiences of his characters become gripping, funny, sad, touching,
easy to recognize or identify with - for millions.“
- The Independent, 2002
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Nick Hornby, British author, often even called ‘pop star’ (Nünning 2003: 31), has managed to make
a name for himself by publishing a total of eight books, all of which turned out to be successes.
Although there is a constant debate on whether Hornby’s works can be considered high or trivial
literature (cf. Weigel 2011: 234), more and more people, even linguists, have started to include
Hornby in their research. This is mostly due to the fact that he has played a great part in construing
the literary genre now called ‘pop literature’. By dealing with seemingly ordinary issues that might
look trivial to some and very relevant to others (cf. Beckenkamp 2008: 7), Hornby manages to
speak to a very broad audience and make them identify with the themes as well as the characters
presented in his works. However, it is not only the fact that Hornby focuses on everyday problems
of life and his multi-layered characters that make him popular among almost every age group but
also his thoughtful use of a variety of narrative perspectives. Especially his usage of focalization
which instantly facilitates readers to take on the perspective of his characters and to feel with them
is what contributes to Hornby’s success.
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In this thesis, I want to explore what makes Hornby a ‘good author’ by inspecting the narratological
as well as the thematic aspect of three of his works that I specifically chose based on the fact that
they all feature different narrative strategies but still deal with the themes common in the genre
Hornby uses. The books represented in this thesis are on the one hand How To Be Good and About
A Boy, some of his earlier works, and on the other Juliet, Naked, one of his newer novels published
in 2009. By analyzing their narrative form as well as their themes, it is my goal to show how
Hornby manages to successfully speak to a vast majority of people all over the globe. In order to do
so, it is important to firstly give a brief theoretical insight into the narrative concepts commonly
used as well as the author himself, his background and his motivations for the works published.
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My thesis is compromised of six parts, the first two covering the theoretical aspects that need to be
established prior to analyzing Hornby’s three works in detail. The first theoretical part focuses on
the narrative structures presented in Hornby’s works such as multi-perspectivity and focalization,
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his techniques of characterization as well as his representation of time and space. The second
section deals with the author himself, with biographical concepts as well as with recurring themes
such as family struggles and pop music. A major part of Hornby’s success can be credited to his use
of everyday life themes. Therefore it is important to take a close look at the frequency with which
he uses the same topics in his novels and explore which effects they have on the reader.
Furthermore, I will try to integrate these themes into the context of the genre pop literature.
Following the theoretical part of this, the next three sections will analyze Hornby’s novels in close
detail, focussing on the plot as well as the characters, the different narrative structures and, in the
case of the last book Juliet, Naked, also the very apparent multi-modal aspect which is a relatively
new term when it comes to novel-writing. To underline my findings, I will quote various passages
in the books. My thesis will end with a conclusion, that summarizes the main aspects dealt with as
well as answers the main question, namely how Hornby manages to be a good author through his
use of narrative structures and themes.
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2. Narratological Aspects!
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2.1 Narrative Perspectives
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One of the most important aspects of a work of fiction is the use of narrative perspectives. In
general, narrative fiction can be seen as “an interaction between an author and the readers through
the medium of a text.“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 25) This means that the author of a text attempts
to convey a message for the intended reader and transmits this message via a text. But what is the
difference between an author and a narrator and most importantly, what role do fictional characters
play when it comes to narrating a story? In order to analyze the narrative situation found within a
novel, it is important to take into consideration both the identity of diegetic levels, i.e. the question
if the narrator is on the same level as the other characters or situated outside the story world, and the
explicitness of the narrator as well as the aspect from whose point of view the story is presented.
(Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 83) To start off, the author always refers to the real person behind the
construction of a book. The author, however, is never the narrator because the narrator is considered
an agent inside the narrative story (cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 29) who tells the story to the
audience. He/she makes the decision of what is told or not and provides the reader with the
information necessary to understand the story. In general, one distinguishes between extradiegetic
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and intradiegetic narrators. While extradiegetic narrators are situated on “the level of narrative
transmission and, together with the fictive addressee, constitute the narrative process“ (2008: 93),
intradiegetic narrators advert to characters who are part of the story. The explicitness of the narrator,
as mentioned before, also plays an important role in analyzing the narrative situation of a story.
Mainly, this explicitness is measured by how present the narrator is in the story. If the narrator
appears as “an individualized speaker and concrete persona“ (2008: 94), then he/she can also be
called an overt narrator. In contrast to this, if the narrative voice is anonymous and hardly gives any
information about him-/herself, then this is considered a covert narrator. The covert narrator only
functions as someone who gives an overview of the location and course of events while the overt
narrator can comment on the actions of the characters, giving insight into their internal processes;
furthermore, he directly addresses the audience. As already mentioned in the introduction, new
media have also found their way into literature and Hornby with Juliet, Naked also experimenting
with the genre of the multimodal novel. This new form of medialized narrative incorporates
different “non-verbal symbolic representations“ (Hallet 2009: 129) such as photographs, maps but
also, as it is the case in Juliet, Naked, e-mails and blogs, in order to foster story and
characterization. The aspect of multimodal novels will be dealt with closely in my analysis of Juliet,
Naked.
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2.1.1 First Person Narration
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A first-person narrator is someone who is involved in the story narrated in the book. This, however,
cannot be confirmed by the fact that the narrator is talking about him-/herself in the first person,
since overt authorial narrators do the exact same thing. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 83) In order
to identify a first person narrator it is thus important to find out whether the narrator is actually
taking part in the action as a character. If this is the case, the term homodiegetic narrator can be
applied, as the narrator occupies the same realm of being (diegesis) as the other characters in the
story. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 93) Furthermore, if the narrator is identical with the main
protagonist and tells his/her own story, then he/she is also referred to as an autodiegetic narrator.
(Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 93) In this context, one can differentiate between the narrating I and
the experiencing I, both referring to the same character but separated by distance since they both
cover different facets of the narrator, as he/she usually reflects on the experiences made over the
course of the novel and grows from them. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 83) The main goal of the
first person narration often is to outline how the knowledge the character has gained throughout the
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novel has shaped him/her and changed his/her life. Genres featuring first person narration are
mainly fictional autobiographies as well as initiation stories. Fictional autobiographies function as
the telling of the life story of a character, reflecting on his/her past experience such as Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Brontë. Initiation stories on the other hand focus on putting the protagonist through
something which demands a transition into a new person by force. Nick Hornby’s novel How To Be
Good is a good example for an initiation story. Katie has to overcome the belief that her job as a
doctor automatically makes her a good person in order to see that in reality, she is the exact opposite
of what she believed to be. This change of mindset is brought about by her husband transitioning
into a seemingly better person by giving away money and providing shelter for homeless people.
However, although the first person narration might seem like the perfect narrative strategy when it
comes to identifying with the characters, there are also a few limitations. First, while the reader gets
direct access to the thoughts and feelings of the narrator, it is not possible to enter the minds of the
other characters. The narrator can only assume what goes on in the heads of his/her fellow
colleagues, an aspect that is also important in relation to the subject of reliability. Due to the fact
that the narrator often lacks knowledge (e.g. a young narrator) or personal involvement in the
events, the reader may regard him or her as unreliable. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 100)
Additionally, as Rimmon-Kenan also states, the aspect of a “questionable value-scheme“ also is an
indicator for unreliable narration, meaning that the values and norms of the narrator do not coincide
with those of the implied author. This aspect can be identified by taking a close look at facts
provided in the text. If those facts contradict with the view of the narrator then he or she can be
classified as unreliable. (Cf. 1983: 101) Additionally, if the discourse of the narrator shows clear
contradictions with how the same event is told by another character or if the narrator directly
addresses the reader and tries to justify his/her actions, then he/she most likely is an unreliable
narrator. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 99) However, the aspect of unreliable narration will be
touched upon later in this thesis since it is also an important issue in the analysis of How to Be
Good. Returning to the limitations of first-person narration, it is also important to mention that, in
contrast with the authorial narrator, the first-person narrator has spatial limitations, too. He/she
cannot be present in two places at once, meaning that in some cases he/she has to rely on the
information provided by other characters. Lastly, the narrator also cannot look into the future and
can solely recount what has happened in the past as well as what is currently happening. (Cf.
Neumann/Nünning 2008: 84)
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2.1.2. Authorial and Figural Narration
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As mentioned above, characters in the story can certainly function as narrators of the story,
however, it is important to note that in addition to the first person narration there can also be a so-
called authorial narrative situation in which the narrator is “situated outside the world of the
characters“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 84) and in a way is omniscient. This means that he/she
knows everything about the characters including their feelings and thoughts. If this is the case, then
we refer to the narrator as being heterodiegetic because he/she is not located within the story but on
the level of narrative transmission. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 93) In addition, this type of
narrator is also called extradiegetic since he/she is not involved in the events him-/herself but solely
functions as an all-knowing observer. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008:93) Authorial narration is
characterized by the narrator’s use of comments and judgements concerning the characters and the
events as well as “flashbacks, direct addresses to the reader and thematization of the act of
narration“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 85) Moreover, in this narrative situation, the narrator can
simultaneously be present in a variety of different situations and has access to the entire course of
narration, whether this concerns events from the past or the future. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008:
85) A figural narrative situation is the counterpart to the authorial narrative situation, as here the
narrator tends to put him-/herself into the background of the action and kind of functions as an
observer. The narrated world in this narrative situation is presented from the perspective of one or
more characters involved in the story, also referred to as reflector figures. In contrast to the authorial
narrative situation, in which the narrator has access to all the characters’ emotions, in figural
narration, the only available access to feelings and thoughts is through the respective characters.
This form of narration is very common in Hornby’s works. For the reader, the distinction between
these forms of narration means that while the authorial narrative gives him/her the impression of
being told the story by “one clearly identifiable speaker“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 86), the use of
the reflector figure in figural narration facilitates that the events are seen through the eyes of one of
the characters and provides the reader with immediate access to the feelings of this character.
However, there are not only these varieties of narrative strategies as so-called hybrid forms exist
too. This means that over the course of a novel, the narrative situation can, for instance, change
from one form to another. Furthermore, there is also the second person narration or “you-narrative“,
in which the second person pronoun is used throughout the text to address a specific character
involved in the main events. In addition to this, over time, a large number of novels were published
that did not use any narrative transmission at all but only transmitted information through the
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conversations of the characters. These novels are referred to as “dialogue novels“. Even though
there is also a narrator present in these novels, his/her actions are strictly limited to commenting on
the spatial setting and the “body language of the characters“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 88). Similar
to the concept of authorial and figural narration, the term perspective is also of use when analyzing
characters. Generally, one can distinguish between character and narrator perspectives. The former
term was introduced by Manfred Pfister in 2001 and refers to the “individual, more or less restricted
view of reality of every character“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 57), meaning the inclusion of all the
facets a character is composed of. The narrator perspective on the other hand gives insight into the
mind as well as the beliefs of the narrating character through personal statements. Through those
accounts the reader then forms a response to the narrator based on the information provided. (Cf.
Neumann/Nünning 2008: 58)
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2.1.3. Focalization
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By definition, focalization is “a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the
experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the
story world.“ (Hühn et. al. 2014: 197) The term was first introduced by Gérard Genette, a French
narratologist. In contrast to narration, focalization functions by referring to the perception of the
events. In addition to Genette’s theory, other critics have also formulated definitions for the term.
Edward Branigan states in his theory Narrative Comprehension and Film that,“Focalization
(reflection) involves a character neither speaking (narrating, reporting, communicating) nor acting
(focusing, focused by), but rather actually experiencing something through seeing or hearing
it.“ (Branigan 1992: 101) The distinction between the concept of narration and the concept of
focalization is often made by posing the questions “Who sees?“ and “Who speaks?“, an approach
also introduced by Genette. This theory is underlined by Patrick O’Neill, who explains that,“the
story is presented through a double mediation, namely a voice that speaks and eyes that see: the
former belonging to the narrator, the latter to the focalizer, the perceived centre of consciousness,
who may or may not, be identical with the narrator“. (O’Neill 1996: 85; 86) However, there is a
problem with both theories since the term ‘see’ can not only be related to the act of seeing. Rather it
includes “all sensory processes, as well as the processes of thinking, feeling and remembering“.
(Neumann/Nünning 2008: 31) This means that while a narrator recounts the events told in a story,
the focalizer, or reflector, is the medium through whose perceptions the occurring events are
“filtered before reaching the reader“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 93) Thus the reader gets direct
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access into internal processes and is induced to take the character’s perspective. Through the use of
a focalizer, the distance between the reader and the character is reduced drastically. (Cf. Nünning
2014: 199) In figural narration, focalization is often represented by the concept of free indirect
discourse. When using free indirect discourse to narrate something, the illusion of having
immediate access to the mind of a character is created by including “loose syntax, exclamations and
other signals of subjectivity“. (Nünning 2014: 199) Additionally, it is important to stress the fact
that focalization, according to Rimmon-Kenan, “has both a subject and an object“ (1983: 74),
meaning that the subject is the agent whose perceptions form the story told (the focalizer) and the
object, so what the agent perceives (the focalized). (Cf. 1983: 74) It is also Rimmon-Kenan who
introduced two criteria necessary for differentiating between the different types of focalization,
namely the level of communication the focalizer is located on and the “degree of
persistence“ (1983: 74). By looking at the position the focalizer takes in the story, one can
distinguish between external and internal focalization, external meaning that the focalizer is located
outside of the narrative world and internal representing the focalizing subject located within the
world of the characters, thus being part of the story itself. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 95) Often,
external focalizers are also called “narrator-focalizers“ since their position is relatively close to the
narrating agent, while internal focalizers are referred to as “character-focalizers“. (Cf. Rimmon-
Kenan 1983: 74) Here, it is of importance to include the aspect of space as mentioned by Rimmon-
Kenan. She states that while a narrator-focalizer takes on the panoramic view of the story world and
thus can simultaneously be present at a variety of places, this is not the case for the character-
focalizer. Here the character in the story world is limited to one fixed space. The same limitations
apply when taking into account the aspect of time. The character-focalizer is not able to perceive the
future or the past but rather has to focus on the present, while the narrator-focalizer has access to
every time sphere. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 77;78) External focalization can mainly be witnessed
in third person narration, however, as Rimmon-Kenan states, it can also appear in first person
narration. If this is the case, either the “temporal and psychological distance between the narrator
and character is minimal“ or the perception of the story is fostered through the narrating I rather
than the experiencing I. (Cf. 1983: 74) Concerning the aspect of persistence, it can be distinguished
between one predominant focalizer and the constant shift of focalizers throughout a narrative, as
seen in Hornby’s About a Boy. In this context, Genette named three so-called “sub-patterns of
focalization“. First, there is the fixed focalization, meaning that the events of a narrative are
perceived through the eyes of one dominant character. The second category, called variable
focalization, covers the aspect of a variety of perspectives from different characters. Lastly, multiple
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focalization focuses on the presentation of the same event through the eyes of multiple focalizers.
However, these sub-categories often do not stretch over a whole book but, according to Genette,
only cover sections of the narrative. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 96) In order to determine
whether a focalizer is external or internal, it is important to consider various aspects, for instance
the use of verbs of thinking, feeling or perceiving. If these verbs are attributed to the narrator, this
means that the focalization is external. Additionally, the use of dialogue is one characteristic of
external focalization because it seemingly only expresses what can be observed from the outside.
(Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 98) On the other hand, if the author makes intensive use of personal
nouns and verbs, it becomes clear that the focalization is internal and situated on the level of
characters. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 96)
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2.1.4. Multiperspectivity
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Although there is a great variety of definitions for the term multiperspectivity, in a narrower sense,
it refers to the narrative transmission of an event or a character from two or more differing
perspectives. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 102) According to Marcus Hartner, this phenomenon
highlights the tension and differences that arise from the merging of different narrative perspectives.
(Cf. 2008: 182) This leads to the reader having to choose from a variety of possibilities and
facilitate a synthesis. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 103) In addition to this function of
multiperspectivity, it can also “serve as a medium for poetological or aesthetic tension in a
narrative“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 103) as well as obtain a didactic function. Generally, one can
distinguish between three forms of multiperspectivity. First, there are narratives in which two or
more narrators either on the extradiegetic or the intradiegetic level present the events from their
respective points of view. The second form includes the narratives in which two or more focalizers
retell the story and the last form can be viewed as some sort of collage in which the characters’
observations are enhanced by inserting other types of text such as photographs, letters or, as it is the
case in Juliet, Naked, e-mails or blogs. This type of multiperspectivity strongly correlates with
multimodal narration. By including some other sort of text type, the meaning of a text is no longer
resulting solely from language, but also from pictorial elements. (Cf. Hallet 2009: 139) This sort of
multiperspectivity thus fosters looking at events from different angles, be it verbal or non-verbal.
By inserting specific non-verbal or typographically marked elements such as Wikipedia pages or
photographs which underline the written part of the novel, the reader has the opportunity to identify
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more with the story. Additionally, enriching the text with graphical markers also plays to the aspect
of realness of a text. Although the three forms of multiperspectivity presented may seem different,
they all share one similarity: the same event or topic is presented in each form. (Cf. Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 102) In relation to these concepts, it is important to differentiate between three sub-
types of multiperspectivity measured by the degree of convergence and difference between the
perspectives: additive, correlative, and contradictory multiperspectivity. When talking about
additive multiperspectivity, the individual perspectives “complement each other, yielding a rather
coherent version of a subject-matter and a unified worldview“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 102), thus
yielding a closed structure. Correlative multiperspectivity focuses on the aspect that the multiple
perspectives do not really merge or overlap; if they do, it only happens partially. Lastly,
contradictory multiperspectivity refers to differing perspectives that bring out differences in the
various perspectives presented. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 103)
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2.2 Characterization
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When looking at the different narrative perspectives in literature, it is also essential to mention the
aspect of characterization since often characters with their different views and values are the ones
being used as focalizers, and their character traits are what constitutes their story as it is told to the
audience. Furthermore, characters are the “most important components of narrative fiction“.
(Neumann/Nünning 2008: 51) They are the ones that act within the story world and play a part in
the events told. Based on their involvement in the plot, they are categorized as either main or minor
characters. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 52) According to Neumann and Nünning, there are a
number of differentiating ideas about the aspect of characterization. On the one hand, characters can
be regarded as individuals who are as close to real life as possible, while on the other hand,
characters are only seen as agents causing things to happen and thus making the plot move forward.
(Cf. 2008: 52) However, the theory about characters being very close to real human beings cannot
entirely be true since the reader can only find out more about the people involved in the story by
relying on the information explicitly stated in the text. In order to make this distinction, it is
necessary to consider what constitutes the characters of a story. Chatman states that characters are
made up by “a specific set of traits and dispositions of action“. (2008: 52) However, the distribution
of these traits can vary according to the level of incompleteness of the characters. Thus there can
either be texts in which characters are “highly individualized and categorized in detail“ (Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 53) while other characters are some kind of fixed type of character, for instance the
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sidekick or the villain, who only have a certain number of traits. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 53)
Based on the traits assigned to the characters, further differentiations can be made. First, we can
distinguish between static and dynamic characters, static meaning that the traits prevail throughout
the course of the story, and dynamic referring to the fact that the traits change over time; thus the
characters develop with the progression of the story. Secondly, a character can either be one-or two-
dimensional. One-dimensional or also flat stands for traits that are typical for a specific character
within a story while two-dimensional or round represents the depth of the character, thus making
him/her seem more lifelike. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 53) The aspect of narrative techniques
can also be found in the aspect of characterization. In a story, characterizations can either be made
by the narrator (narrational characterization) or by another character of the story (figural
characterization). Additionally, a characterization can also be made implicitly or explicitly, the latter
meaning that specific aspects of a character can either be stated directly by the narrator or another
character. When characterizing someone explicitly, precise statements about the traits of the
character are made. This means that for instance adjectives are used in order to name the specific
trait of a character (e.g. “he was good-hearted“). However, also nouns or abstract nouns can be used
for the characterization. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 59) On the other hand, when the
characterization is implicit, most of the time it happens unintentionally by the character him-/herself
by behaving in or looking a certain way. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 54) These implicit
characterizations can be made through three types of behavior. The first type is the verbal behavior,
i.e. the way a character talks (e.g. if he/she uses slang) which can identify the social class he/she
belongs to. Secondly, the non-verbal behavior is also an important aspect of implicit
characterization as it reveals how a character behaves in a specific situation and characterizes him/
her on the basis of his/her actions (e.g. the character smokes, so he/she must be a smoker). The third
type covers the looks of the characters and how they constitute to characterization. Based on the
famous quote “You are what you wear“, a characterization can be made upon the physical
appearance of a character. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 54) This type of implicit characterization
can for instance be found in About A Boy, when, based on her looks, Fiona is characterized by Will.
Furthermore, Rimmon-Kenan states that the environment of the character also plays a role when it
comes to characterization. The character’s physical as well as social environment can determine the
traits associated with him/her. (Cf. 1983: 66) Along with the analysis of characterization in fictions,
the reliability of both implicit and explicit characterization has to be taken into account, too. If a
statement is made about a character in order to make out his/her traits, there is never a guarantee
whether this statement is true or not. The level of credibility mainly relies on the circumstances
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surrounding the characterization. In the case of figural characterization when it comes to auto-
characterization, characters often make use of so-called ‘face-saving‘ techniques meaning that they
try to maintain a good self image, while altero-characterizations are regulated by “social hierarchies
and strategic aims and tactical considerations“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 55) Additionally, it is
always essential to establish whether the characterization takes place in public and if the character
being described is present. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 55) When talking about explicit
narratorial characterization, the reliability is measured by whether the narrator is considered reliable
or not. If a narrator is believed to be unreliable due to “limited knowledge and problematic value-
schemes“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 55), their speech is “marked by subjective
distortions“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 55), as is often the case with first-person narrators. However,
as Wall states, there is always the possibility of naturalization meaning that while reading, the
reader can make use of strategies in order to dissolve the distortions introduced by the narrator in
order to make the story coherent. (Cf. Allrath 2013: 60)
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2.3 Representation of Time
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According to Rimmon-Kenan, time is “one of the most basic categories of human experience“.
(1983: 43) Due to its importance for the real world, it is obvious that the aspect of time is also often
represented within the field of narrative fiction. However, it cannot only be a theme presented in
fiction but also constitutive of the aspect of story and text. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 44) In order
to analyze the role time plays in narrative fiction, scholars have postulated different categories.
Generally, one can distinguish between story-time and discourse-time. In relation to time, story
refers to the “sequence of events“ while discourse refers to the “representation and reception of
these events“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 66) In other words, while story-time refers to “the time
that passes within the narrated world“, discourse time is concerned with “the time required in order
to narrate or read a text“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 68) To clarify what is meant by this definition,
Neumann and Nünning name the instance of an event taking a large amount of time in the story
while being just briefly recalled in the text. (Cf. 2008: 66) The relationship between story and
discourse was discussed by many scholars, one of them being Gerard Genette, who also introduced
the model of narrative perspectives. He suggested three main categories for the analysis of time:
order, duration and frequency. According to Genette, order refers to the “chronological reshuffling
of events“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 66) meaning the different arrangements of events.
!
11
Generally, there are two types of possible narrative sequences. First, there is the chronological
narrative which refers to a narrative that correlates with the natural sequence of time, also called
“natural chronology“. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 69) In contrast, an anachronic narrative is
characterized by the chronology being interrupted either by an analepsis (flashback), which retells
events that happened before the actual story, or a prolepsis (flashforward), which gives insight into
events that occur later in the story. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 67) According to Neumann and
Nünning, in relation to anachronies, one has to consider two further categories: reach and extent.
When speaking of ‘reach’, one refers to anachronies being able to reach into both the future and the
past. On the other hand, when talking about “extent“, this involves the aspect of whether the
duration that is covered by the anachronies is either short or extensive. Thus, the differences in
lengths are called extent. (Cf. 2008: 70) Both analepsis and prolepsis function as some sort of
“second narrative in relation to the narrative onto which they are grafted and which Genette calls
“first narrative“. (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 47) According to Rimmon-Kenan, an analepsis can either
be ‘homodiegetic’ when referring to past clues about a character or an event at that certain point in
the text or ‘heterodiegetic’ when focussing on another character or event. (Cf. 1983: 47) Prolepsis is
a phenomenon less frequent than analepsis. By giving an insight into the events of the future, the
aspect of suspense is taken away while making the reader guess how the upcoming events are going
to unfold. Moreover, prolepsis is common for first-person narration since it seems “more natural for
the narrator to allude to a future which has already become a past“. (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 49) Just
like analepsis, prolepsis can both be homodiegetic and heterodiegtic as well as internal (if the period
covered is anterior to the end of the first narration but posterior to the moment the time switch
happens), external (if the period covered is after the end of the first narrative) or a mixed form of
both. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 49) According to Neumann and Nünning, the order of sequences
within a narrative cannot only contribute to the reader’s opinion on the text but also to the way he/
she reproduces the text’s meaning. When a text is anachronous, for instance, the reader’s
understanding of it is stalled, making it necessary for the reader to review the meanings he/she has
already constructed for the text. Thus, if the reader has for example been given one part of
information about a character and another has been left out, this makes the character shine in either
a favorable or non-favorable light to the reader and an opinion is formed that cannot easily be
revised. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 72)
!
Duration, the second category introduced by Genette, focuses on the how long the events told
proceed. Genette acts on the assumption that the duration of events is always in correlation with
12
their importance within the story. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 67) Neumann and Nünning also
connect the term of duration with the connection between story and discourse-time, namely the time
it takes to read the text and the time the events of the story last. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 72)
However, this category is seemingly hard to grasp since, according to Rimmon-Kenan, text-duration
cannot be measured. She argues that the only time that can actually be determined is the time the
reader takes to read a story. Unfortunately, this time varies from reader to reader making it hard to
come up with a norm. (Cf. 1987: 51) Due to the difficulty of finding a norm to measure the degrees
of duration, Genette composed another definition by including the relation between the duration of
the story (e.g. days or hours) and the actual text (e.g. pages). Resulting from this relation, he coined
the term ‘pace' and introduced constancy of pace in narrative, i.e. “the unchanged ratio between
story-duration and textual length, e.g. when each year in the life of a character is treated in one page
throughout the text“ (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 52) as the new norm. Generally, pace can be divided
into the categories: acceleration and deceleration. While the first refers to the dedication of a brief
passage of the text to a relatively long event in the story, the latter is concerned with the exact
opposite. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 53) There are certain categories when it comes to duration.
Scene stands for a match between story time and discourse time, also referred to as isochrony. This
is often the case with dialogue. However, scene also plays an important role in connection with a
change in plot due to the fact that an event being recalled in close detail makes the reader believe
that it is of importance for the story. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 73) Stretch, another sub-
category of duration, focuses on the discourse-time being longer than the story time. Generally,
stretch stands for the “representation of consciousness“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 75) This means
that it takes longer for someone to express their thoughts than to actually think them and even
longer to read them. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 75) The counterpart to this phenomenon is
named summary. Here the story-time is longer than the discourse-time, meaning that a chain of
events is compromised to a “relatively short statement of its central features and
outcomes.“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 73) However, the degree of summary can also vary since in
narrative fiction, a whole life can be told in one page while one day can be stretched out to a whole
chapter. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 73) The last category of duration comes into play when a
period is completely left out — this is called ellipsis. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 67) Ellipsis can
either be explicit, if the time that has passed is actually named (e.g. “three years later“), or implicit.
In the latter case the event is completely elided and has to be inserted by the reader. (Cf. Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 74)
!
13
The third category introduced by Genette, frequency, refers to the relation between how often an
event comes up in the story and the number of times it is mentioned in the text. (Cf. Rimmon-
Kenan 1983: 56) If an individual event is mentioned only once in a text, then this is referred to as
singulative narration while if it is mentioned a number of times, one speaks of repetitive narration.
Concerning repetitive narration, one has to bear in mind that not only the style but also the focalizer,
the narrator, and the duration may vary. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 76) If an event is told more
than once, this could either be a sign for an obsession of the narrator or, in the case of multiple
narrative perspectives, it could add different facets to the same event. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008:
67). This function of frequency is especially important for About A Boy since some events, like the
Dead Duck Day are told from both Marcus’ and Will’s perspectives. However, I will go into more
detail on the aspect of frequency in the context of Hornby’s novels in a later section of the thesis.
!
Lastly, iterative narration refers to an event appearing several times in the story but only being
narrated once. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 67) It usually occurs in summaries. Generally, iterative
narration always functions as a sub-category for singulative narration due to the iterative sections
“providing background information for the singulative narration“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 76)
Bringing all those categories together, Genette created the so-called Four-partite scale. It extends
from maximum to minimum speed, explaining the different categories. First, speed is decelerated in
the case of scene. When it comes to pause, speed is zero. Ellipsis stands for the speed being infinite.
Lastly, if the speed is accelerated, one talks about summary. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 74;75)
However, Neumann and Nünning state that these categories only cover the aspect of measurable
time whereas there are also other notions of time, for instance “mind time“. It refers to “the
character’s subjective experience of time“. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 67) Additional notions are
either ‘rhythmic time’ or ‘cyclical time’ which focus on the cycle of the year (e.g. seasons).
Nevertheless, it is important to mention that as soon as time becomes cyclical, incoherent or the
story moves towards a distinct ending, it does not correlate with the reader’s definition of time
anymore. While reading, the reader comes up with his or her own perception of time and then
attempts to connect the two definitions of time. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 68)
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2.4. The Semanticization of Space
!
Neumann and Nünning say that space is crucial for our understanding of a fictional world because
characters within this world move and get to see a variety of different spaces. This makes it possible
for the reader to create their own picture of the world the characters live in. (Cf. 2008: 59)
Generally speaking, space is the environment the characters of a story inhabit. Space can among
other things incorporate a number of landscapes, rooms and cities. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008:
59) Moreover, as Neumann and Nünning point out, space can be described according to a variety of
parameters reaching from “the living conditions it offers“ to “the objects it comprises“ to the
“boundaries that separate it from others“. (2008: 59) However, space is not limited to the illustration
of the story world but rather constitutes a “container for existents and as location for events“. (Cf.
Ryan 2012, online) Thus Ryan introduces four sub-categories to the aspect of space, two of them
being “the narrative space“ and “the spatial extension of the text“ which I found to be of importance
for my analysis (Ryan 2012, online)
!
The category of narrative space refers to the environment inhabited by the actors of the story world
as already mentioned above. This aspect is also called setting. Setting can either be specific when
describing time and place or it can be descriptive in a more indefinite manner. Generally, a novel
has an overall setting with varying definite settings for individual scenes, the latter being called
“spatial frame“. (Cf. Author’s Craft, online; cf. Ryan 2012, online) Furthermore, as the setting can
remain the same for a number of scenes, it does not have to be mentioned more than once. (Cf.
Neumann/Nünning 2008: 60) Geographical locations or conditions like the weather and the time of
day can all constitute the phenomenon that is setting. (Cf. Author’s Craft, online) In addition to
place, other elements can contribute to the aspect of setting such as time (“How much time passes in
the story? What season is it?“) and circumstances (“What are the social conditions of the
characters?“) which also correlates with the phenomenon of characterization. (Cf. Karen Woodward
2016, online) Narrative space and setting are generally explained from a rather static perspective
although they can also be revealed to the reader throughout the reading process. This phenomenon
is called textualization of space. (Cf. Ryan 2012, online) The spatial extension of the text, the
second category introduced by Ryan, refers to the extension happening to the text on the basis of
playing with the interface of the text. A good example are for instance the so-called ‘hypermediated
displays’, meaning that images are put into separate windows. (Cf. Ryan 2012, online) This can also
be found in Juliet, Naked where the blogs and website entries are put on separate pages and have a
15
different layout than the rest of the text. When categorizing space, it is also important to
differentiate between literary spaces and real world locations. As Dennerlein points out, “space is
created by the textual means the author uses as well as by the inferences made by a model reader“.
(2009: 6) Space can also be divided into story space and discourse space, the first referring to the
“spatial environment of any event“, the latter to the “narrator’s current spatial environment“.
(Neumann/Nünning 2008: 60) Places like hospitals or prisons fall into the category of discourse
spaces because they make an implicit characterization of the narrator possible. (Cf. Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 61) The aspect of space can also be of importance in relation to the narrative
strategies used in a text. If a space is perceived through the eyes of a focalizer, this always means
that there is some kind of bias due to the emotional involvement of the character. (Cf. Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 61) Neumann and Nünning point out that settings in novels can also fulfill a
‘narrative function’. One has to pay close attention to how a setting is construed as well as to the
adjacency of various locations. These factors can have a significant influence on the semanticization
of space. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 61) Generally, space can either be narrated by the narrator
or the character. However, space can also be described through aspects like perception or allegory.
(Cf. Dennerlein 2009: 8) If the perceptions of a character are narrated, the reader can often
determine where the character is due to the fact that his/her location is explicitly stated. (Cf.
Dennerlein 2009: 12) However, in the context of space, one should also bear in mind the boundaries
between the individual locations. Generally, boundaries are created in order to keep specific people
from transgression not only in relation to space but also in relation to the transgression of social
boundaries. This aspect can thus be very telling about the social role the transgressing character
takes on. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 62)
!
Lastly, space also has three distinct functions as introduced by Gerhard Hoffmann. First, there is the
so-called ‘mood-invested space’ meaning that space and objects have an expressive function.
Secondly, ‘space of action’ provides the basic setting for the action and ‘observed space’, the third
category, refers to giving a panoramic overview. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 62) However, Katrin
Dennerlein points out that there is a major disadvantage with the categories introduced by
Hoffmann: techniques of narrating like perception or description cannot be defined without naming
qualities as well. As an example, she names the space of mood. According to her, the space of mood
should not be considered a space but rather be a quality linked to the space of action or the space of
vision. (Cf. Dennerlein 2009: 5)
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!
3. About The Author
!
This section of the thesis is meant to provide a brief insight into the author Nick Hornby, his life as
well as his works. Over the years Hornby has managed to get popular in the world of literature,
nationally and globally, by publishing a variety of works featuring topics closely related to real life.
The use of issues the general public can identify with contributes to the genre of pop literature,
something that will also be touched upon in this chapter.
!
3.1. Nick Hornby And His Works
!
Born in Surrey, England, in 1957, Nick Hornby always had a passion for reading and for soccer,
interests that would later be reflected in his writing. Hornby graduated from Cambridge University
with a degree in English literature. It was during his studies that he discovered his love for writing.
Hornby spent most of his free time creating a variety of screenplays and plays. Before becoming the
famous novelist he is today, Hornby worked as a teacher giving language classes. During his job as
a teacher, he started doing some journalism work and a number of his articles were featured in GQ
Magazine and Time Out. He was even hired to write for The New Yorker. Hornby started publishing
with a collection of essays, assembling his early non-fiction works before releasing his first novel
Fever Pitch in 1992. It was an autobiographic piece about a die-heart soccer fan whose life was
completely determined by his passion. This was the first novel in which Hornby dealt with ordinary
topics like manhood, finding one’s identity and coming-of-age, thus putting his works into the genre
of pop literature. The novel is loaded with observations of everyday life and thus features a high
degree of trivialness. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 34) Furthermore, due to the book’s surprise success
among readers, the novel was made into a movie twice. One movie was based on the screenplay
written by Hornby himself in 1997, while there also was an American adaptation filmed in 2005.
(Cf. Gurr 2007: 183) Three years after the success of his first novel, Hornby published High
Fidelity, a book that finally catapulted him into the bestseller list of the UK. According to Gurr,
High Fidelity was the work that contributed to bringing pop culture in relation with literature. (Cf.
2007: 185) Similar to his story in Fever Pitch, the protagonist in High Fidelity also has a severe
passion for something and focusses his whole life around it. However, this time it is music, another
topic important to Hornby himself. Additionally, Hornby started using the aspect of music not only
to create references to phenomena of pop culture but also to characterize his protagonist and form
17
his identity through the music he listens to. (Cf. 2007: 186) Thus in this novel, according to Vera
Nünning, music not only functions as a medium to foster a sense of community but also the
acceptance/avoidance of others. (Cf. 2003: 34) Just like his first novel, High Fidelity was also made
into a movie in 2000 starring John Cusack. However, it only became a modest box-office hit. In
2006, a broadway play was created and Hornby grew more popular by the minute. It was in 1998
that Hornby published one of his most successful and well-known works today: About A Boy. The
novel is based on Hornby’s own reminiscences of his time at school and features two diametrically
opposed lines of development. (Cf. A&E Television Networks 2016, online) The story about
Marcus, a boy who desperately needs to behave his own age, while Will, a middle-aged man,
behaving like a child should do the exact opposite and finally grow up, received rave reviews
among readers. Once again, this book was turned into a movie starring Hugh Grant and was a
complete success. In 2001, Hornby put out How to be Good, a novel about the unlucky marriage of
a female doctor whose husband decided to turn his life around for the better when meeting some
sort of guru. (Cf. 2007: 183) It was also the first book Hornby wrote from a female perspective. In
comparison to the topics of his other books published to that date, How to be Good focuses on a
more serious topic, thus bringing Hornby more attention from critics, even earning him a famous
Booker Prize. (Cf. 2003: 35) There follow books like A Long Way Down, a novel about four people
who meet by accident when wanting to commit suicide by jumping off a roof, and Juliet, Naked, yet
again picking up on the topic of music obsession. In addition to his novels, Hornby kept busy with
writing screenplays, two of which brought him a nomination for the famous Academy Award.
Nowadays, Hornby is also involved in charity work as he campaigns for better education for autistic
people due to his eldest son suffering from autism. (Cf. A&E Television Networks 2016, online)
!
3.2. Pop literature, its common themes and the relation to Nick Hornby
!
Nick Hornby is often considered one of the most successful novelists of British pop literature.
However, in order to put Hornby and his works in the category of pop literature it is important to
establish how this genre came about and what the features are that categorize it, as well as to point
out its common themes. Generally, the manifestation of music in literature and vice versa is not at
all a new phenomenon. Various departments of literary studies have started studying this aspect of
literature, even coming up with a categorization system reaching from ‘literature in music’ (e.g.
Shakespeare’s plays) and ‘music and literature’ (e.g. the Romantic lied) to ‘music in literature’ (e.g.
literature that features concerts). However, the problem with this categorization is that it solely
18
focuses on classic music as opposed to pop music, which is rarely dealt with. (Cf. Viol 2006: 11)
Considering the importance both pop music and pop literature play in our lives, it seems peculiar
that not more studies have carried out on the topic. This might lead back to the fact that pop and
literature have not always been intertwined the way they are now. The two sections started mixing
when literature became the medium through which pop was transmitted. Aspects of pop, namely
“accessible and commercially successful“ (Beckenkamp 2008: 17) were included into literary texts
and thus the phenomenon of pop literature was created. In the beginning, the movement of pop
literature was considered an anti-movement since it tried to rebel against society and its norms. The
movement, like many other concepts, has its origins in the USA where writers from the so-called
‘Beat Generation’ tried to break free from what was the culturally considered norm and started to
include unconventional aspects of everyday life. This also contributes to the fact that Nick Hornby
is nowadays considered to be one of the entrepreneurs of the new form of pop literature. He himself
has set his goals to publish popular British literature that describes what happens in everyday life.
Additionally, he has successfully managed to distance himself from traditions established in high
literature, a characteristic feature common for the movement of pop literature. (Cf. Nünning 2003:
32) Additionally, including and addressing mass-market themes and phenomena defines not only
the early beginnings of the genre but can still be observed today, as for example in Hornby’s works.
(Cf. Beckenkamp 2008: 19) This aspect of the genre has brought about a change in literary
aesthetics, which has led to heated discussions between literary critics about the understanding of
literature. On the one hand, people are afraid that by including trivial themes the quality of literature
could be lessened, others have the opinion that literature should be something that brings people
together and thus feature themes that are accessible to everyone. (Cf. Beckenkamp 2008: 21) Even
Nick Hornby has stressed in one of his interviews that the trivial aspect of pop literature is an
important element that can be used to make literature more accessible: “It seemed obvious to me
that popular culture is an important part of all our lives and it should have some kind of reflection in
the books we are reading“. (Hornby 2003: 31) Böttiger, a German linguist, on the other hand, refers
to pop literature as follows: “Dabei geht es um die Intensität des gelebten Augenblicks, um Musik,
um ein empathisches Daseinsgefühl — aber auch um die Vermitteltheit des Augenblicks […] Es
ringt darum, den Moment des glücklichen Lebens zu beschreiben, um die Möglichkeit, das
authentische Leben festhalten zu können — und das im Wissen, daran scheitern zu
müssen.“ (Weigel 2011: 235) Böttiger’s definition strongly contrasts with what is typically
considered pop literature since most of the time, as it is the case with Hornby, too, the books
published in this genre are not only set to entertain people but often deal with topics that go beyond
19
an affirmative celebration of the happiness of life to also feature its darker aspects such as
depression or suicide. Additionally, Baßler states that pop literature corresponds to something that
previously had not been considered culturally acceptable like the importance of labels or the
differentiation between what is considered ‘in’ and what is seen as ‘out’. (Cf. 2003: 32) Generally it
can be claimed that nowadays pop literature is still considered inferior to ‘high literature’. Being
situated somewhere between high literature and trivial literature, the pop-novel possesses
characteristics from both genres while its length of approximately 300 pages or fewer, and its
accessibility show commonalities with an easy trivial literature, its focus on complex characters and
its emphasis on emotional and psychological aspects are features it shares with high literature. (Cf.
Gurr 2007: 181) In his article about Hornby, Jens Gurr also stresses that while novels that due to
their popularity among readers and due to their seemingly trivial features, are regarded as pop
literature, often include a variety of innovative concepts like featuring different perspectives (e.g.
multiperspectivity in About A Boy), different regional English dialects (e.g. Trainspotting by Welsh)
or typographic conventions (e.g. Filth by Welsh) (cf. 2007: 182) Concerning the themes featured in
pop literature it is essential to include the aspect of accessibility as already mentioned above.
Generally, stories from the genre deal with individuals, mostly young people and the problems they
face when finding their own identity in society. By putting them into situations which are very close
to real life, they become very identifiable to the reader. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 234;235) This is why
themes like race, gender, class, drugs, family but also increasingly new digital media and their
effects on society are very common for pop literature. (Cf. Beckenkamp 2008: 31) However, as
Jonas Beckenkamp mentions in his thesis “Do you believe in Pop?“, the themes common for pop
literature have undergone some sort of change since the beginnings of the genre in the 60s. Due to
the phenomenon of mass culture, which has increased in relevance throughout the last few years,
authors nowadays tend to base the topics of their stories more strongly on current events. (Cf. 2008:
32) This also pays tribute to the fact that texts often feature the everyday routine of people and thus
facilitate a shared interest among readers as they identify with the protagonists. Now that we have
established what pop literature means and which themes are commonly addressed, we can turn to
Hornby and explore how his works contribute to the genre. As already mentioned, one of the
characteristics of Hornby’s writing is that his novels “tackle contemporary problems of ordinary
people“. (Chifane 2015: 192) This means that in his works, readers are often faced with topics like
failed relationships, adulthood, disappointment or some sort of obsession (e.g. music). Apart from
those, an aspect that Hornby often touches upon in his novels are the “changes of the cultural
understanding of femininity and masculinity“. (Chifane 2015: 193) This means that a lot of times
20
the main protagonist of the story comes to realize that he/she has once defined him-/herself through
a relationship and the aspect of sexuality when in reality, he/she should have focussed on him-/
herself. This can, for instance, be encountered in Juliet, Naked, when Annie realizes that she has
basically wasted 15 years of her life living with Duncan, who is only concerned with his obsession
with singer Tucker Crowe and has completely forgotten about her. (Cf. Chifane 2015: 194)
Additionally, by including pop culture into his literature, Hornby manages to bring “the discourse of
ordinary people closer to the centre of literature“. (Chifane 2015: 194) This discourse, among
others, includes the aspect of love and in this context, as already mentioned, also failed relationships
and broken family ties. The latter can clearly be seen in Juliet, Naked as Tucker Crowe, the
musician Duncan is infatuated with, has failed at both being a father and a husband but is now
trying to redeem himself by focussing all his attention on his youngest son, Jackson. Furthermore,
in About A Boy, Marcus has a very strange relationship with his mother, desperately looking for a
father figure to look up to while dealing with his self-observed mother, who is unable or unwilling
to notice her son’s needs. (Cf. Chifane 2015: 196) Other themes Hornby touches upon in his works
also include depression as for instance in Juliet, Naked, when Annie frequently visits her therapist
trying to figure out what is going wrong in her life. Depression also plays a great part in About A
Boy, as Marcus experiences that his mother suffers from depression, and how she acts on it. The
themes occurring in About A Boy, however, will be dealt with in a separate sub-chapter when
analyzing the novel in more detail.
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4. About A Boy
!
Although not considered as much of a good read as High Fidelity, About A Boy still managed to be
extremely successful among readers as well as at schools, which started including the novel into
their language classes. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 189) Published in 1998, the novel is one of Hornby’s earlier
works. After releasing his first novel High Fidelity which featured first-person narration, Hornby
here adapted a third-person limited point of view using focalizing as a key element. The title of the
novel has its origins in the famous Nirvana-song ‘About a Girl’ (1989) and according to Jens Gurr,
it is ambiguous in the sense that it tells the ‘coming-of-age’ story of both an adult male, Will
Freeman, who at thirty-six years is basically still a child, and Marcus Brewer, the child that
seemingly is too grown up for his age in the London of the 1990s. (Cf. 2007: 189) As already
mentioned before, the novel received rave reviews amongst the readers and due to its success it was
21
eventually turned into a movie. The film, starring Hugh Grant, was produced by Nick Hornby
himself and earned over $130 million dollars worldwide. Later, there was even a TV show made
about the novel. (Cf. bio. 2016, online)
!
4.1. Plot
!
As already mentioned, the novel focuses not only on one but on two protagonists: Will and Marcus.
Marcus is a twelve-year-old boy who lives with his mother and has recently moved from
Cambridge to London. Due to him taking care of his depressive mother, Marcus has never had the
chance to be a child and thus does not act the way a boy his age should. He rather is “the oldest
twelve-year-old in the world“. (About A Boy 1998: 68) Of course, the way he dresses and his sense
of music is not suitable for his age either and instantly makes him a target for his fellow class mates.
Will, the other protagonist, is a thirty-six-year-old man who has not worked a day in his life.
However, due to his father creating a famous Christmas carol back in 1938, Will does not have to
face the fear of being broke. His last name Freeman is also a suitable word-play by Hornby which
in a way characterizes Will. He spends his days doing nothing, living according to his free will and
not obeying any rules he has not set himself. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 189) Will lives his life according to
points he scores on questionnaires about coolness in the popular magazines he reads. His degree of
coolness is measured by the clothes he wears, the number of women he sleeps with and the music
he listens to (cf. Nünning 2003: 36):
!
How cool was Will Freeman? This cool: he had slept with a woman he didn’t know very well in the last three
months (five points). He had spent more than three hundred pounds on a jacket (five points). He had spent
more than twenty pounds on a haircut (five points) He owned more than five hip-hop albums (five points).
[…] Will didn’t know how seriously you were supposed to take these questionnaire things, but he couldn’t
afford to think about it; being men’s magazine cool was as close as he had ever come to an achievement, and
moments like this were to be treasured. (About a Boy 6)
!
According to Gurr, because of his big ego, his short relationships with women as well as his lack of
responsibility, Will is representative of “the New Lad“ phenomenon common in the early 1990s.
(Cf. 2007: 190) Since Will has a certain fear of commitment, the topic of family and kids is
something he completely detests. However, he soon gets tired of his routine of having sex with
single women and after having a brief affair with a single mother, he decides that dating single
mums ultimately is what he has been missing out on.
!
22
Single mothers - bright attractive, available women, thousands of them, all over London - were the best
invention Will had ever heard of. His career as a serial nice guy had begun. (About a Boy 27)
!
Unfortunately, single mothers are not as easy to find in London as Will had hoped. However, he
comes up with the perfect solution: Will simply turns himself into a single parent and names his
imaginary son Ned. He then volunteers to join a group for single parents called SPAT. Due to him
being careless, he is not even afraid of being exposed:
!
The point was that if you had a history of pretending, then joining a single parent group when you were not a
single parent was neither problematic nor particularly scary. If it didn’t work out, then he’d just have to try
something else. It was no big deal. (About a Boy 36)
The meeting in the group, although Will is not at all happy with the women participating in SPAT
goes very well and he even gets to know a woman, Suzie, who seems fairly attractive. One day, the
whole group comes together to do a picnic in Regent’s park. Will is eager to meet up with Suzie but
much to his surprise, she has brought a boy with her. That boy is Marcus, who has been dragged to
the park due to his mother not feeling like watching after him. This is the first incident where
Marcus and Will meet. While Will’s first impression of Marcus is not really positive, he instantly
feels like he needs to help the boy in some way:
!
[…] It did occur to Will, however, that there were few adult males better equipped than him to deal with a
teenager (if that is what Marcus was - it was hard to tell. He had a strange frizzy bush of hair, and he dressed
like a twenty-five year old chartered accountant on his day off […] (About a Boy 54)
!
!
Marcus, too is not particularly fond of Will when he first meets him, calling him a “bloke who was
trying to get off with Suzie“. (About a Boy 1998: 61) However, their conceptions of each other are
overshadowed by Marcus accidentally killing a duck with a loaf of bread. After the incident has
been solved, Suzie and Will return Marcus home where they find Fiona, Marcus’s mother, lying on
the floor, having swallowed a great number of pills in order to commit suicide. For Marcus, this
moment is the most shocking of his life. Of course he knew that his mother was sad and cried a lot,
but he would never have expected her to try to take her own life:
!
[…] What got him about this was that there wasn’t even anything very shocking, just some puke and some
shouting, and he could see his mum wasn’t dead or anything. But this was the scariest thing he’d ever seen, by
a million miles, and he knew the moment he walked in that it was something he’d have to think about forever.
(About a Boy 64;65)
23
Will, while just observing the events and being glad about the fact that his life is as carefree as it is,
is still moved by the events and even after some time has passed, he feels like he is drawn back to
what has happened. He starts caring about the fate of Fiona and Marcus and decides that he wants to
be involved in their lives:
!
Maybe he could really… do something with those two. He could take an avuncular interest in them, give their
lives a bit of shape and gaiety. He would bond with Marcus, take him somewhere every now and again - to a
football match, possibly. And perhaps Fiona would like a nice dinner somewhere, or a night out at the theatre.
(About a Boy 82)
!
Marcus is more than happy to see that Will is taking an interest in him and his mother. In some way,
Marcus imagines that Will could take on the role of his father, someone Marcus desperately wants
in his life. After Will tells him that he wants to take Marcus and his mother out for lunch, Marcus
decides that Will would be a perfect suitor for his mum. He even goes as far as to imagine what life
would be like once Will and Fiona become a couple:
!
[…] His mum was pretty, and Will seemed quite well off, so they could go and live with Will and his kid,
and then there’d be four of them, and four was twice as good as two. And maybe, if they wanted to, they
could have a baby. […] So then there would be five of them, and it wouldn’t matter quite so much if one of
them died. (About a Boy 88)
!
However during lunch, Will and Fiona do not get along as well as Marcus had hoped. Although the
lunch goes well, they do not seem to hit it off and after a supper at the Brewster’s house, Will does
not hear from Fiona anymore. He is not particularly unhappy about it. Furthermore, after the Fiona
incident, he starts to question whether his decision to date single mothers was the right one after all.
He arrives at the conclusion that he will go back to dating single women who are child-free.
However, as soon as he has made up his mind, his doorbell rings and Marcus stands in front of him.
Letting himself into Will’s apartment, Marcus confronts him with his knowledge about Will’s spiral
of lies. He tries to cut a deal with Will, saying that he will not tell his mother about it if Will goes
out with her again. Although Will tells him off, Marcus is not planning to keep the information
about Will not having a child all to himself. He rather keeps contemplating what to do with it. All he
knows is that it could prove helpful when keeping in touch with Will:
!
[…] He just knew that he didn’t want to spend this information right away: he wanted to leave it in his
pocket while he looked around, to work out what it was worth. He knew that he couldn’t make Will go out
24
with his mum if he wasn’t bothered, but he could make him do something else, maybe, something he hadn’t
even thought of yet […] (About a Boy 106)
!
Marcus starts to visit Will on a regular basis and even though it seems like Will is not particularly
happy with Marcus’s visits, the two of them start growing closer and Will even starts to include the
visits into his everyday life:
!
Once or twice Will decided he couldn’t face it and went shopping or to the cinema; but most of the time he
was in at four-fifteen, waiting for the buzzer - sometimes because he couldn’t be bothered to go out,
sometimes because he felt he owed Marcus something. (About a Boy 116)
!
Their hang-outs usually include watching a TV show and talking about unimportant issues. Will is
not keen on getting too involved with Marcus’s life. However, one day he observes Marcus being
bullied by his classmates and feels like he is responsible for making Marcus fit in with the others.
Although this is the first sign of a change of personality for Will, his superficial belief that problems
can be solved through changing one’s looks results in a disaster. He takes Marcus out to buy him
expensive Adidas sneakers. During their visit to the shop, Will first notices that the act of taking
Marcus shopping could easily be something a father does with his child:
!
Will caught sight of the pair in the mirror, and was shocked to see that they could easily pass for father and
son; he had somehow imagined himself as Marcus’s elder brother, but the reflection threw age and youth
into sharp relief - Will’s stubble and crow’s feet versus Marcus’s smooth cheeks and gleaming white teeth.
(About a Boy 124)
!
They end up buying a nice pair of sneakers for Marcus and Will feels extremely confident about
doing something good for Marcus. However, the ‘natural high’ does not last long — the next day
Marcus shows up at Will’s doorstep without his sneakers — they were stolen by the bullies. When
Marcus returns home without wearing any shoes, Fiona gets suspicious and eventually, he confesses
about his meetings with Will as well as about Will’s invented son. His mother is more than unhappy
about him hanging out with Will and they drive up to Will’s flat to confront him. Will and Fiona yell
at each other and Fiona tells Will to back off from Marcus. However, Marcus starts to realize that in
some way, he does not want to stop meeting Will. Furthermore, there is some sign of change in him.
For the first time, Marcus starts to question whether the decisions his mum makes for him are really
what’s best for him and if he should start to do things the way he wants to. Fiona and he start to
argue and Fiona does not understand why Marcus suddenly wants to make his own decisions when
25
in her opinion, everything is working just fine. That is the moment when Marcus sees no other way
than to be honest with his mother, whether it would upset her or not:
!
He could give her a reason. It wouldn’t be the right reason, and he’d feel bad saying it, and he was pretty
sure it would make her cry. But it was a good reason, a reason that would shut her up, and if that was how
you had to win arguments, then he’d use it. (About a Boy 137)
!
Shortly before Christmas, Will gets a phone call from Fiona who is in desperate need of help
concerning Marcus. At first, Will does not want to get involved in their conflict but then he decides
to meet up with Fiona. They eventually decide that Will, even though he knows that Marcus is
going to show up at his door again, should not be seeing him again. At school, Marcus meets Ellie,
a girl completely different from him: she is notorious around school and basically stands for
someone his mother would not want him to interact with. That is why Marcus randomly starts
talking to Ellie and she makes fun of him. Nevertheless, he is more than proud of his achievement
to talk to an older girl who is known for being weird. Marcus then shouts at the headmistress and
walks out of school. But instead of feeling guilty about it, he feels free and like a new person:
!
As soon as he left Mrs. Morrison’s office he felt different, better, as if he’d let go and he was now falling
through space. It was an exciting feeling, really, and it was much better than the feeling of hanging on that
he’d had before. (About a Boy 156)
!
Marcus decides to visit Will and tells him all about these incidents at school. Although Will tells
him that it is no use telling him instead of his mother, Marcus insists that Will knows things and that
he can be helpful to Marcus. When he tells Will about the incident with Ellie and how she
convinced him that ‘Kurt Cobain’, the famous singer, was called ‘Kirk O’Bane’, a football player,
Will realizes that Marcus does not need a father figure at all, but rather someone who guides him
through being a child, and since Will refuses to grow up himself too, that’s something that he is
certainly able to do:
!
It was then, for the first time, that Will saw the kind of help Marcus needed. […] Marcus needed help to be a
kid, not an adult. And, unhappily for Will, that was exactly the kind of assistance he was qualified to
provide. (About a Boy 164)
!
Back at school, Marcus encounters Ellie and her friend. Although they make fun of him, Ellie seems
to have taken some sort of interest in him. The conversations with Ellie make Marcus be more
confident about his actions and he starts talking to other pupils. When Christmas is around the
26
corner, Will is invited to spend it with Marcus and his mother. On Christmas Eve, he finally meets
Clive, Marcus’s biological father, who is more interested in rolling a joint in front of Marcus than in
what is happening with his son. Marcus, on the other hand, thinks that the evening is working out
just fine and is happy that Will stays with them until the end. On New Year’s Eve, Will meets
Rachel and instantly falls in love with her. However, in order to awaken her interest, he yet again
comes up with a lie: he introduces Marcus as his son. Marcus, on the other hand, spends New Year’s
Eve with Ellie who makes him drink alcohol for the first time; they dance and they talk about
Fiona’s suicide attempt. While Marcus feels like he truly has found a friend in Ellie, he also wants
her to be his girlfriend mainly because he does not know the difference between the two terms. He
asks Will for his advice. Will, on the other hand, knows exactly how he feels about Rachel. Because
Marcus sees that Will needs his help, he agrees to pretending to be Will’s son when meeting Rachel.
Their scheduled lunch does not go as planned, mainly because Rachel’s son Ali is not keen on
meeting either Will or Marcus. However, after a short argument, they manage to smooth things
over. In school, Marcus is growing more and more confident and is not bullied anymore mainly due
to him being friends with Ellie. Meanwhile, Will decides that he does not want to lie to Rachel
anymore and confesses his lies. Although she is shocked to find out he lied, they keep meeting and
eventually even sleep with each other. Will realizes that Rachel could potentially be the right
woman for him and feels like he experiences real love for the first time. Furthermore, with Rachel's
help, Will starts to notice just how close he and Marcus have grown and how much they really care
for each other:
!
It had never occurred to Will that Marcus actually had any real feelings towards him, especially feelings that
were visible to a third party. He knew that Marcus liked hanging out at his place and he knew that Marcus
described him as a friend, but all this he had taken merely as evidence of the boy’s eccentricity and
loneliness. (About a Boy 248)
!
While Fiona starts being sad again, Marcus feels like his life is changing in a good way. However,
one day in summertime, she tells him that he has to go to Cambridge to meet Clive. Marcus is not
happy about meeting his father because he is mad with him. He tells Ellie about it, who offers to
join him in Cambridge and tell his father off. Will, on the other hand, wants to help Fiona with her
issues by bringing her together with Rachel. When she does not show up to their meeting and he is
left alone with Fiona, they start warming up to each other and Will finds out a lot about Fiona that
makes him actually sympathize with her. Their date is however interrupted when they get a call
from a police station in Royston and they are told that Marcus has been arrested. They rush up to
27
Royston to pick up Marcus from the station. Even Clive, Marcus’s father, shows up. The group has
an argument and Marcus finally tells his parents how he feels. He also realizes that Ellie is not the
right girl for him. Once they leave the police station, Marcus gets to talk to his father in private and
they make up. Time moves on and while Will is more than happy with how things work out with
Rachel and also Fiona is getting better, Marcus has finally arrived at his own age. And while
Marcus has become a true twelve-year-old and Will has finally managed to grow up and be the
responsible adult he is supposed to be, all characters had to both lose and gain some things in order
to arrive at the place in which they are now (cf. Nünning 2003: 44):
!
He had flattened out, and become as robust and as unremarkable as every other twelve-year old kid. But all
three of them had to lose things in order to gain things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance,
and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus,
and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from
school with his shoes on. (About a Boy 306)
!
However, according to Nünning, the end of the novel cannot be considered entirely positive. Will,
for instance, while having changed his earlier attitude towards life and becoming a more responsible
man, is not illustrated as being only positive. On the one hand, he has gained a lot by undergoing
this drastic change, on the other, however, he realizes how easy and carefree his last life was (cf.
Nünning 2003: 44):
!
He’d been an idiot then, but at least he’d been an idiot with an idea, some kind of belief system; now he was
hundreds of years older, one or two IQ points wiser, and absolutely all over the place. He’d rather be an
idiot again. He’d had his whole life set up so that nobody’s problem was his problem, and now everybody’s
problem was his problem, and he had no solutions for any of them. So how, precisely, was he, or anybody
else he was involved with, better off? (About a Boy 268)
!
Will also undergoes a development with regard to honesty. While at the beginning, he is willing to
tell a lie at any given occasion in order to get what he wants, throughout the novel, he learns that
honesty can very well be helpful when communicating with others. When he honestly answers
Rachel’s questions regarding his life, he even congratulates himself on his morality: “He’d really
got the hang of this truth-telling business now, he felt. If anything, he’d moved right away from
lying and towards understatement.“ (About a Boy 1998: 196)
!
Marcus also plays an important role in turning Will into a more honest person. Through his advice,
Will decides to tell the truth to Rachel about inventing Marcus as his son. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 46)
28
The fact that Marcus undergoes a change due to Will helping him to cope with life in a better way is
another aspect that cannot be regarded as solely positive. While Marcus certainly has learned to deal
with difficult situations much better than he did in the past, he has definitely lost a great amount of
his sensibility and individuality. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 44) Marcus undoubtedly learned throughout
the novel that he must live by certain rules. While he was very spontaneous at the beginning and
often talked without thinking, towards the end of the novel, he seems to have adapted to the given
rules. However, Marcus definitely needs time to learn to follow the rules of communication (cf.
Nünning 2003: 44;45): “It’s OK,“ Marcus said brightly, “He really fancies you. He told
me.“ (About a Boy 1998: 224) Vera Nünning names this example as an indicator for Marcus’s
spontaneity and for being able to say what he feels. She also mentions the fact that this
characteristic feature of Marcus certainly is not considered good by the other characters, especially
Will, who has to witness Marcus’ direct way of speaking when they meet Rachel. (Cf. Nünning
2003: 45) Lastly, she also states that the progression of the two protagonists not only results from
their similarities and their contradictions but also from the influence they have on each other, thus
facilitating the changes they both undergo. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 46)
!
!
4.2. The General Structure of the Novel
!
About a Boy tells the story of both Will and Marcus. By constantly changing the point of view, the
reader can witness the events through the eyes of both protagonists, thus being introduced to the
mindset of both characters. This is established by Hornby’s use of multiperspectivity. When reading
the book, it becomes evident, that by presenting the events alternately through the perspective of
both Marcus and Will, a coherent structure is introduced. This could very well speak for additive
multiperspectivity. However, as the introduction of both perspectives also highlights the differences
in the views of both protagonists, the novel also corresponds to the aspect of contradictory
multiperspectivity. Moreover, by introducing two views on the same event, the reader gets to form
his/her own opinion according to whose retelling he/she trusts more. This can, for instance, be seen
when Will takes Marcus and his mother out for lunch one day. Marcus is very proud of how his
mother is dressed:
!
His mum looked good, Marcus thought. She was wearing her best leggings and a baggy, hairy sweater, and
she was wearing makeup for the first time since the hospital, and a pair of nice dangly earrings someone had
sent her from Zimbabwe. (About a Boy 90)
29
!
As opposed to how Marcus sees his mother, Will’s thoughts on her outfit are introduced in the
following chapter and he seems less happy about her looks: “Why didn’t she have a decent haircut,
instead of all that frizz, and why didn’t she wear clothes that looked they mattered to her? He didn’t
get that at all.“ (About a Boy 1998: 98) By getting the input about Fiona’s character from two
decisively differing perspectives, the reader then has to form an own opinion concerning Fiona.
!
In About A Boy we have a limited third-person narrator, who, as Nünning argues, puts him-/herself
into the background only engaging when giving neutral observations of situations or commenting
on the mindset of the protagonists. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 40) This can be seen when Will tries to talk
himself into liking children when he is dating single mother Angie: “It had to be said that Angie’s
beauty was not irrelevant to his decision to reassess his affinity with children“. (About a Boy 1998:
22) From this passage, one can clearly see that the narrator comments on the situation. In a way, this
also correlates with how Will is characterized as being superficial at the beginning of the novel. He
is only contemplating changing his view on children since he is attracted to a woman who happens
to have children. Furthermore, because the narrator usually retreats, and the events are filtered
through the two focalizers, who do not know what the other characters are thinking, Hornby
sometimes resorts to other devices to make the feelings of the characters visible to the reader. For
instance, the suicide note that Fiona writes Marcus before trying to commit suicide can be
considered such an aid when expressing Fiona’s feelings, as it mediates in first-person voice:
!
I’ve loved being your mum, always, even though it’s been hard for me and I’ve found it difficult sometimes.
And I don’t know why being your mum isn’t enough for me, but it isn’t. And it isn’t that I’m so unhappy I
don’t want to live anymore. That’s not what it feels like. It feels more like I’m tired and bored and the
party’s gone on too long and I want to go home. I feel flat and there doesn’t seem to be anything to look
forward to, so I’d rather call it a day. (About a Boy 72;73)
!
Concerning the overall structure of the book, it can be said that About a Boy consists of 36 chapters,
with each chapter representing either Will’s or Marcus’s point of view. The happenings are thus
focalized subjectively by either of the characters. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 190) The events are told in
chronological order and the story time that passes is approximately one year since in the book, the
seasons as well as festivities for both Christmas and New Year’s Eve are explicitly mentioned. The
beginning of the story happens, as Neumann and Nünning call it, ‘in medias res’. This means that
the reader is directly taken into the “middle of the action“ (2008: 49):
30
!
“So, have you split up now?“
“Are you being funny?“
People quite often thought Marcus was being funny when he wasn’t. (About a Boy 1)
!
Clearly, the reader is thrown directly into the story and is additionally introduced to the main
protagonist Marcus. Furthermore, the second sentence already kind of characterizes Marcus by
stating something about him as a person. Chapter 1–7 revolve around the introduction of both the
main protagonists. At first, due to them not having met, the happenings in their lives are told in a
parallel manner. However, this changes in chapter 8 when their storylines overlap on Dead Duck
Day and the beginning of their relationship is introduced, a phenomenon that Neumann and
Nünning call multi-strand plot. According to them, multi-strand plots “represent several related
aspects of a specific subject from the perspective of different characters or groups. (Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 48) Furthermore, the novel also features a so-called double plot, since two
independent plots are “thematically, temporally or spatially connected“. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning
2008: 49) Later in the novel, other important characters are introduced in chapter 19 with Ellie,
Marcus’s new friend and Rachel, whom Will falls in love with. As Gurr argues, by the end of the
novel, a broad network of characters who all have some sort of connection to each other has formed
and they seemingly function as one happy extended family. (2007: 190) Hornby makes use of free
indirect speech as the main channel through which the perspectives of both Marcus and Will are
presented. In free indirect discourse, the consciousness is presented, always “keeping close to the
characters’ oral syntax and diction, though tenses and pronouns are adjusted to the surrounding
first-person or third-person past-tense narrative.“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 111) Characteristics for
free indirect discourse can for instance be ellipsis or exclamations as well as loose syntax which are
all used quite often throughout the novel:
!
It wasn’t all his mum’s fault. Sometimes he was weird just because of who he was, rather than what she did.
Like the singing… When was he going to learn about the singing? He always had a tune in his head, but
every now and again, when he was nervous, the tune just sort of slipped out. For some reason, he couldn’t
spot the difference between inside and outside, because there didn’t seem to be a difference. […] Anyway, a
song had slipped out yesterday during English, while the teacher was reading; if you wanted to make people
laugh at you, really, really laugh, then the best way, he had discovered, better even than to have a bad
haircut, was to sing out loud when everybody in the room was quiet and bored. (About a Boy 16)
!
In short, the key element of narration in the novel is focalization. As Neumann and Nünning state,
focalization is the perception of events by a reflector whose memories and feelings are presented to
31
the reader. (2008: 95) In this novel, the focalization is presented both from Will’s and Marcus’s
points of view. Additionally, in the book the concept of multiple focalization is predominant since
the “same events are presented in succession from the point of view of different focal characters“.
(Neumann/Nünning 2008: 96) According to Gurr, the intensity with which Hornby uses focalization
in the novel becomes especially evident when Marcus first meets Ellie and asks her about her Kurt
Cobain-T-shirt:
[…] “Who is it, then?“
“Kirk O’Bane.“
“Oh, yes.“
He’d never heard of Kirk O’Bane, but he’d never heard of anybody.
“What does he do?“
“He plays for Manchester United.“
[…]
“Does he?“ He looked much more like a singer than a footballer. […]
“Yeah. He scored five goals for them last Saturday.“ (About a Boy 154)
!
The funny aspect about this dialogue is not only that Ellie completely misleads Marcus and mocks
him by introducing her idol Kurt Cobain to him as a footballer but also that Hornby does not write
Kurt Cobain’s real name but rather the conception of what Marcus mistakenly hears. (Cf. Gurr
2007: 190) Another example of the way focalization gives direct access to the perceptions of the
character is when Will hears the Christmas carol his father created on November 19 on the radio:
“November the nineteenth. November the fucking nineteenth. This definitely was a new
record.“ (About a Boy 1998: 138) According to Gurr, the use of focalization also makes it possible
to give an insight into the different motivations of the characters as well as into their alternating
ways of having conversations. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 191) This becomes clearly visible when Marcus talks
to his mother trying to persuade her to give him more free will: ““Because I need a father“. It shut
her up, and it made her cry. It did the job.“ (About a Boy 1998: 137) However, as Nünning states
that while relying heavily on the focalization of the differing perspectives, the continuous use of
past tense as well as the referring to the main protagonists as Will and Marcus definitely makes the
novel seem more uniform. (2003: 41) Additionally, she mentions the incident at the end of chapter
3, when Marcus is being humiliated by his classmates for singing in class. His colleagues even go
so far as to categorize him as mad. Will, in the following chapter, is also considered mad, not
because he is singing but rather because he starts talking to a woman who he has never met before
but wants to have a date with:
!
32
“OK, let’s put it another way. How can we tell if people are mad?“
Here it comes, he thought. Here it comes. This is it.
“If they sing for no reason in class, miss.“
[…] “OK, that’s one way of telling, yes. You’d think that someone who does that would be a silly little
pony. But leaving Marcus out of it for a moment…“ (About a Boy 17;18)
!
She looked at him, smiled nervously and glanced across at the waiter, probably calculating how long it
would take for the waiter to hurl himself across the room and wrestle Will to the floor. Will both understood
and sympathized. (About a Boy 20)
!
Nünning states that by juxtapositioning both characters and the events happening to them, parallels
as well as differences between them can clearly be outlined. For instance, although they are both
considered mad according to their actions, Will, in contrast to Marcus, manages to turn the situation
around and still gets to go on the date with the woman. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 41) The fact that the
novel is mostly based on the focalization of events through the reflector figures of Marcus and Will
while the narrator remains in the background makes it possible for the reader to have direct access
to the perspectives of both characters and to formulate an opinion about them. Furthermore, the use
of focalization fosters the feeling of empathy towards the characters and through the constant
change between Marcus and Will, who are very different from each other, the important competence
of feeling for someone else is promoted. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 42)
!
Another aspect that is very important for the analysis of the novel is characterization. The characters
introduced in the book are highly individualized and multi-dimensional meaning that they have a
large revenue of differing character traits and can be considered round characters. (Cf. Neumann/
Nünning 2008: 53) In addition, they all are dynamic characters, especially in the case of Marcus and
Will, since they undergo a complete transformation in the course of the book. However, while the
characters are attributed with various characteristic traits, they are solely characterized through the
focalizers Marcus and Will. Additionally, the protagonists are mainly characterized implicitly since
their verbal behavior as well as their non-verbal behavior, thought processes and physical
appearance are aspects mediated through focalization. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 54) A good
example here is the scene in which Will meets his friend John at his house in order to look at his
newly born daughter. In this instance, it becomes apparent just how strongly Will feels about having
children:
!
[…] These two were beginning to make him feel physically ill. It was bad enough that they had children in
the first place; why did they then wish to compound the original error by encouraging their friends to do the
33
same? For some years now, Will had been convinced that it was possible to get through life without having
to make yourself unhappy in the way John and Christine were making themselves unhappy. (About a Boy
9;10)
!
Another example for implicit characterization is a scene in which Marcus reflects on why he is not
right for certain things at the beginning of the novel: “It was OK not to be right for some things (he
already knew he wasn’t right for parties, because he was too shy, for baggy trousers, because his
legs were too short), but not being right for school was a big problem.“ (About a Boy 1998: 12)
Through this unintentional auto-characterization, the reader is able to acquire some knowledge
about who Marcus is, namely that Marcus is a shy guy who is not particularly tall. This
characterization definitely aids the reader in practicing perspective taking, as introduced by
Nünning, since here the reader puts him-/herself into Marcus’s shoes and tries to understand what
he is going through. (Cf. Nünning 2014: 187) Implicit characterization can also be found when
Marcus describes his mother and makes her strange behavior responsible for the way he behaves:
!
Marcus knew he was weird, and he knew that part of the reason he was weird was because his mother was
weird. She just didn’t get this, any of it. She was always telling him that only shallow people made
judgements on the basis of clothes or hair; she didn’t want him to watch rubbish television, or listen to
rubbish music, or play rubbish computer games (she thought they were all rubbish), which meant that if he
wanted to anything that any of the other kids spent their time doing he had to argue with her for hours.
(About a Boy 15)
!
In this passage, we can find an explicit auto-characterization of Marcus as well as an explicit altero-
characterization of his mother. They are explicitly referred to as “weird“, a definite descriptive
statement evaluating a character which is, according to Neumann and Nünning, typical for this form
of characterization. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 54) Additionally, an illustration of
characterization according to physical appearance can be found on various occasions throughout the
novel, for instance when Marcus meets Ellie in front of the headmistress’s office: “He was on his
own at first, but then Ellie McCrae, this sulky, scruffy girl from year ten who hacked off her own
hair and wore black lipstick, sat down on the far end of the row of chairs outside the office.“ (About
a Boy 1998: 152)
!
According to Rimmon-Kenan, by analyzing the physical appearance of a character, certain traits are
ascribed to him/her. However, there is always a difference between external features that cannot be
controlled by a character such as the color of his/her eyes and features that largely depend on his/
her free will. (Cf. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 65) This certainly is the case with Ellie as she herself
34
decides to cut her hair and wear dark lipstick. Furthermore, she surely knows how her physical
appearance makes her come across to others. Characterization in About a Boy is also strongly
influenced by direct speech, in the numerous dialogic passages featured in the novel:
!
“Mum, you must know why I turned it off really?“!
“No.“!
He couldn’t believe it. Surely she must be thinking about it all the time, like he was?
“Because of what he was trying to do.“!
She looked at him.!
“I’m sorry, Marcus, I’m still not with you.“!
“The… thing.“
“Marcus, you’re an articulate boy. You can do better than this.“!
She was driving him mad. “He’s spent the last five minutes trying to kill himself. Like you did. I didn’t want
to watch it, and I didn’t want you to watch it.“!
“Ah.“ She reached for the remote control and turned the TV off. “I’m sorry. I was being pretty thick, wasn’t
I?“!
“Yes.“!
“I just never made the connection at all. Incredible. God.“ (About a Boy 78)
!
Another aspect Gurr categorizes as being characteristic for the novel is Hornby’s humor. As an
example, Gurr names the instance when Will and Fiona meet for the first time after her suicide
attempt and he politely tries to introduce himself to her but fails anyway (cf. Gurr 2007: 191): ““Hi.
I’m Will,“ he said. “We’ve … Well, I…“ But he obviously couldn’t think of a polite way of saying
that he’d seen her conked out on the sofa by a pool of her own sick the week before, so he stopped
and just smiled.“ (About a Boy 1998: 90)
An important technique associated with humor is also frequently used in the novel: irony. Generally,
irony can be defined as humor based on “something other than especially the opposite of literal
meaning“. (Cf. Merriam-Webster, online) In connection with About a Boy, the phenomenon
becomes most strikingly apparent in two scenes. One example definitely can be found in the Dead
Duck scene in which Marcus accidentally kills a duck with a loaf of bread and in a way
foreshadows the his mother’s suicide attempt: “Marcus couldn’t believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK,
he’d been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things,
and none of them had ever happened before.“ (About a Boy 1998 :60)
!
Due to the use of the word “try“ in the sentence, it becomes obvious that the type of humor is this
scene definitely is slapstick, meaning that a comic scene is released through an often exaggerated
35
physical act. (Cf. Merriam-Webster, online) However, the tone of the scene changes almost
immediately after the seemingly comic scene when Marcus comes home and finds his mother on
the floor, lying in her own vomit. By contrasting two examples of the theme of mental health,
namely Marcus’s attempt to kill a duck and Fiona’s suicide attempt, Hornby tries to make the
audience think about the seriousness of the topic. (Cf. South Australian Certificate of Education
2011, online) Another instance, in which irony becomes apparent is when Will is asked to be a
godfather upon his visit to his friends’ house:
!
“We were wondering,“ said John, “whether you’d like to be Imogen’s godfather?“ The two of them sat there
with an expectant smile on their faces, as if he were about to leap to his feet, burst into tears and wrestle
them to the carpet in a euphoric embrace. Will laughed nervously.
“Godfather? Church and things? Birthday presents? Adoption if you’re killed in an air crash?“
“Yeah.“!
“You’re kidding.“!
“We’ve always thought you have hidden depths,“ said John. !
“Ah, but you see I haven’t. I am this shallow.“ (About a Boy 11)
!
The last two sentences especially bring out the irony of the whole situation since Will’s use of
sarcasm underlines just how ironic it is to ask someone who clearly detests children to be a
godfather. (Cf. South Australian Certificate of Education 2011, online) Additionally, the two scenes
mentioned above have a high comic potential, as the situations rendered in the ‘Dead Duck Day’
episode or the ’Godfather’ episode draw their effects from their inherent absurdity. Marcus killing a
duck with a hardened loaf of bread is very unlikely to happen in real life and also the way he
handles the situation, not blaming himself but rather the duck, is quite humorous:
!
Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent’s park. How come he managed to
pick a duck that pathetic? There must have been something wrong with it. It was probably just about to die
from a heart attack or something; it was just a coincidence. (About a Boy 60)
!
Another aspect especially important for this novel and also for the genre of pop literature in general
is the extensive use of cultural or literary references. Hornby works with a handful of different
references from the pop world to make the novel seem more life-like. However, often the reference
cannot be instantly understood by everyone, especially if reading the novel today. Back in 1998,
different cultural frameworks could be taken for granted than in 2017. This might lead to younger
readers not getting the meaning behind the reference when reading the novel today, for instance in
the case of the reference to Macaulay Culkin:
36
!
The only other kind of person he could think of who didn’t go to school was the Macaulay Culkin kind.
They’d had something about him on Saturday-morning TV once, and they said he got taught in a caravan
sort of thing by a private tutor. That would be OK, he supposed. Better than OK, because Macaulay Culkin
probably got three hundred and fifty pounds a week, maybe even more, which meant that if he were
Macaulay Culkin he could pay his mum to teach him. (About a Boy 13)
!
Back in 1998, Macaulay Culkin was a popular child actor who earned a lot of money, thus being
considered an idol by many children. However, nowadays hardly anyone remembers him. And
while for older readers, the reference to Macaulay Culkin is obvious because Marcus thinks that if
he were a famous actor who earns a lot of money, he would not have to go to school, it might not be
obvious to the younger audience. Another type of reference used in the novel are cultural
references. This means that the references are specifically set to the culture associated with the
book, hence the English culture. References like ‘Manchester United’ or ‘Ryan Giggs’ contribute to
the setting of the novel but also to the aspect of time. Through referencing Ryan Giggs, we know
approximately which time the novel is set in. Additionally, the references to soccer are very
common for Nick Hornby since he is a huge fan of soccer. ‘Ryan Giggs’ is referred to in Chapter 26
when Marcus enters Ali’s, Rachel’s son’s room. He has a big poster of the soccer player, who was
very popular in the year of 1998, on his wall:
!
Everything was there - the Ryan Giggs poster and the Michael Jordan poster and the Pamela Anderson
poster and the Super Maria stickers… A social historian of the future would probably be able to date the
room to within a twenty-four-hour period. Will glanced at Marcus, who was looking bewildered. Standing
Marcus in front of posters of Ryan Giggs and Michael Jordan was like taking an average twelve-year old to
look at the Tudors in the National Portrait Gallery. (About a Boy 217)
!
Gurr also mentions the use of cultural references in his article. He states that by giving various hints
to cultural phenomena, insiders are encouraged to establish the connections between the references
and their meanings in the book. As an example, he mentions Will’s first visit to the SPAT group and
his observations upon meeting the female members: “Moira, Will noted with interest, was wearing a
Lorena Bobbit T-shirt.“ (About a Boy 1998: 39)
Gurr goes on by explaining that Lorena Bobbit became famous in the 1990s for cutting her violent
husband’s penis off one night. (Cf. 2007: 192) When connecting this reference to its position in the
novel, the reader can establish that by wearing a T-shirt with Lorena on it, Moira definitely supports
Lorena’s actions and declares herself a feminist, taking a stand against violence against women.
!
37
Additionally, Gurr mentions the use of musical references. He states that by using subtle references
to phenomena associated with the genre of pop (e.g. Nirvana), Hornby not only instrumentalizes
them for the plot but also to characterize some of the protagonists. (Cf. 2007: 184) Additionally, by
mentioning lines like “dark despair“ and “I felt he found my letters“ from the famous song ‘Killing
me softly’, Hornby manages to implicitly link those words to the situations occurring in the novel,
namely Fiona’s attempt to commit suicide and Kurt Cobain’s death. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 192) The most
important musical reference used in the novel is obviously the one to the grunge band Nirvana. The
first reference can directly be found in the title of the novel: ‘About a Boy’ is a direct reference to
the popular Nirvana song called ‘About a Girl’, representing the initiation story of both
protagonists. Furthermore, there are constant references to Kurt Cobain, the famous lead singer of
the band. Ellie, the girl Marcus thinks he is in love with, is a great fan of him. Not only Ellie, but
also Will always listens to Nirvana’s music, thus playing into the aspect of defining oneself as cool
according to the music you listen to. This also becomes apparent when Marcus visits Will’s flat for
the first time and goes through his CDs:
!
“But who are they? And why are they cool?“
“That’s Charlie Parker, and that’s Chet Baker. And they’re on my wall because I like their music and they’re
cool.“
“Why are they cool?“
Will sighed. “I don’t know. Because they took drugs and died, probably.“ (About a Boy 109)
!
Nevertheless, the great number of references to both Nirvana and especially Kurt Cobain do not
only account for the coolness associated with listening to grunge at that time but also stand for a
much more serious topic: Kurt Cobain suffered from depression and eventually killed himself. In
relation to what happens to Fiona, it becomes apparent that this is also of importance for the book,
especially when Ellie and Marcus want to travel to Cambridge to meet Clive, Marcus’s father, and
their trip is overshadowed by the death of Kurt Cobain:
!
He knew who it was now. He saw the same picture every single day of the week on Ellie’s chest. He felt hot
all over; he didn’t even need to read the old guy’s paper, but he did anyway. “ROCK STAR COBAIN
DEAD“, was the headline, and underneath, in smaller writing, “Nirvana singer, 27, shoots himself.“ Marcus
thought and felt a lot of things all at once: he wondered whether Ellie had seen the paper yet, and if she
hadn’t then how she’d be when she found out; and he wondered if his mum was OK, even though he knew
there was no connection between his mum and Kurt Cobain because his mum was a real person and Kurt
Cobain wasn’t; and then he felt confused, because the newspaper headline had turned Kurt Cobain into a
real person somehow; and then he just felt very sad - sad for Ellie, sad for Kurt Cobain’s wife and little girl,
sad for his mum, sad for himself. (About a Boy 259)
38
!
From this passage, the connection between Fiona's attempt to commit suicide and Kurt Cobain’s
death becomes obvious. Although it seems that Marcus has gotten over Fiona overdosing on pills,
by being confronted with what happened to Kurt Cobain, he is made aware of what could have
happened had Fiona not survived. Additionally, by having experienced what Cobain’s family is
going through upon hearing about his suicide, Marcus is also able to empathize with their emotional
state. He also knows what it feels like to be depressed due to witnessing his mother’s emotional
state every day. However, the theme of depression and possible suicide is a topic of great
importance for the book and will be discussed in close detail in the following section.
!
4.3. Themes
!
As already mentioned, Hornby is often categorized as an author belonging to the genre of British
pop literature, thus his themes also fall into this category, meaning that they cover issues occurring
in our everyday lives. In an entertaining as well as in a reflective way, Hornby deals with topics like
manhood, identity and coming-of-age. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 183) In the case of About a Boy, Hornby also
deals with a range of more serious topics, one of them being depression and (possible) suicide.
Marcus knows that something is wrong with his mother since she cries a lot throughout the day.
Marcus, however, cannot make out the reason for her being sad. This is brilliantly illustrated in the
following, longer passage rendered in free indirect discourse:
!
What could be wrong with her that he wouldn’t know about? She was in work, so they weren’t poor,
although they weren’t rich either - she was a music therapist, which meant she was a sort of teacher of
handicapped children, and she was always saying that the money was pitiful, pathetic, lousy, a crime. But
they had enough for the flat, and for food, and for holidays once a year, and even for computer games, once
in a while. What else made you cry, apart from money? Death? But he’d know if anybody important had
died; she would only cry that much about Grandma, Grandpa, his uncle Tom and Tom’s family, and he’d
seen them all the previous weekend, at his cousin Ella’s fourth birthday party. Something to do with men?
He knew she wanted a boyfriend; but he knew because she joked about it sometimes and he couldn’t see
that it was possible to go from joking about something now and again to crying about it all the time. […] So
what else was there? He tried to remember what people cried about in EastEnders, apart from money, death
and boyfriends, but was wasn’t very helpful […] (About a Boy 30)
!
Of course, due to his young age, Marcus has no idea what the symptoms of depression are, let alone
what depression is. However, since he is an extremely intelligent child, he knows that there is
something wrong with her, thus he constantly tries to cheer her up by coming up with possible
39
solutions for her sadness. One such envisioned solution is the belief that by expanding the family,
her problems could be solved. However, all his efforts do not seem to work since Fiona attempts to
commit suicide anyhow. While Marcus thinks that his mother has great problems and thus is very
worried about her, she surprises him by being very calm about the whole situation which confuses
him even more, making him question if her suicide attempt was in fact as bad as he had believed:
!
But at the moment, he was not getting her at all. He hadn’t understood the crying, and now, when he had
expected her to be twice as miserable as she had been before, she was completely normal. He was beginning
to doubt himself. Wasn’t trying to kill yourself a really big deal? Didn’t you have long talks about it
afterwards, and tears, and hugs? Apparently not. (About a Boy 79)
!
However, later in the novel Marcus finds out that while Fiona certainly is not happy with her life
just, like the lead singer of Nirvana, it is possible to cheer her up more easily than he thought. By
asking Will for help, they come up with a way to help her: Will introduces his girlfriend Rachel to
her and the two of them start talking to each other. Thus, although the theme of depression and
suicide is a rather serious and darker theme, in the end it is resolved in a rather positive way.
!
Another theme of the novel clearly is coming-of-age. The whole novel focuses on both Will’s and
Marcus’s way of becoming more mature, or in Marcus’s case, to become more like a teenager.
Marcus is a twelve-year-old boy who, mostly due to his mother’s condition, has had to grow up
more quickly than other children his age. Will, on the other hand, has never fully grown up. He is
unwilling to commit to a relationship or have children — two things that are considered normal for
people his age. Furthermore, the fact that he invents a child in order to get sexually involved with
single women speaks for his immaturity. The relationship between Marcus and Will is beneficial for
both of them. By learning from Will what constitutes being young, Marcus starts to get along better
with his classmates at school and becomes accepted while Will must take on more responsibility
when taking care of Marcus. Thus, not only coming-of-age can be considered a theme but rather the
aspect of transformation.
Other themes featured in the book are single parenting but also bullying. In a way, the two themes
are intertwined since Marcus being bullied in school is an effect of his mother single-parenting him
and failing at it. She tries to raise Marcus according to her own beliefs; thus, he does not learn how
to behave like a child. Hence Marcus does not know what children his age do and instantly becomes
a target. Additionally, Fiona is so involved with her own problems that she fails to notice how badly
Marcus is treated in school. The problem with single parenting always is the missing parent. In an
40
effort to create a family, Marcus tries to bring together Will and his mother. However, this is not the
ideal solution, as the novel suggests. Rather the establishment of a community of people that both
are closely linked and care about each other is what Marcus needs. At the end of the novel, he has
found a network of people that he can rely on. This also proves to be a solution for Marcus’s
problem of being bullied since the people caring about him manage to make him feel more
comfortable in his own skin and adapting to the lifestyle of a twelve-year-old. (Cf. Penguin
Readers, online) While the novel certainly is supposed to be a comic novel, Nünning states that by
including themes like problems with identity or inner crisis, it becomes clear that Hornby also wants
to address more serious topics. Additionally, the question of how to behave in a society that is solely
based on the level of coolness is posed by Hornby. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 49) He critically reflects on
a topic that has become more and more important in our society, namely the importance of brands
when forming one’s identity as well as circling other people out according to the clothes they wear.
This becomes especially apparent in Marcus’s case since he has learned from his mother to regard
those who identify themselves as cool according to their clothes as superficial, thus making him the
prime example for an outsider. In relation to the importance of brands for our everyday lives,
Nünning also mentions the aspect of ethics. According to her, Will has a very distorted view on
ethics since at the beginning of the novel, he solely bases ethical values on the way people look (cf.
2003: 43): “People, women and men, had a duty to care, he felt.“ (About a Boy 1998: 98)
Marcus, on the other hand, has to face being the target of bullying due to his style of clothing and
the rules his mother has set for him. He starts to question whether the choices his mother has made
for him are what is best for him since people who surround him are doing exactly the opposite of
what he is doing. Although he naturally trusts his mother’s views, in meeting Will, he finds out that
there are other ethical views apart from his mother’s that might make it possible for him to be
treated better in school, thus changing his life for the better. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 44)
!
The last theme I want to mention in this section is the theme of music since it has a great
importance for the characters in the book. Music takes on the role of characterizing the protagonists
and also has an influence on how the plot develops. Will, for instance, is characterized by the music
he listens to. Mainly, he listens to music that is considered ‘cool’ by society. Hence, he obliges to
the rules of society. Fiona, a late hippie, listens to Joni Mitchell and Roberta Flack, two musicians
commonly associated with the genre, thus here music again functions as a way of characterization.
Lastly, Marcus, who has to listen to the same music as his mother, does not conform with what
people his age listen to and only slowly, with the help of Will, learns what music is common for his
41
age group. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 191) This is especially important since in a way, he breaks free from his
mother by starting to listen to the music he wants. Pop music, as we shall see in chapter 6, plays an
even more significant role in Juliet, Naked.
!
5. How To Be Good
!
Published in 2001, How To Be Good was Hornby's fourth novel. In contrast to his previously
released books written from a male perspective, in this book Hornby made the main protagonist
female. (Cf. Nünning 2003: 34) However, as John Mullan points out, Hornby does not adequately
manage to bring across the female perspective but rather "uses his female narrator as an echo
chamber for mid-life male dissatisfaction." (Cf. Mullan 2002, online) Hornby on the other hand,
when asked whether he encountered any challenges writing from a female perspective stated that he
didn't think that "men and women are as different as glossy magazines would have us believe, and
despite the perceived maleness of some of my pursuits, I've still spent more time in my life talking
to women than men." (Hornby 2005, online) Unlike in his other works, Hornby's common themes
of football and music are not dealt with, but he rather focuses on the different aspects of marital life.
(Cf. Bartels 2001, online) Moreover, it was not only Hornby's first attempt at female narration but
also the long narrative passages that made many readers label the novel dull, thus not making it as
much of success as Hornby's previous works.
!
5.1. Plot
!
Katie Carr, a forty-year-old doctor and mother of two living in a North England suburb is both
dissatisfied with the way her life has developed and how her marriage has drastically taken a turn
for the worse. For this, she in no way blames herself, but her sarcastic and angry husband David
whom she has been married to for nearly two decades. (Cf. Jeff 2007, online) They have lived
parallel lives for quite some time, not being affectionate with each other. In a way, Katie feels
trapped by her relationship with David and not valued enough by him:
!
So I'm bound to end up thinking about brutal and degrading marriages, and whether I'm in one, and however
hard I try to kid myself - ah, but the meaning of these words "brutal and degrading" it’s different in our
particular postal district, he calls me a silly bloody woman, he creates bad atmospheres when my family
visit, he is consistently negative about things I hold dear, he thinks old people should stay in the seats
specially designated for them on buses - I know, really, I'm not. I'm neither brutalized nor degraded by my
42
relationship with David; it's just that I don't really like it very much, and that is a very different kind of
complaint. (How To Be Good 30)
!
However, it is not only the way David behaves but also his job that Katie detests. He writes a
weekly column called ‘The Angriest Man in Holloway’, and he is living up to the title by being
incredibly cynical and bitter:
!
David's only steady income derives from a newspaper column he contributes to our local paper. The column
is illustrated by a photograph of him snarling at the camera, and is subtitled "The Angriest Man in
Holloway." The last one I could bear to read was a diatribe against old people who traveled on buses: Why
did they never have their money ready? Why wouldn't they use the seats set aside for them at the front of the
bus? […] (How To Be Good 4)
!
Rubilandia argues that David's hostile behavior towards Katie could very well be a reaction to Katie
treating David inferior because of his lower income as well as her believing that without her job the
whole family would not survive. (Cf. 2013, online) Their constant fights result in Katie eventually
telling David that she wants a divorce. While this is very shocking for him, Katie has foreseen this
outcome:
!
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 (How To Be Good 2)
!
Joe Queenan states that putting this statement very early in the book is not Hornby's usual way of
commencing. In a way, he seems to advise the reader not to expect too much from both the narrator
or the plot. (Cf. 2001, online)
Due to her unhappy marriage, Katie starts an affair with some man she hardly knows. However,
based on her job as a doctor which in her opinion automatically makes her a good person, Katie
feels completely innocent:
!
Listen: I'm not a bad person. I'm a doctor. One of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was because I
thought it would be a good - as in Good, rather than exciting or well-paid or glamorous - thing to do. I liked
how it sounded: "I want to be a doctor", "I'm training to be a doctor", "I'm a GP in a small North London
practice". Although it made me seem just right - professional, kind of brainy, not too flashy, respectable,
mature, caring. You think doctors don't care about how things look, because they're doctors? Of course we
43
do. Anyway. I'm a good person, a doctor, and I'm lying in a hotel room with a man I don't really know very
well called Stephen, and I've just asked my husband for a divorce. (How To Be Good 6)
!
It is not the first time the thought of divorce has crossed Katie's mind. Nevertheless, she had
imagined it in a very different way with David and her being civilized about an amicable break-up.
Now, she finds herself in a situation that is far from her fantasy:
!
But I can see now just how fantastical this fantasy is; I am already beginning to suspect that the wistful
evenings with the photograph albums might not work out. It is far from likely, in fact, that the photographs
will be snipped down the middle - indeed, knowing David, they already have been, last night, just after our
phone call. […] The trouble with my fantasy was that it skipped straight from the happy wedding to the
happy separation; but of course in between weddings and separations, unhappy things happen. (How To Be
Good 11)
!
Talking to David about a divorce does not turn around things for Katie either. She tries to explain to
him that because she is unhappy, a divorce is imminent. However, he is not willing to accept this as
a reason to leave his family which makes Katie question whether she has made the situation too
easy for herself: “I hadn't thought about any of this, of course. Somehow I'd got it into my head that
me saying the words would be enough, that mere expression of the desire would be proof that my
marriage wasn't working.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 14)
!
When they decide to let the issue slip and a few weeks pass, Katie starts to wonder if her asking for
a divorce was just an act of panic. For the time being, the situation seems to get better, and Katie
starts to look differently at David. Nevertheless, she continues having an affair: “If I were single, or
had recently embarked on the latest in a long string of relationships, I would think that Stephen's
behaviour was pathetic, or threatening, or annoying, at least; but I'm single, I'm a married woman,
and as a paradoxical consequence I tell him that I'll meet him for a drink after work.“ (How To Be
Good 2001: 24)
!
Katie is not sure what the purpose behind the affair is. The only sense she can make out of what she
is doing is that she finds something in him that her marriage with David is missing: herself:
!
You see, what I really want, and what I'm getting with Stephen, is the opportunity to rebuild myself from
scratch. David's picture of me is complete now, and I'm pretty sure neither of us likes it much; I want to rip
the page out and start again on a fresh sheet, just like I used to do when I was a kid and had messed a
drawing up. It doesn't even matter who the fresh sheet is, really, so it's beside the point whether I like
44
Stephen, or whether he knows what to do with me in bed, or anything like that. I just want his rapt attention
when I tell him that my favourite book is Middlemarch, and I just want that feeling, the feeling I get with
him, of having not gone wrong yet. (How To Be Good 31)
!
Katie concludes that she does not want to divorce David but rather wants him to change. In her
opinion, he should stop being the angry, whiny man she married and start being "someone who
loves me properly, and makes me feel good, and appreciates me, and thinks I'm great." (Cf. Hornby
2001: 33) But then, their crisis takes a new turn when David enthusiastically tells her that some guy
in the park named GoodNews magically healed his back problems by laying his hands on him.
Being the doctor that Katie is, she is not euphoric about a stranger with no medical degree
whatsoever playing around with her husband's back and wanting 200 pounds for it:
!
"How did you find him?"
"Newsagent's window."
"A newsagent's window? What qualifications has he got?"
"None whatsoever." Information delivered with a great deal of pride and aggression, inevitably. Medical
qualifications belong on my side of the marital divide, and are therefore to be despised. (How To Be Good
35)
!
In this excerpt, it yet again becomes clear that David feels inferior to Katie based on her job as a
doctor and is therefore very proud of himself for having achieved something without her medical
expertise. The reader also gets the impression that in a way, David has trusted a stranger with his
back problems so that he can make Katie mad about it.
David is so fascinated by the healer that he takes their daughter Molly, who suffers from eczema, to
see GoodNews and surprisingly her health problems also magically disappear. Although Katie is not
pleased with David's actions, her sole focus lies on fixing their marriage, which turns out to be a
lost cause since David wants her to move out. With everything that is happening around her, Katie
starts to question her concept of being good:
!
I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't
count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way. […] It's no good me telling you that I'm a
doctor, because I'm a doctor during weekdays. I've been sleeping with someone other than my husband
outside working hours - I'm not so bad that I'd do it inside working hours - and at the moment, being a
doctor can't make up for that, however many rectal boils I look at. (How To Be Good 48)
!
45
Instead of Katie leaving, David moves out for a few days. When he returns, he has changed
dramatically for the better. He takes the whole blame on himself and even wants to make it right
with Katie by taking her to the theater. The evening goes by very pleasantly, and Katie starts to
believe that David might be changing for the better. However, her thoughts about them possibly
rekindling their romance are surpassed by a very unusual act from David giving away their money
to homeless people:
!
"You can't go around giving eighty quid to homeless people!", I hiss.
"I am aware that I cannot go around giving eighty quid to every homeless person. I just wanted to do it that
one time. See how it felt."
"And how did it feel?"
"Good."
I don't get any of this. "When were you ever interested in being good?"
"I wasn't talking about being good. I was talking about feeling good."
"Well… Get drunk. Get stoned. Have sex. Don't give all our bloody money away."
"I'm tired of all those things. I was stuck. I need to do something different." (How To Be Good 58)
!
As it turns out, this is just the beginning. David starts to behave very differently from how he
previously did: taking an interest in his children, making breakfast and selling his son's computer to
give it to people in need. While Katie had wished for a different David, she certainly had not hoped
for this version of him. She soon finds out the trigger for his behavior: DJ GoodNews. David stayed
with him for a couple of days and noticed that he had made a lot of wrong choices in his life.
Thus ,he now wants to make right by everyone. He even gives up his column and the novel he was
writing on. It seems that GoodNews in a way has brainwashed David to make him believe that
material things are not something one cannot live without. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online) While
Katie is happy to see him be better, she is both confused by the abruptness with which the change
came about (cf. Jeff 2007, online) as well as not agreeing with him giving away his stuff because
she believes that everyone ought to work hard for the things he/she owns. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013,
online) Eventually, much to Katie's dissatisfaction, GoodNews moves in with the Carrs. Katie
remains skeptical about the powers of DJ GoodNews, mainly because she is bothered by how much
time David and he spend together. In a way, David trades Katie for GoodNews. Rubilandia also
argues that GoodNews in a way also betrays his beliefs of not having to live with material goods
when he moves in with an upper-middle-class family in a big house. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online)
GoodNews and David start working on a project involving providing shelter for homeless. By
making the people in the neighborhood adopt a homeless child, David and GoodNews want to
46
reduce poverty on the streets. David's odd behavior also starts affecting other parts of their lives:
their daughter Molly starts to randomly give her things away, while their son Tom as a reaction to
having to give everything to the poor, starts stealing.
!
The plan of providing shelter for homeless teenagers is in full motion and even the Carr family
adopt a young adult named Monkey. Regarding this, Rubilandia once again mentions the
importance of class and money in the book stating that the neighborhood the Carr's live in is very
wealthy and thus at first the inhabitants are not all too happy with the idea of having to adopt a
homeless child but rather feel threatened. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online) Things start out well with
the teenagers, but later one kid eventually starts stealing from one of the families proving that the
fears the neighbors had in the beginning, were not too far-fetched. Just when Katie thought that
David's plan was finally failing, he manages to turn around the mood and convinces the neighbors
that although some of the children might have a difficult past, they should not be left on the streets.
This aspect also corresponds to the idea that some of the children certainly were not interested in
improving while others very well "wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of receiving a
proper education, clothes and be well-fed." (Rubilandia 2013, online) When one of the neighbors
congratulates Katie on her husband's achievements and the good he has done, she feels the need to
justify herself as a good person too: "I'm a doctor, you know.", I say. "I've saved the odd life
myself." (How To Be Good 2001: 166)
!
In the act of defeat, Katie moves out of the house and into a spare room that belongs to a friend of
hers. When she tells David about it, he seems almost depressed about her move. However, Katie
could not be happier in her new home. Finally, she feels like she has time to do the things she wants
to do: read the newspaper, listen to music and be by herself without any interruptions. However, her
state of blissfulness comes to an abrupt end when she realizes that without her, things at home start
to grow very weird. Since their plan to provide shelter for the poor has not worked out the way they
thought, David and GoodNews come up with a different one: they now want to reverse guilt. Of
course, although Katie does not want it to happen, she starts to think about reversing her guilt too.
She realizes that her life holds several categories which she would like to reverse like Stephen or
her children and finds herself questioning whether it is possible to redeem oneself from what one
has done wrong:
!
47
I don't wish to be melodramatic: I know I have not lived a bad life. But nor do I think that this crime-sheet
amounts to nothing: believe me, it amounts to something. Look at it. Adultery. The casual exploitation of
friends. Disrespect for parents who have done nothing apart from attempt to stay close to me. I mean, that's
two of the ten commandments broken already, and given what - what, three, four? — of ten are all about
Sunday working hours and graven images, stuff that no longer really applies in early twenty-first-century
Holloway, I'm looking at a thirty-three per cent strike rate, and that, to me, is too high. […] When I look at
my sins (and if I think they're sins, then they are sins), I can see the appeal of born-again Christianity. I
suspect that it's not the Christianity that is so alluring; it's the rebirth. Because who wouldn't wish to start all
over again? (How To Be Good 180;181)
!
Katie sees no other way than to go to church to redeem herself. Instead of being freed of her sins,
she finds herself with even more questions on whether her life is meaningful and a divorce from
David is the last straw. During a meaningless fight with David, he brings her a box he made for
their wedding day and Katie realizes while her husband still cares about their marriage, she has
been emotionally lost the last few years: “That’s why David's box devastated me, I realize now - not
just because I had no idea my husband still felt anything at all about our wedding day, but because
the part of me that should feel things is sick, or dying, or dead, and I never even noticed until
tonight.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 200)
!
The next time Katie is in her office, the woman who held the sermon when Katie was at the church
comes to see her for a prescription. In desperate need of a second opinion on what to do about
David after the ‘wedding box’ incident, Katie asks her whether she should stay or leave David for
good. After a lengthy discussion, the woman eventually tells Katie to stay, and Katie is not sure if
that is the answer she wanted to hear:
!
I feel suddenly hopeless, the way one always does when two alternatives become one chosen course of action. I want to
go back to the time just seconds ago when I didn't know what to do. Because here's the thing: when you get into a mess
like mine, your marriage is like a knife in your stomach, and you know that you're in big trouble whatever you decide.
You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's
all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you
might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. (How To Be Good 204)
!
In an attempt to smooth things over, Katie tells David that she is moving back home. While it seems
like she is trying to accept David's change in attitude and adapt to it, Rubilandia argues that Katie's
‘good' behavior rather stems from her guilt, meaning that she feels obligated to come to terms with
her situation to be considered a good person. (Cf. 2013, online) Katie even asks GoodNews to heal
48
her headache. However, when he starts laying his hands on her, he cannot find anything, and Katie
knows that something must be missing:
!
"That's not how it works. There's got to be something there."
"What does that mean?" I ask this because I know he's not just talking about the headache. He is talking
about something else, something that he thinks is missing, and I believe him to be right: there is something
missing, which is why I came into this room in the first place. (How To Be Good 212)
!
Katie realizes that her ‘flat battery’ might have been the cause of her marital problems as well as
David's change and wants to start being "good" like David herself. He, on the other hand, suddenly
has another change of mind. Rubilandia argues that through his numerous attempts at being good
and making something out of his life, David, in fact, forgot that all these things do not improve
either the relationship with Katie nor with his children. (Cf. 2013, online) At this point in the book,
it seems like he finally realizes that: “I'm not talking about apologies. I'm talking about everything.
Feeding the poor. Telling everyone to give their money away. Writing that book. It's all mad, I know
that. I've known it for a while. I just haven't let on." (How To Be Good 2001: 223)
!
David tells Katie that he knows about GoodNews trying to help her and not finding anything. He
assumes that this is due to her losing the spark of life just like him. In a way, this shared feeling of
"having a flat battery" (How To Be Good 2001: 223) brings them closer together, and they decide to
try to make their marriage work again. However, the plan of just forgetting about the problems they
have with each other is bound to fail eventually. The whole situation explodes when Katie invites
one of her patients, Brian, for supper. Since he is homeless at the moment, her daughter comes up
with the idea to provide shelter for him because "that's what we do here. We're very good." (How To
Be Good 2001: 231) Realizing that her daughter has been drawn into the charity scheme of
GoodNews as well, Katie cannot longer hold it in and bursts out the emotions she has been holding
back for too long:
!
"Katie, stop. You're upsetting the kids."
"Good. Maybe they should be upset. Maybe they shouldn't go through life thinking that everything's OK,
everything's great, everything's so great, in fact, that it doesn't matter who we give money to or who we take
in, because it does matter. I wish it didn't. I wish we were competent enough to handle lives other than our
own, but we're not. And I'll tell you something for nothing. All my life I have wanted to help people. That's
why I wanted to be a doctor. And because of that I work ten-hour days and I get threatened by junkies and I
constantly let people down because I promise them hospital appointments that never come and I give them
drugs that never work. And having failed at that, I come home and fail at being a wife and a mother. Well, I
49
haven't got the energy to fail at anything else. […] If in twenty years' time, we're all still speaking, and
Molly's not an anorexic, and Tom's not inside, and I'm not hooked on tranquilizers, and you're not an
alcoholic, and you and I are still together, well, that'll be a bloody miracle in itself." (How To Be Good 235)
!
Katie's outbreak changes everything: David goes back to writing columns for the newspaper even
though he no longer is the ‘Angriest Man in Holloway’. GoodNews agrees to move out within three
months and the children, who seem very taken with their mother's outburst, live in constant fear that
their parents might divorce any second. Katie, on the other hand, has come to terms with how her
life is going to continue: she is going to stay married, at least until her children are of-age, and in a
way, she is still clinging to the hope of David and her coming to terms with each other one day. The
end of the book has been considered ambiguous by a variety of readers online:
!
He's wearing jeans, and Tom and I grab hold of one back pocket each in an attempt to anchor him, while
Molly, in turn, hangs on to us, purposelessly but sweetly. My family, I think, just that. And then, I can do
this. I can live this life. I can, I can. It's a spark I want to cherish, a splutter of life in the flat battery; but just
at the wrong moment, I catch a glimpse of the night sky behind David, and I can see that there's nothing out
there at all. (How To Be Good 244)
!
Many reviewers thought that the last paragraph started out with a very definite feeling which was
then overshadowed by the last sentence. Sara said that she thought, "this last bit was maybe that it's
just not that simple. It takes more than a single spark to sustain a battery, a marriage, or a family“.
(Cf. Sara, goodreads.com, online) Jeff brings an excellent argument forward stating that when
looking at "the last several pages before the end, you'll see the resolutions that Katie Carr makes to
give meaning to her life. […] In the very last page, she hesitantly accepts her family as the core of
her life, the thing that will give coherence and meaning. […] The last sentence violently departs
from that charm. The optimism is gone. We're left with the sense that although Katie may resolve to
find a meaning in family, in the back of her mind she'll always know that nothing means
anything." (2007, online) Jeff then goes on by asking himself what could have been the reason for
Hornby to destroy the perfect idea that "family makes everything worthwhile" and argues that
without faith, it is nearly impossible to live a life that is worth living and that finding answers in a
world without God is not easy. (Cf. 2007, online) Bartels also reckons the end of the book can be
considered a resignation as Katie is staring past her husband into the distance. (Cf. 2001, online)
Rubilandia, on the other hand, has a different take on the ending. They argue that throughout the
book, Katie always seems rather selfish because "we are always told that she wants to fill her own
necessities, whether they include her family or not." (Rubilandia 2013, online) However, Rubilandia
50
argues that at the end of the book, Katie has only just started her journey to find goodness as well as
having reconnected with her family, and while from the last sentence it might seem that Katie has
given up hope, the novel is describing a process, from general to particular, leading its way to a
happy ending“. (Cf. 2013, online)
!
!
5.2. Narrative Perspective
!
In How To Be Good, for the first time, Hornby breaks away from taking the point of view of a
middle-aged male protagonist whose perspectives are being focalized to the reader and instead
focuses on a female first-person narrator. Due to Katie being the main protagonist as well as the
narrator of the story, this phenomenon can also be considered an autodiegetic narrator. By using
Katie to tell her story from her own point of view, Hornby gives the reader the opportunity to
establish some level of intimacy that cannot be reached with a third person narration. (Cf. Hemus
2013, online) In the book, Katie lets the reader get an insight into her marital life and similar to
focalization, we get the feeling of having exclusive access to her thoughts and emotions. Due to the
direct approach into Katie's mind, the distance between the reader and the narrator is reduced thus
making it possible to take on her perspective as well as understanding her. (Cf. Nünning 2014: 179)
It can also lead to the reader experiencing the so-called "imagine-other" perspective, meaning that
he or she imagines how another person is feeling. This phenomenon comes into play when reading
How To Be Good. As a reader, one imagines what Katie must feel like being trapped in an uncaring,
seemingly hopeless marriage, trying desperately to find some time for herself. However, there also
is a bias to this phenomenon. While reading the book, readers do not only feel with Katie but also
with David who, as it turns out, is not the only one responsible for having ruined the marriage:
!
Maybe if I kept a diary I could date it precisely. I could read an entry and think, oh, right, it was on 23
November 1994, when David said this or did that. But what could David have possibly said or done to make
me close down in this way? No, I suspect that I closed myself down, that something in me just infarcted, or
dried up, or sclerotic, and I let it happen because it suited me. (How To Be Good 200)
!
However, while we can look right inside Katie's mind, there is no way of knowing how the other
characters of the story are feeling. In the case of How To Be Good, this would certainly have been
interesting since knowing how David feels about his marriage as well as his fundamental change
remain in the dark due to the fact that the novel exclusively features first-person narration. Katie
51
can only presume what her husband is thinking. This aspect could also constitute to the fact that she
does not understand his abrupt change in behavior and believes that he only starts seeing
GoodNews because he wants to make her angry:
!
I think two hundred pounds is too much, therefore he gleefully pays the two hundred pounds. The perversity
of the logic is actually alarming, when you think about it, because where will it end? Is it possible, for
example, that he would sell the kids to a paedophile ring - for a piffling amount of money - just because it
would really upset me? True, he loves his kids. But he really, really hates me, so it's a tough one to call.
(How To Be Good 37)
!
The limited viewpoint of the first-person narrator can also lead to bits and pieces of information
unfolding later in the story because the narrator was not present at every event that occurred and
thus does not know everything that happened. (Cf. Frost, online) A good example for this is when
Katie first hears about GoodNews and his healing powers. She is very skeptical about the man who
heals her husband's back problems without any medicine when in fact she is herself a doctor. Her
suspicion grows even more when GoodNews also heals her daughter's eczema:
!
"So, head, eczema, back. He's a real wizard, isn't he? Another two hundred quid?"
"And you don't think this is worth it?"
I snort, although I don't know what the snort is intended to convey. I don't know why I'm being like this. I
would have paid double that to make Molly better, but the opportunity to snipe is always irresistible,
whatever the circumstances. (How To Be Good 45)
!
Due to Katie not being present when GoodNews healed David and Molly, she has to be "reliant on
the information from the other characters" thus trusting David's and Molly's retelling of events.
(Neumann/Nünning 2008: 84)
Another problem that comes with first person narration is bias. Katie is telling the story from her
perspective, making it highly unlikely that she will remain biased about the events happening
around her especially since they involve her family. (Cf. Brenda 2012, online) Naturally, this also
applies to the aspect of characterization. All characters appearing in the story are only characterized
according to how Katie perceives them; thus, whether she has any personal feelings towards them
will play an important role during their characterization. This issue becomes apparent in Katie's
description of GoodNews upon their first meeting:
!
He's a funny little man, GoodNews. Thirtyish, small, astonishingly skinny; he would be unwise to pick a
fight with Tom. He has huge, bright-blue, frightened-looking eyes, and lots of curly, dirty-blond hair,
52
although I suspect that personal hygiene might not necessarily be a priority for him at the moment, and
perhaps I should reserve judgement on the hair colour until he has been persuaded to shower. There has
been an unwise and spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to grow a goatee, hence a fluffy little tuft of
something or other, just underneath the centre of his lower lip, that any mother would want to rub off with a
bit of spit. What you notice first of all, however, is that both his eyebrows have been pierced, and he is
wearing what appear to be brooches over each eye. (How To Be Good 93)
!
Katie characterizes GoodNews according to his looks; thus, the characterization is implicit.
Additionally, by describing his eyes as ‘frightened-looking’, Katie also uses what Rimmon-Kenan
refers to as disguised definitions, meaning that "a non-visual quality is attributed - as in a
synecdoche - to one part of the character's physique rather than to the character as
whole." (1983:66) Since there is only one narrator in the novel, every characterization can be
considered an altero-characterization and is based solely on how Katie perceives the other
characters, which becomes especially apparent in David's case. His characterization undergoes
some changes throughout the book. In the beginning, he is described as "the definition of aggrieved.
Permanently." (How To Be Good 2001: 3) Thus the reader believes him to be a very indecent
person according to Katie's description. Another incident underlining the attributed ascribed to him
is the description of a typical evening with their friends:
!
We walk in, and then Andrew says that so-and-so's a wanker and his new book is awful, and you say that the
new film by somebody else is unintentionally hilarious - even though nine times out of ten I know for a fact
that you haven't seen it - and Cam and I set there smiling and laughing if you're being funny instead of just
plain nasty, and then you get drunk and tell Andrew he's a genius, and he gets drunk and tells you you're a
genius, and then we go home. (How To Be Good 127)
!
According to Laura Miller, Hornby ascribes a very distinct specimen to the character of David: the
Angry Guy or at least a British variation of the American kind. She states that generally, the Angry
Guy is very resentful, just like David is in the book, but also a lot less cautious about his actions.
While David only writes about headscarves or old people on the bus in his columns, the American
Angry Guy will go as far as sending e-mails to anyone distancing themselves from his beliefs. (Cf.
Miller 2001, online) However, the attributes ascribed to him change when he meets GoodNews.
Although she is not happy with him giving away their money to poor people, she still calls him "a
model husband and father" acknowledging that he is participating very well in the family. (How To
Be Good 2001: 76) She also often distinguishes between the ‘old' and the ‘new’ David in the book
making the change he has undergone apparent. Apart from characterizing the other actors in the
novel, Katie explicitly portrays herself. Throughout the novel, the reader does not get very detailed
53
information about what Katie looks like. However, there are short passages in which she refers to
her looks: “Maybe it's just because I am simply not exciting enough for anyone to get worked up
about. OK, I'm just about attractive enough for Stephen to want to sleep with me, but when it comes
to jealous rages and dementedly possessive behaviour and lovelorn misery, I simply haven't got
what it takes.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 88)
!
The aspect of characterization also plays a major role in relation to unreliability. As stated in
Neumann and Nünning, when using auto-characterization, first person narrators tend to use
techniques like face-saving and wishful thinking - two phenomena also common in Katie’s case (Cf.
2008: 55): “[…] And what I’ve got turns out to be two lovely kids, a nice house, a good job, a
husband who doesn’t beat me and presses all right buttons on the lift… I can do this, I think. I can
live this life.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 20)
!
In general, the element of unreliability has a significant influence on first person narration. When a
narrator gives the reader the feeling that he/she cannot be trusted, then this is called an unreliable
narrator. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 98) As already mentioned, this can be caused by a disturbed
self-characterization, but also by the retelling of events or the evaluation of these developments.
(Cf. Allrath 2013: 59) Furthermore, when facts do not correspond with the narrator’s views or the
outcome of an action shows that the narrator is wrong, the narrator can also be considered
unreliable. The problem with unreliability is, as mentioned by Wall, that there is also the aspect of
naturalization, meaning that the reader can come up with strategies to solve contradictions rising
from the narrator’s tellings. (Cf. Allrath 2013: 60) Allrath points out that the speech of unreliable
narrators cannot automatically make them unreliable due to most of them having an excellent use of
language. Above all, the reader has to consider the personal involvement of the reader in the story.
(Cf. Allrath 2013, 64) In the case of female narrators, there often is a discrepancy between the
implicit description and the explicit evaluation of the behavior of other characters. (Cf. Allrath
2013, 67) This aspect of unreliability can also be witnessed in How To Be Good when Katie talks
about GoodNews:
!
“I try to survive without things that not everybody has,“ says GoodNews. “I’m not joining in until
everyone’s got everything. When, like, the last peasant in the Brazilian rainforest has a dishwasher, or a, you
know, like, a cappuccino maker, or one of those TV’s that’s the size of a house, then count me in, yeah? But
until, I’m making a stand.“ “That’s very noble of you.“, I say. Nutter, I think, with enormous sense of relief.
54
There is, after all, nothing to learn from this person, no way he can make me feel small or wrong or ignoble
or self-indulgent: he is simply a crank, and I can ignore him with impunity (How To Be Good 100;101)
!
In the case of How To Be Good, unreliability cannot be traced back to Katie’s limited knowledge
but rather to her personal involvement in the story when narrating the events. Since she is a
character in the story and David is her husband, she is personally affected by the things that happen.
Furthermore, she is the only narrator in the story. Thus the reader can solely rely on how she recalls
what is going on. While her personal involvement in the story does not automatically make Katie an
unreliable narrator, there are certainly instances when her feelings make actions, as well as
characters, appear in a particular light when the reader cannot be sure if this holds true. Referring to
the quote used above about GoodNews, it becomes apparent that Katie does not like him personally
and thus does cast his personal beliefs in a favorable light. The same holds true for David:
!
When David swears in front of the children - who are only pretending to watch television, seeing as how
their two heads swivel round immediately when they hear a word they shouldn’t - he is communicating to
all of us that he is unhappy, that his life is terrible, that he hates me, that things are so bad he can no longer
control his language. He can, of course, and does, most of the time, so I in turn hate him for his
manipulation. (How To Be Good 29)
!
Through Katie’s negative description of David, the reader also harbors negative feelings towards his
behavior and the character as a whole, when it could also be very well that due to his back pain,
David, just like everybody else, when in pain, is in a bad mood. As stated by Shelley Frost, the
restrictive view of the narrator can also lead to false assumptions about characters. (Cf. Frost,
online) In the case of Katie, as she cannot read David’s mind, she frequently interprets his actions as
something pointed against her: “He sighs and mutters under his breath, filled with despair at my
prissiness and my lack of sympathy.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 29) However, there are no clear
indicators whether Katie can be regarded an unreliable narrator or not and while her restricted point
of view may lead to misunderstandings of other character’s actions or intentions, I would rather put
this phenomenon in the category of naturalization than to regard it as unreliable.
!
5.3. Themes
!
As already mentioned, Hornby does not deal with the usual themes of music and football in this
book. Instead, he focuses on a crucial and severe issue: goodness. However, since there are various
notions and everyone individually interprets the term, it is hard to find just one definition of
55
goodness. This issue is also taken on by the book which seems to ask the question of what can
actually be considered good: Can you call yourself good if you redeem yourself by helping others?
Does your job automatically make you a good person and what role does forgiveness take on
concerning goodness?
!
Katie believes that she truly is a good person based on her job. Additionally, she considers herself a
good mother and a good wife. However, those notions are put into question when the reader learns
that Katie has an affair, does not have a good relationship with her children and has asked her
husband of two decades for a divorce. David and she fight on a regular basis and often Katie
mishandles the situation. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online) Throughout the book, passages like “I get
through a working day without wanting to hang myself“ (How To Be Good 2001: 17) signal to the
reader that Katie fights battles for herself, not caring too much about how her family is affected by
everything but solely focusing on her survival by helping others. (Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online)
David is the complete opposite of Katie. Starting out being an angry man, one does not know
whether he has made up his mind about what can be considered good nor if he has even ever
considered the concept of goodness. However, his whole attitude changes when he is introduced to
GoodNews. He starts being the extreme contrast to his old self: not judging anybody based on their
looks or actions, helping the poor and wanting to re-establish a relationship with his family,
especially Katie. The problem is, as Rubilandia states, that David soon loses track of his initial
thought of saving his marriage and instead over-achieves in an attempt to redeem himself from all
his wrong choices. (Cf. 2013, online) The aspect of the economic class also plays a significant role
in relation to goodness. David and GoodNews’s project of providing shelter would not be possible
if the neighbors, as well as they, did not have the needed resources. Without a steady income and
spacious house, the families would not be able to take in another teenager. Additionally, providing
them with the opportunity of education can also only be established within a particular social class.
(Cf. Rubilandia 2013, online)
Concerning the concept of goodness, Ana also mentions the aspect of the way of living. Katie
always thought she is a good person based on her job: helping people was one of the reasons she
chose to be doctor in the first place. However, when her husband feels the urge to adopt homeless
children and give away their savings, she starts asking herself if her concept of goodness is not
enough. Without a doubt, she cares about homeless people, but is she willing to give away the
money she has earned for her family to help them? (Cf. Ana 2009, online)
!
56
[…] I am not, after all, standing up to my unbearably smug husband and - now - my unbearably smug eight-
year-old daughter and saying, “Now look here, we worked jolly hard to pay for that computer and if some
women are daft enough to shack up with men who beat them, that’s hardly our fault, is it?“ […]
So what do I believe? Nothing much, apparently. I believe that there shouldn’t be homelessness, and I’d
definitely be prepared to argue with anyone who says otherwise. Ditto battered women. Ditto, I don’t know,
racism, poverty, and sexism. I believe that the National Health Service is underfunded, and that Red-Nose
Day is a sort of OK thing, although slightly annoying […] And, finally, I am of reasonably firm conviction
that Tom’s Christmas parents are his, and shouldn’t be given away. (How To Be Good 75;76)
!
Ana goes on by stating that Katie also starts asking herself how much attention she should devote to
other people’s problems and how much to her own. (Cf. Ana 2009, online) Can she, as a middle-
aged doctor who works hard to earn enough money to feed her family, change the world with her
efforts and does this then make her a good person? Furthermore, Ana makes a good point by saying
that the ending does not symbolize an epiphany Katie has on how to be good but rather how “books,
and music and art in general can make such a big difference in our lives“ (Ana 2009, online),
meaning that through having different outlets, one is less likely to feel unhappy about his/her life.
(Cf. Ana 2009, online) The story shows that ‘good' is, in fact, a very ambiguous word. On the one
hand, moral questions like “What makes a person good?“, on the other, existential questions like
“What makes a life a good life?“ are both introduced in the book. However, concerning these issues,
one also must choose whether good can be understood in the sense of righteousness or happiness.
(Cf. Jeff 2007, online) With a rather open ending, the reader cannot be sure if their personal concept
of goodness was found by either Katie or David. However, through her being able to find some time
for herself, Katie has realized that for her, goodness also means just that — making time for things
you love:
!
It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I
have found some space, some air that isn’t stale, that hasn’t been breathed by my family a thousand times
already. Janet’s bedsit seemed enormous when I moved into it, enormous and quiet, but this book is so much
bigger than that. And when I’ve finished it I will start another one, and that might be even bigger, and then
another, and I will be able to keep extending my house until it becomes a mansion, full of rooms where they
can’t find me. And it’s not just reading, either, but listening, hearing something other than my children’s TV
programmes and my husband’s pious drone and the chatter chatter chatter in my head. (How To Be Good
242)
!
Another theme introduced in the book is marriage. After an extended period of being together, Katie
is bored with how her relationship with David has developed. The passion has gone, and their
interaction with each other has grown rougher. Through Katie’s renderings, the reader gets the
57
impression that the love between the two of them has faded:“David and I, however… this is not our
situation, not anymore. Phone calls like ours only happen when you’ve spent several years hurting
and being hurt, until every word you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and
full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 3) On many occasions in the
book, Katie even speaks of ‘hate' when talking about her and David’s relationship:“If I were any
kind of right-thinking parent I’d get involved, explain that fathers do all sort of different things, but
I hate David so much at the moment I can’t be bothered.“ (How To Be Good 2001: 51) Chifane
argues that the lack of emotional stability can also contribute to the extreme behavior of both Katie
and David. (Cf. 2015: 197) Both feel like they cannot rely on the other and although Katie’s
reaction of having an affair might be what is a common effect of marital problems, David giving
away money to the poor and adopting homeless teenagers certainly is not. Nevertheless, Hornby
cleverly manages to show both the happy and the dark times in a marriage and makes the reader
realize that although one might have the feeling that a relationship has grown emotionless and
monotonous, there is always a flicker of hope that the marriage can be saved.
!
6. Juliet, Naked
!
Hornby’s sixth novel was published in 2009 and, in contrast to How To Be Good, received good
reviews from readers. Similar to About A Boy, Hornby again adopted a limited third-person point of
view rendering in the background while focalization is the main instrument to tell the story.
Furthermore, the novel focuses, as commonly associated with Hornby’s works, on the role music
plays in our lives and how it can influence our relationships. Annie, a museum curator from the
small town of Gooleness, has been facing the effects of music in a rather negative way: her
boyfriend of fifteen years, Duncan, is obsessing over a singer named Tucker Crowe and invests all
his spare time into discussing Crowe’s music on various websites with fellow fans. Not
understanding her partner’s obsession with the musician, Annie feels unloved and starts to question
whether her relationship with Duncan still makes sense. The story is told in a double narration, first
from Annie’s and Duncan’s perspective with Tucker Crowe’s point of view joining in later in the
novel making the narration an entity again. (Cf. Gaulier 2014, online)
!
!
!
!
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6.1. Plot
!
Annie and Duncan have been together for fifteen years living in Gooleness, a town in northern
England. Their love for each other has slowly faded away which is mostly due to Duncan’s crazy
obsession with Tucker Crowe, a rock singer who was popular in the 1980s but then completely
disappeared from the public. In an attempt to keep Crowe’s popularity alive, Duncan has created a
website for fans from across the world who come together to talk about the musician:
!
And then the internet came along and changed everything. When, a little later than everyone else, Duncan
discovered how it all worked, he set up a website called “Can Anybody Hear Me?“, the title of a track from
an obscure EP recorded after the wounding failure of Crowe’s first album. Until then, the nearest follow fan
had lived in Manchester, sixty or seventy miles away, and Duncan met up with him once or twice a year;
now the nearest fans lived in Duncan’s laptop, and there were hundreds of them, from all around the world,
and Duncan spoke to them all the time. There seemed to be a surprising amount to talk about. (Juliet, Naked
6)
!
Duncan’s obsession has taken over both his and Annie’s lives completely. Most of their vacations
are spent traveling to places in the United States where Tucker Crowe once stayed. Although Annie
does not understand Duncan’s passion for everything Tucker Crowe, she has managed to live with it
for the past fifteen years and has not questioned her relationship with Duncan in the slightest. Now,
however, her wish for a baby is becoming stronger every day, and with Duncan refusing to have
children, she starts to feel trapped in a relationship that has become lifeless over the years: “The
amount of time they had for themselves was beginning to feel sort of … decadent.“ (Juliet, Naked
2009: 8)
!
Upon their arrival back in Gooleness, Annie finds a brown envelope in the mail addressed to
Duncan. Being used to opening all this mail, she tears it open only to find a copy of Tucker Crowe’s
newest release, a demo version of his old album, called Juliet, Naked. With Duncan out of the
house, Annie struggles with herself whether she should listen to the CD or not:
!
Could she really listen to it before he did? It felt like one of these moments in a relationship - and there were
enough of them in theirs, God knows - that would look completely innocuous to an outsider, but which were
packed with meaning and aggression. […] She knew that playing the CD was an act of naked hostility, even
if anyone peering through the windows wouldn’t be able to see the nakedness. (Juliet, Naked 22;23)
!
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Annie’s curiosity eventually wins, and she listens to the CD. However, Duncan comes back just in
time to find her taking in the new music. While he cannot believe that his idol has released a new
record, he is more devastated by the fact that Annie listened to the album without him: “What had
she been thinking of? He wanted to find a benign interpretation for her behaviour, but there just
wasn’t one. It was malevolence, pure and simple. Why did she hate him so much, all of a sudden?
What had he done?“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 27) Duncan then listens to the tracks himself and is
completely overwhelmed. Annie, on the other hand, tells him that the album has not won her over.
Duncan gets overly emotional about her response, and they get in a fight:
!
“I’m just… I’m so disappointed in you, Annie. I thought you were better than that.“
“ Ah, yes. That’s the next step. It becomes a moral failing on my part. A character weakness.“
“But I’m sorry to say that’s how it is. If you can’t hear anything in this…“!
“What? Please. Tell me. I’d love to know what that would say about me.“!
“The usual stuff.“
“Which is what?“!
“Which is, I don’t know. You’re a moron.“!
“Thanks.“!
“I didn’t say you were a moron. I said you were a moron if you can’t hear anything in this.“!
“I can’t.“ (Juliet, Naked 30)
!
Due to Duncan being one of the first to listen to Tucker Crowe’s new album, he feels an obligation
to tell the members of his blog about his feelings towards it. He writes a review praising the songs
highly which Annie also reads. She is angered by his overly emotional writing partly because she
knows that he is wrong and partly because Duncan manages to make her feel like she has absolutely
no taste in music. As a reaction to the anger about Duncan’s comment, she writes her own review on
the album. At first, she does not want anyone to read it, but after finishing it, she is really proud of
what she has written and wants to share it with the other Crowe fans on Duncan’s website.
Eventually, after thinking everything through, Annie asks Duncan if she can upload her text to the
site. He apparently is not amused by her writing a review and considers it to be completely wrong
after having read it, but still, allows her to put it online: “He couldn’t refuse to put the piece up,
though. That wouldn’t be fair, and he didn’t want to put the position of turning her down. And it
wasn’t as if she didn’t get the greatness of Tucker Crowe: this was, after all, a long hymn of praise
to the perfection of Clothed. No, he’d post it on the site and let the others tell her what they thought
of her.“ (Juliet, Naked 2001: 42)
!
60
Much to Duncan’s dismay, Annie’s review mainly receives positive feedback from the online
community. Among the individuals contacting her about her review is someone who calls himself
Tucker Crowe. At first, Annie doubts that the real Tucker Crowe would ever reach out to her,
especially since her review was not very positive. Still, her interest is sparked, and she responds to
the mysterious message.
!
Tucker Crowe, retired singer and father of five children by different women, lives a rather dull life
in the US with his son Jackson. His fame has faded over the years, and he is only confronted with
his music or his fans on rare occasions. His relationship with his current girlfriend Cat is not going
very well, and Tucker blames himself for that: “Cat was a woman! But on the other hand: he and
Jackson had ruined her! She’d misspent her youth on them, and they’d repaid her by making her
look worried and old! He suddenly wanted to hold her, and say sorry, but right now, moments after
a guest daughter had arrived, probably wasn’t the time.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 58) After receiving
the news that he is going to be a grandfather soon, Tucker starts to think about his past and comes to
the conclusion that, apart from music, he has not been very successful in his life. Wanting to pour
his heart out to someone, he answers Annie’s mail.
!
Annie is still dealing with the aftermath of the fight about the demo. She questions herself whether
the relationship with Duncan still makes sense. However, Tucker’s response brightens her day, and
she feels like she finally has someone to talk to. Although she is uncertain whether she should
reveal too much information about herself and if it is plausible to ask Tucker questions about his
album, she throws her worries overboard and sends her response: “This time, she clicked on ‘send‘
before she could change her mind.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 72)
!
In the meantime, Duncan realizes that he does not love Annie anymore. He considers their
relationship ‘an arranged marriage’ by their friends who paired them according to their hobbies.
Duncan feels like he has been emotionless for a while and Tucker Crowe’s new album, in a way, has
revived him:“Later, he wondered whether Juliet, Naked had done something to him — woken him
up, shaken some part of him that had gone numb. He’d certainly been more emotional, in the days
since he first heard it, prone to sudden lurches in the stomach and the occasional, inexplicable
prickle of tears.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 74) At work, he meets a new colleague Gina, and due to her
being the complete opposite of Annie, Duncan and she immediately hit it off:
!
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Gina vaguely remembered Tucker Crowe, but she was happy to be educated. The day after their drink,
Duncan played her Naked and Clothed, back to back, on her iPod dock in her small and heartbreakingly
under-furnished-one-bedroom-flat up the hill at the back of town, away from the sea and from Annie, and
they went to bed together shortly afterwards, when she’d said exactly the right things about the rawness and
unadorned simplicity of Naked. To Duncan, anyway, it was sex that felt like sex, too, something needy and
alarmingly uncontrollable, rather than something that happened on Saturdays after he and Annie had rented
a DVD. (Juliet, Naked 77)
!
Being overwhelmed by the whole incident, he tells Annie about it. Although she is alarmingly calm
about him sleeping with another woman, she makes it clear that he has to move out as soon as
possible. Duncan eventually moves in with Gina, while Annie buries herself in work to avoid
thinking about whether she and Duncan have split up for good. On the other side of the world,
Tucker faces similar problems: his wife tells him that she has been seeing someone else and he
realizes that marriages are not for him. In order to get away from his problems, Tucker writes
Annie, whom he started thinking about the minute his girlfriend told him about his affair. To prove
to Annie that he is, in fact, Tucker Crowe, he attaches a photo of him and Jackson to the message.
After some thinking, he also asks her if they could meet up during his England visit to his daughter.
!
Annie prints out the picture of Tucker and Jackson and hangs it up on the fridge. This is, however,
not only because she is starting to fancy Tucker and is imagining his visit to Gooleness but also
because her relationship with Tucker, real or fake, would definitely bother Duncan: “Her real
relationship with Tucker would be enough to drive him into a frenzy of jealously, if he ever found
out about it, although she wasn’t entirely sure who he’d be jealous of; but even her pretend
relationship with the man on the fridge might be enough to provoke a few twinges.“ (Juliet, Naked
2009: 111) When Duncan calls her to apologize, she invites him for tea so that he can see Tucker’s
photo. During their meeting, Annie tells Duncan that she has started seeing someone — meaning
Tucker Crowe — and he, thinking that he could smooth things over and move back in, is
completely taken by surprise. And while he notices the photo pinned to the fridge, he assumes that it
must be Annie’s new boyfriend rather than his idol:
!
“That’s him, isn’t it?“!
“I’m sorry. I should have taken it down.“!
“I don’t wish to be rude. But… is that his son? Or grandson?“!
Annie was momentarily disconcerted: she had got lost in all the layers of irony. Duncan was missing so
much crucial information that all he’d been left with was a photo of a bespectacled, silver-haired man with a
young boy. !
“That is rude, actually.“
62
“I’m sorry. It just wasn’t immediately obvious.“!
“It’s his son. He’s only your age.“!
He wasn’t, but he could have been. More or less.
“He’s probably been around the block a couple of times, then. Any other kids?“
“Duncan, I’m sorry, but I think you should leave. I’m not comfortable with these questions.“!
It really hadn’t been as much fun as she’d hoped. (Juliet, Naked 121)
!
With Annie realizing that her relationship with Duncan has come to an end, she is confronted with
the fact that she has wasted the last fifteen years on him. In an attempt to make up for what she has
been missing out on, mainly having sex with other people than Duncan, Annie goes out with Ros, a
lesbian colleague of hers. They end up meeting two single men whom they spend the evening with
but instead of getting to know one of them more closely, Annie has an epiphany about how
senseless her life is at the moment. She tells her therapist about her evening and how she feels as if
she has wasted her life being in a relationship with Duncan for the past fifteen years. Upon him
asking Annie what she looks for in her new partner, she finds out that in fact, she wants someone
exactly like Tucker Crowe: “Tucker was the opposite of Duncan. Duncan had no children of his
own, no creative bent, and he hadn’t lived, not even a little. Or at least, he had never thrown stones
at a noted beauty’s window, had never been an alcoholic, hadn’t toured America and Europe, hadn’t
thrown away a God-given talent.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 141)
!
While Annie slowly starts to come to terms with the fact that she has fallen in love with Tucker, she
also knows that it is highly unlikely that the two of them will ever meet. However, when Tucker
finds out that his pregnant daughter, who lives in England, has had a miscarriage, he spontaneously
decides to visit her in the hospital. He too has started to grow fond of Annie and wants to explore
their relationship. Therefore, he arranges to meet up with her in London during his visit to which he
eventually does not show up. Bummed out, Annie meets up with an old friend to talk about her
failed relationship with Duncan when Tucker calls her and tells her about the heart attack he had
shortly after his arrival. Annie instantly agrees to visit him at the hospital. Upon their first meeting,
Tucker asks Annie to take him to Gooleness with her. She is surprised by his directness, and
although she wants nothing more than to provide him with a home, she still struggles with the idea
of making him leave his family behind:
!
There was nothing she wanted more than to nurse Tucker back to health in Gooleness, yet the desire was
untrustworthy, and dangerously, self-indulgently whimsical: it was the crush talking. For a start, he’d had a
heart attack, not a bout of flu. He probably didn’t need blankets and hot-water bottles and homemade soup;
63
for all she knew, any of those things might kill him. And stealing him away from his family, it seemed to
her, would be wrong and bad and none of her business; she tried not to think conventionally, but she
probably did believe that families were important, that fathers had a duty to their children, that Tucker
couldn’t just run from them out of fear or embarrassment or both. All these doubts, when she examined
them, started to lead to the unwelcome conclusion that Tucker was a real person, with actual problems, and
neither he nor the problems could comfortably be accommodated in her life, or in her house, or in
Gooleness. (Juliet, Naked 174)
!
Eventually, after dismissing his idea at first, she ends up taking him and Jackson to Gooleness with
her anyway. At first, they do not know how to act around each other, and Tucker even writes Annie
an e-mail on her computer because he feels more comfortable writing than actually talking to her.
However, after having read his e-mail telling her about his earlier life, Annie feels comfortable
opening up to Tucker about her relationship with his number one fan Duncan as well as how she got
involved with his music in the first place:
!
“You know the guy who wrote the first review on that website? The one where you found mine?“!
“Duncan somebody. Talking about wankers.“!
Annie stared at him, then clapped her hands to her mouth. He’d have worried that she’d said something out
of turn, except that her eyes were bright with a kind of astonished mischief.
“What?“!
“Tucker Crowe knows who Duncan is and he called him a wanker. I cannot tell you how weird that is.“!
“You know that guy?“!
“He’s…This was his house, up until a few weeks ago.“!
Tucker stared at her. !
“So he’s the one? The man you wasted all those years with?“!
“He’s the one. That’s why I’ve heard your music so much. That’s why I got to hear Juliet, Naked. That’s
why I posted a review on his website.“ (Juliet, Naked 204)
!
After having told Tucker everything, she asks him to meet Duncan in person. Although Tucker is
not sure why Annie wants to introduce him to her ex-boyfriend, the two of them eventually meet by
coincidence. After making an acquaintance with ‘Tucker Crowe’, Duncan first thinks that Annie is
playing games with him, calling it “pathetic“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 206) but still phoning her later
requesting an explanation. After Annie retells the story of how she and Tucker met, Duncan does
some research only to find out that he, in fact, has been introduced to his idol, who happens to be in
his hometown: !
!
“Oh, God,“ said Duncan.
64
“What?“!
“I can’t think of any good reason why that man would introduce himself as Tucker Crowe unless he actually
was.“!
“Really?“!
“Annie’s not really a cruel person. And the person on the beach looked a little bit like the person in that
picture. Except older.“!
“And did she explain how she knew him?“!
“She said he wrote to her. Out of the blue. After she posted that review of Naked on our website.“!
“If that’s true,“ said Gina thoughtfully, “then you must want to hang yourself.“ (Juliet, Naked 212)
!
Duncan makes his way to Annie’s house, where he finally gets to talk to his favorite musician and
although their first meeting did not go as planned, their feelings towards each other turn out to be
very amicable. While Duncan and Tucker talk about everything concerning Tucker’s life, Annie
notices just how much of a crush she actually has on Tucker: “She could characterize it as a crush,
or the beginnings of something deeper, or the pathetic fantasy of an increasingly lonely woman, or
the recognition that she needed to sleep with someone before the decade was out, and sometimes
she thought of it as all of these things at once, and she always wished that she hadn’t told him off so
often over the previous twenty-four hours.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 216;217)
Tucker and Jackson end up extending their stay, and Annie grows very fond of them being around:
“She was hoping, she supposed that they would stay for ever, in any formation that they
chose.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 229) Although nothing has happened between the two of them, Tucker
is very well aware of Annie’s crush on him. He has started to grow feelings for her but is not sure
whether to act on them or not, partly because he is not sure if he can have sex with her based on his
recent heart attack and partly due to him not wanting to mess things up with her. Eventually, after
researching the issue online together, they sleep with each other. However, there is something that
Annie keeps from Tucker - she is not on birth control, hoping that their unprotected sex could lead
to pregnancy: “She’d already thought about this moment; she’d been thinking about it since her
conversation with Kath. She went to the bathroom, stayed in there for a couple of minutes and then
went back to make love to him. She didn’t kill him, even though it felt like parts of her had been
asleep for as long as Tucker’s career.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 240)
!
In the end, Tucker returns home to America and Annie is left with the question whether she should
leave everything behind to go live with him or stay in Gooleness and never truly be happy. Duncan
starts to question his obsession with Tucker: “He’d like to think that there wasn’t a single allusion
he’d missed, in the lyrics or in the music. […] Maybe he’d spent too long translating something that
65
had been written in English all the time.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 192) Tucker releases a new album
which, in the last pages of the book, is discussed on Duncan’s blog. The community does not seem
to like it. However, there is one member new to the blog, who introduces herself as a supporter of
the new songs and the reader is left to wonder whether it is Annie writing or not. Similarly to his
other novels, Hornby leaves the ending open to imagination, partly because the ending yet again is
not narratively transmitted by a reflector figure or a narrating instance but through the inclusion of
media, in this case, Duncan’s blog. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 248) Some reviewers state that the end was a
very positive one with Annie finally doing what she always wanted. Furthermore, her moving to
America and living with Tucker seems very likely according to jbvm, who states that,“the ending
was hidden in plain sight“. (librarything.com, online) He/she thinks that the member ‘Uptown Girl’
obviously must be Annie who intentionally misspells Tucker’s last name in an attempt to hide her
identity. Additionally, by referring to ‘me and my husband’, it becomes obvious that she and Tucker
ended up marrying each other. (Cf. librarything.com, online) Vidalia, another reviewer, also
supports the theory of Tucker and Annie ending up together by referring to the lyrics of ’You’re My
Best Friend’ included on Tucker’s new album, which clearly stands for Annie being pregnant and
leaving England to be in America with Tucker. (Cf. librarything.com, online) However, as Weigel
states, due to the reliability of the internet facing constant criticism throughout the novel, the
reliability of the blog entry at the end of the book is certainly also questionable. (Cf. 2011: 248)
!
6.1. General Structure of the Novel
!
Regarding the overall structure, the novel is divided into 15 chapters with each chapter including
the different points of view from either Annie, Duncan or, later in the book, also Tucker. The events
in the story are narrated in chronological order, apart from a few flashbacks providing insight into
Tucker Crowe’s past. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 237) The time that passes within the story cannot explicitly
be stated. However, it could be a timespan of a few months. The beginning of the novel, like the
other two books, is in medias res, meaning that the reader is directly taken into the action: “They
had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 1) The first
sentence awakens the reader’s interest, and he/she wants to know what the intention behind looking
at a random toilet could be. Chapters 1–3 function as an introduction to Annie and Duncan as well
as their troublesome relationship. In Chapter 4, the reader is then introduced to Tucker Crowe
himself, Duncan’s idol and the cause of Annie’s and Duncan’s problems. While in the beginning,
the two story lines parallel, they are brought together relatively early in the novel when Annie and
66
Tucker start e-mailing each other. Additionally, the novel also includes a double plot since
independent plots, namely Annie’s and Tucker’s, but also in a way Duncan’s are connected with
each other. However, contrary to About A Boy, the characters’ plots are not overlapping through
them actually meeting in person but through medialization. This means that physically, Annie and
Tucker are on two separate continents, she is in England and he is in America, but by writing emails
to each other, their stories become interwoven. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 237)
!
Characterization is another aspect that needs further investigation concerning the novel. While the
characters introduced in Juliet, Naked are multi-dimensional, not all of them are round. Duncan, for
instance, would fall into the category of a one-dimensional or flat character since, in the course of
the novel, he does not develop. As Neumann and Nünning state, flat characters can often be
“reduced to a type or even a caricature“ (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 53), which is certainly the case
with Duncan as he embodies the stereotype of a fan: he lives and breathes Tucker Crowe, not
paying any attention to what is happening around him. Focalization serves as the main channel
through which the protagonists explicitly characterize both themselves and others. Additionally,
implicit characterization, namely through verbal and non-verbal behavior can also be found in the
novel. Annie is finishing her review on Tucker Crowe’s album and realizing that writing the
comment is marking a turning point due to her daring to show her opinion, serves as a good
example of implicit characterization:
!
She’d finished her essay now. Somehow, Juliet, Naked - or her feelings about it, anyway - had woken her
from a deep sleep: she wanted things. She’d wanted to write, she wanted Duncan to read what she’d written.
She wanted the other message board member to read it, too. She was proud of it, and she had even begun to
wonder whether it might not be socially useful in some way. Some of these cranks, she hoped, might read it,
blush a deep crimson and return to their lives. There was no end to her wanting. (Juliet, Naked 40)
!
Another example for implicit characterization can be observed when Tucker is first introduced to
the reader in Chapter 4 by reflecting on his career as a singer and the influence of the internet:
!
He tried very hard not to over-inflate his importance in the cosmos Most people had forgotten him; very
occasionally, he supposed, they’d come across his name in a music review - some of the older journalists
still used him as a point of reference sometimes - or there’d be an album in somebody’s old vinyl collection,
and they’d think, “Oh yeah. My college room-mate used to listen to him.“ But the internet had changed
everything: nobody was forgotten any more. He could Google his name and come up with thousands of hits,
and as a consequence he’d started to think about his career as something that was still current, rather than
something that had died a long time ago. If you looked at the right websites, he was Tucker Crowe, former
67
musician, ex-person. He was flattered at first […] but after a while these people just made him feel ill,
especially when they turned their cranky attention on to Juliet. […] So, stopping had been a very smart
career move - provided, that is, you ignored the lack of a career that was the inevitable consequence. (Juliet,
Naked 53;54)
!
From this excerpt, it becomes apparent that while Tucker is happy that he has ended his career as a
musician and has settled for a quiet life, he is not particularly satisfied with the attention he gets
through various websites online. His feelings towards the World Wide Web do not seem very
pleasant. However, while this passage characterizes Tucker, it also outlines how much has changed
since the introduction of the internet and that nowadays,“nobody gets forgotten anymore.“ (Juliet,
Naked 2009: 37) There are also instances of altero-characterization, for example when Tucker first
meets his daughter Lizzie, who comes to visit Jackson and him:“If Tucker didn’t disapprove of
national stereotyping, then he’d describe Lizzie’s greeting as English. She smiled politely, kissed
him on the cheek and still somehow managed to suggest that he was representing all the pond life
who’d been unable to get to the airport due to other commitments.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 54) This
passage could be categorized as implicit since Lizzie’s characterization happens according to her
behavior towards Tucker. However, there are also occasions in the novel in which characters get
characterized based on their physical appearance, like Gina, who, according to Duncan, “didn’t talk
about herself all the time either, despite having spiky hennaed hair and a lot of chunky
jewellery.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 74); or when direct speech functions as the main channel for
characterization: “Because this was always going to happen. He was going to meet someone, or I
was going to meet someone, and that would be it. So I should have got out ages ago. It was just
inertia. And now I’ve been sh… dumped on.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 83)
!
Lastly, as Weigel states, music also plays a major role in relation to characterization. (Cf. 2011: 241)
Both Tucker and Duncan are characterized according to their feelings towards music. Tucker, being
a musician for most of his life, cannot imagine his life without music: “He couldn’t contemplate a
driving life without music.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 241) Music also entirely consumes Duncan’s life,
who is so obsessed with Tucker that he neglects Annie and their relationship and only realizes what
he has done when it is too late. Additionally, Weigel mentions the use of the expression
‘Tuckercentric’ by the narrator as characteristic for Duncan referring to the fact that he spends every
free minute on his idol even paying more attention to it than on his life partner Annie. (Cf. 2011:
241) This becomes obvious in the following statement: “Tucker Crowe was his life-partner. […] If
Tucker was the husband, then Annie should somehow have become the mistress, but of course that
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wasn’t right - the word was much too exotic and implied a level of sexual activity that would
horrify them both nowadays.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 6) Weigel goes on by saying that while Hornby
uses references to music to characterize his actors, their use of media also highlights characteristic
traits. (Cf. 2011: 242) As an example, she names the instance in which Tucker is hospitalized after
his heart attack and his twins, whom he hardly knows, visit him but have no interest in him
whatsoever and so they listen to music on their iPods: “Maybe, when they’d turned their iPods off
they’d somehow turned themselves off, too. They were in standby mode.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 184)
Hence, the non-existing relationship between Tucker and his sons is illustrated by their use of
media. Another example, as mentioned by Weigel, is Tucker’s daughter’s boyfriend Zak, who, as
opposed to Tucker’s twins, is a huge fan of the musician. He even mentions that Tucker’s music has
changed his life. (Cf. 2011: 243) Annie, on the other hand, does not understand the reason behind
the fandom of her boyfriend or any of the other members of his websites: “But really, if these
people actually had anything to do all day, they wouldn’t have time to write his lyrics out
backwards to see if there are any hidden messages in them.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 106) However, the
aspect of the influence media and the internet have on the characters will be discussed in more
detail in the following section dealing with the themes featured in the novel.
!
6.3. Narrative Frame
!
Like in About A Boy, the story is narrated by a limited third person narrator who retreats into the
background, providing enough space for the alternating instances of focalization. (Cf. Weigel 2011:
239) There are, however, instances in which the narrator becomes visible: “Look at them. There’s
Duncan. There’s Annie. There’s Duncan and Annie.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 20) Furthermore, as
Weigel states, the narrator also comments on the characters’ emotional state as well as their
mindsets in brief instances (cf. 2011: 239): “To begin with, she was so churned up by the act of
playing the CD, the drama and the treachery of it, that she forgot to listen to the music - she was too
busy composing her retorts.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 23)
!
In Juliet, Naked the story of three separate protagonists is narrated. The point of view is constantly
changed, so that the reader gains access to the thought processes of Annie, Duncan, and Tucker.
Again, the phenomenon of multiperspectivity is of great relevance in the narrating process. While
the events are presented alternately through the eyes of all three protagonists, the narrative also
takes on the form of a “montage or collage, in which the observations of the characters are replaced
69
or supplemented by other types of text, such as letters or newspaper articles.“ (Neumann/Nünning
2008: 102) Weigel states that due to its narrative structure Juliet, Naked is both a multiperspectively
structured text and a multiperspectively focalized text. By integrating and combining different
forms of media from the internet, Hornby manages not only to heighten the focalization but also to
introduce other perspectives from different media such as Wikipedia pages and e-mails. (Cf. Weigel
2011: 239) Furthermore, due to the perspectives both complementing as well as contrasting each
other and thus highlighting the difference in the character’s perspectives, one can very well speak of
a hybrid between additive and contradictory multiperspectivity. (Cf. Neumann/Nünning 2008: 102)
By introducing differing perspectives on the same events, on the one hand, the reader is confronted
with the decision which of the characters to trust more while on the other, the characterization of the
characters is fostered. This can, for instance, be observed when Annie and Duncan both listen to the
demo of Tucker’s new album for the first time. Annie is not at all impressed by the new songs:
!
Those lovely melodies were all there, intact, and Crowe had clearly written most of the lyrics, although a
couple of the songs were missing choruses. But it was so tentative, so unadorned - it was like listening to
one of those people you’ve never heard of who comes onstage at lunchtime in a folk festival. There wasn’t
really any music to it yet, no violins, no electric guitars, no rhythm, none of the texture or the detail that still
contained surprises, even after all this time. (Juliet, Naked 24)
!
!
Tucker, on the other hand, is completely fascinated with the album: “I think it’s a masterpiece. I
think it blows the other one out of the water. And as the other one is my favourite album of all
time…“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 29) By getting both Duncan’s and Annie’s views on the album, the
reader gets a better understanding of how the characters think. Being the obsessed fan Duncan is, it
is obvious that he likes Tucker’s new music, simply because he has to. One could even argue that he
has an obligation to like it because of his longtime fandom. As opposed to Duncan, Annie is not a
big fan of Tucker’s music, partly because he has had such a significant influence on Duncan's and
her relationship. It could very well be the reason she does not like the music very much. After all, a
new album by Tucker Crowe means that Duncan’s full attention is yet again focused on his idol
rather than on her. Through the use of multiperspectivity, the reader gets the advantage of knowing
more than the characters do in the story. Often, this leads to dramatic irony as mentioned by Weigel.
She states that for instance Duncan, on a few occasions, falls victim to irony. One incident is when
the reader knows about Annie’s and Tucker’s relationship but Duncan does not and he is very
shocked when he hears the news (Cf. 2011: 239):
70
!
“Hello,“ said Duncan. “Duncan Thomson.“!
“Hello,“ said Tucker. “Tucker Crowe.“ He had never been more conscious of the weight of his own name. !
Duncan dropped Tucker’s hand as if it were red-hot and looked at Annie with real contempt. !
“That’s just pathetic,“ he said to Annie. And he jogged on. (Juliet, Naked 206)
!
Next to a range of dialogues, free indirect discourse is yet again Hornby’s choice of presentation for
the perspectives of the three protagonists. By including this type of narration, a high degree of
suspense is created. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 239) And while free indirect discourse certainly plays an
important role in giving the reader an insight into the mindset of the characters, focalization is the
main element of narration. In the case of this novel, due to the narrative “drawing from the point of
view of several focal characters“, variable focalization takes place. (Neumann/Nünning 2008: 96)
Hence, the events are presented through the eyes of different characters, thus providing the reader
with direct access to the thoughts of the characters. This can, for instance, be observed when
Duncan listens to Tucker Crowe’s new album and thinks about his reaction towards Annie:
!
What did it matter that Annie had heard the album before he had his chance? Imagine all the people who’d
heard the album before he’d had his chance? Imagine all the people who’d heard the original album before
he’d discovered it! Imagine all the people who’d seen Taxi Driver before him, come to that! Did that deaden
its impact? Did it make it less his? He wanted to go home, hug her, and talk about a morning he would never
forget. He wanted to hear what she had to say, too. He valued her insights on Crowe’s work - she could
surprisingly shrewd, sometimes, given her unwillingness to immerse herself in the subject […] (Juliet,
Naked 28)
!
However, as already mentioned, there is another important aspect that contributes to focalization as
well as the structure of the novel: the insertion of other media. Instances of focalization are either
complemented by websites or e-mails or they are completely supplemented by them. (Cf. Weigel
2011: 240) Hornby includes several Wikipedia pages about Tucker Crowe and his album Juliet in
the novel as well as the e-mails Tucker and Annie write to each other and the blog entries on
Duncan’s website. By integrating these different media in the novel, the reader is provided with
various perspectives and in the case of the emails, the focalization providing insight into the minds
of Tucker and Annie is underlined by what they write to each other. According to Weigel, Hornby
makes use of this method to make the reader sympathize with the characters while at the same time
creating a high degree of suspense. (Cf. 2011: 240) Furthermore, by including different forms of
texts from the internet in the text, Hornby also sheds light on the problems that rise with the
differentiation between fictional reality and medial fiction. In the context of the novel, the fictional
71
websites and blog entries seem reliable due to their layout. However, they not only function to
outline the authenticity of the story but also to hide the fictionality. Additionally, the media
presented in the book is supposed to show the reader that the trustworthiness of online content can
also not be regarded high. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 240)
!
6.4. Themes
!
Juliet, Naked, like other works of Hornby, can be categorized as pop literature. The themes of the
novel also correspond to this categorization since they deal with everyday topics. However, in this
book, Hornby combines the discussion whether the invention of the internet has brought about more
disadvantages than advantages with the usage of his common themes. Just like About A Boy, the
main focus lies on the obsession with music. Again, music plays a role for both characterizations, as
mentioned above, and for how the plot develops. Duncan is mainly characterized by his obsession
with Tucker Crowe and his music, thus spending his time on not much else. This is brilliantly
outlined when Annie thinks about Duncan’s passion: “She’d been with Duncan for nearly fifteen
years, and Tucker Crowe had always been part of the package, like a disability. To begin with, the
condition hadn’t prevented him from living a normal life: yes, he’d written a book, as yet
unpublished about Tucker, lectured on him, contributed to a radio documentary for the BBC and
organized conventions, but somehow these activities had always seemed to Annie like isolated
episodes, sporadic attacks.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 6) However the theme of music as well as the fan
culture that surrounds it both in the real world and in cyberspace also takes on a crucial part.
Additionally, as already mentioned, the internet also plays an important role. Hornby tries to make
the reader aware of how rapidly media is developing and how much we take advantage of it every
day. Duncan, for instance, still loves playing his old vinyls. However, when he gets his hands on
Tucker’s new album, the first thing he does is to put the music on his iPod to listen to it both at
home and on the beach. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 243) He is also very fascinated with the development of
technology since the digitalism of music has made his love for it grow even more:
!
Shortly after that, people from the message board started sending him songs attached to emails, and that was
every bit as mysterious, because it meant that recorded music wasn’t, as he’d previously always understood,
a thing at all - a CD, a piece of plastic, a spool of tape. You could reduce it to its essence, and its essence
was literally intangible. This made music better, more beautiful, more mysterious, as far as he was
concerned. People who knew of his relationship with Tucker expected him to be a vinyl nostalgic, but the
new technology had made his passions more romantic, not less. (Juliet, Naked 26)
72
!
Annie is also affected by the internet. After having written a review about Tucker Crowe’s new
album, it is Tucker himself who contacts her via email to talk to her about her comment and
eventually meet her. Hence, the internet makes it possible for the two of them to communicate with
each other and even develop feelings for each other, even though they are spatially separated.
Tucker, who has been hiding away in New Jersey, is very popular among the online community.
However, there are a lot of untruths circulating around his person. Through the e-mails he sends to
Annie, his real identity eventually comes to the surface, revealing that he in no way is the famous
rock star he used to be but instead is a lonely man hoping to change his life by meeting Annie. (Cf.
Weigel 2011: 236;237) A good example for this is when Tucker writes Annie an email trying to
prove that it is indeed him:
!
How about this: nothing happened to me in a toilet in Minneapolis. Or this: I don’t have a secret love-child
with Julie Beatty. Or this: I stopped recording altogether after I made the album Juliet, so I don’t have two
hundred albums’ worth of material locked away in a shed, and nor do I regularly release material under an
assumed name. Does that help? Probably not, unless you are sane enough to believe that the truth about
anyone is disappointing, the truth about me especially so. (Juliet, Naked 64)
!
Additionally, Hornby shows the reader just how much the characters in the book depend on the
internet. In a way, the use of new media such as e-mails and the internet dominates the lives of the
protagonists. Annie, for instance, invests her free time in writing e-mails to Tucker, even when she
is at her job. Weigel mentions the fact that while Annie is certainly glad an email is not the same as
a letter and thus can be changed as often as one pleases, the big disadvantage about it is that one
cannot show as much emotion as one wants. (Cf. 2011: 243) Another aspect Hornby touches upon
with the use of the internet is the question whether online content can be reliable or not. Juliet,
Naked clearly outlines that people can become victims of online manipulation. (Cf. Weigel 2011:
246) The prime example of this phenomenon is when Tucker’s neighbor John pretends to be Tucker
on several occasions and thus, photos of him are put online stating that Tucker Crowe has been
spotted. Hence, his loyal fans, including Duncan, are made believe that new pictures of the
musician have surfaced when in reality, they are idolizing some random guy who just happens to
look similar to Tucker: “It seemed genuine. There was no mistaking the man from the infamous
Neil Ritchie photo - the same long grey dreadlocks, the same discoloured teeth, although this time
the teeth were visible because Tucker was smiling, rather than because they were being bared in
anger.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 106)
73
Weigel mentions another instance where online manipulation is highlighted. When Tucker meets his
daughter Lizzie for the first time, she tells him that she has looked him up on the internet before
their meeting just to find out that there are a lot of untruths circulating on the websites:
!
“I thought you lived on a farm“, she said […] “I read it on Wikipedia.“!
“And did you read about yourself there? Or Jackson?“!
“No.“ “It said you were rumoured to have one child, with Julie Beatty.“ […]!
“Anyway, you have my phone number and my email address. Why didn’t you just ask me where I lived?“ !
“It seemed like too weird a question to ask my own father. Maybe you should write your own Wikipedia
page. So your children know something about you.“ (Juliet, Naked 58)
!
Weigel explains that this passage clearly outlines that the information accessible online can in no
way always be trusted. However, she also states that online databases like Wikipedia are the first
websites to be recommended when looking for something on the internet and thus are considered
reliable sources. (Cf. 2011: 246)
Additionally, as Weigel states, the internet can also endanger the lives of the protagonist, as it is the
case with Tucker. He feels like everything he does is constantly monitored by his fans. Though his
career ended years ago, there still is a large amount of online content about him. (Cf. 2011: 247) His
feelings towards the internet become obvious in the following passage: “Fuck the internet for
collecting them all in one place and making them look threatening. And fuck the internet for putting
him right at the centre of his own little paranoid universe.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 225)
!
Lastly, while the internet and music clearly are the main themes of the book, Hornby also focuses
on interpersonal relationships in Juliet, Naked. Even in the era of the cyberspace, Annie still must
face her problems with Duncan. Their relationship has been monotonous and child-free and while
Duncan does not seem to mind those things, Annie starts to think about it more and more. The need
to build a family and to find a partner that feels the same way as she becomes very clear when she
talks to her therapist about Duncan’s affair and her ideal companion: “Somebody my age or older.
Somebody who reads. Maybe somebody with a, a creative bent of some kind. If he had a child or
children of his own, I wouldn’t mind. Somebody who’s lived a bit.“ (Juliet, Naked 2009: 141) She
realizes that while Duncan does in no way fit the description, Tucker does. And while a relationship
between the two of them would be very plausible, not only because they are both single but also
because they both long for a change in their lives, in the end, they come to the conclusion that due
to their spatial distance and Tucker’s son Jackson, being together would not work. And while Annie
74
and Tucker both have had bad luck when it comes to relationships and their connection does not
seem too promising, they still keep up their email contact in the hopes of it working out this time
(Cf. Weigel 2011: 244)
!
!
6.5. Multimedial Aspects of The Novel
!
The novel has always been a very dynamic genre influenced by a variety of different text-types.
Starting in the 18th century, the genre started including various other texts and media. Due to a
change in culture and in society, but mostly because of the rise of digital media, novels focusing on
the internet have grown popular. (Cf. Weigel 2013: 367) Hallet states that the multimodal novel,
even to be considered a novel, has to feature verbal narrative discourse. (Cf. Hallet 2009: 133)
Generally speaking, a novel does not integrate any other sort of media other than text. However,
incorporating another medium into a text can serve as, “aids provided by the narrator for the fictive
reader, and are fully integrated into the narrative discourse.“ (Hallet 2009: 133) Hence, they are as
important for a novel as the written text. While a variety of different media, reaching from
photographs to diagrams can be inserted into a text, in the case of Juliet, Naked the aspect of
typography, namely, “identifying independent textual units outside the main narrative text“ (Hallet
2009: 138), plays an important role. Hallet explains that normally these text units are produced by a
clearly identifiable author, who can also serve as a protagonist in the story. (Cf. 2009: 138)
!
Juliet, Naked is a hybrid novel, including both elements of an email novel as well as a pop novel.
(Cf. Weigel 2011: 234) The genre of email novels came about with the invention of the epistolary
novel and is a reaction to the tendency of medialization of literature. (Cf. Kusche 2011: 165)
According to Kusche, an email novel is characterized based on it embedding literary reproductions
of emails into the narrative structure. (Cf. 2011: 154) However, it is important to mention that the
medium as such, namely the emails, is not materially present but instead its literary reproduction is
included in the text. (Cf. Kusche 2011: 155) Due to the internet being impossible to include into a
novel, novels only refer to e-mails, blogs or websites by “either describing them or imitating their
language and structure.“ (Weigel 2013: 369) One can distinguish between two types of email novel.
On the one hand, there are novels that feature a story solely based on emails, whereas on the other,
novels can also only partially include emails as it is the case with Juliet, Naked. (Cf. Kusche 2011:
155) Furthermore, it is important to mention that email novels always reflect upon the medialization
75
of literature, which is established both by letting the protagonists of the novel reflect on emails and
the use thereof as well as considering the influence new media have on interpersonal relationships
and forms of communication. (Cf. Kusche 2011: 165) Hence, the limits, as well as the opportunities
which arise with the establishment of new media, are considered. (Cf. Kusche 2011: 166)
!
Hornby’s novel is structured like a montage, meaning that several types of texts or genres of the
internet are integrated into the book. The perspectives of the reflector figures are thus supplemented
or replaced by other text types. In between instances of focalization, intermedial text such as emails,
Wikipedia pages or blogs is inserted. Hornby includes fictive Wikipedia pages about Tucker Crowe
and his albums as well as emails between Tucker and Annie and blog entries on Duncan’s website.
(Cf. Weigel 2011: 240) While the insertion of multimedial text, on the one hand, provides insight
into the protagonists' minds, for instance, Annie’s and Tucker’s e-mails, on the other, it is supposed
to outline the difference between fictional reality and medial fiction. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 240) It is
obvious that in doing so, Hornby criticizes the media. Furthermore, the novel falls into the category
of the so-called ‘fictions of the internet’ since it “thematizes various forms of the internet on the
story-level, but also integrates them on the discourse level.“ (Weigel 2013: 367) Additionally, the
word play on the word fiction refers to the way the novels “critically reflect on the fictions the
internet creates.“ (Weigel 2013: 367) This certainly is the case with Juliet, Naked since the untruths
created about Tucker on several websites including photos of his neighbor, who looks like him,
definitely, represent a critical approach to the medium internet. Besides Weigel, Hallet argues that
the textual elements inserted in the text are “indissolubly interwoven into the narrative discourse
and storyworld.“ (2009: 141) This means that these units are of extreme importance for the whole
story as well as how the story is told. Without the insertion of Annie’s and Tucker’s e-mails, for
instance, the reader would not know how they feel about certain aspects. Concerning the importance
of the inclusion of their writing for the development of plot, it is obvious that due to their spatial
difference, Annie and Tucker would not have met without their internet connection. Hallet also
points out that one of the effects of a multimedial text is that the reader has access to something the
characters themselves have produced, thus the characters “move closer to the reader’s real
world.“ (Hallet 2009: 144) This correlates with Weigel’s assumption about Hornby’s intention to
make the reader sympathize with the characters by including different media into Juliet, Naked. (Cf.
2011: 248) Kusche states that by only inserting e-mails or other forms of media into the text in
specific instances, the narrative structure is not as influenced as it is the case with a typical e-mail
novel in which the whole narrative is told via emails. (Cf. 2011: 159) However, the e-mail
76
correspondence serves the purpose of providing structured multiperspectivity. Through the different
perspectives introduced, the reader receives the highest degree of information available. (Cf.
Kusche 2011: 160) Jenkins supports this thesis by stating that multimedial storytelling is a process
in which different types of text are transmitted through a variety of channels with the purpose to
create a “unified and coordinated entertainment experience.“ (Cf. Weigel 2013: 370) According to
him, the ideal outcome would be if every element inserted into the text would play their own unique
part in developing the story. (Cf. Weigel 2013: 370) However, the inclusion of the internet is not the
main source of the reading process but rather functions as an aid to the novel. (Cf. Kusche 2011:
377)
!
Another aspect Kusche mentions is that through the characters reflecting on the medium of e-mails,
or, in Juliet, Naked, the use of the internet and its effects, another level of reflection is created. (Cf.
2011: 162) A good example for this is when Annie looks at the photos she took while on vacation in
the United States with Duncan and reflects on how the advancement in technology also has its
disadvantages:
!
You shuffled through the twenty-four holidays snaps, only seven of which were any good, put them in a
drawer and forgot about them. You didn’t have to compare them to every other holiday you’d had in the last
seven or eight years. But now she couldn’t resist it. When she uploaded or downloaded or whatever it was
you did, the new photos took their place alongside all the others, and the seamlessness was beginning to
depress her. (Juliet, Naked 20)
!
By letting the characters critically reflect on the use of the internet in the novel, not only does the
reader get a better perspective of what the characters are thinking and thus perceive them as more
life-like, but also the medium itself is being questioned, making the reader reflect on their personal
use of the internet and other media. As already mentioned, in Juliet, Naked, Hornby certainly
utilizes media such as blogs or e-mails to establish different outlets and thus creates
multiperspectivity. Additionally, the reader is provided with a variety of different channels and thus
gets a complete picture of the story world. Therefore, one could argue that Hornby’s inclusion of
new media in Juliet, Naked helps to form a coherently structured text, giving the reader access to a
variety of information, not only through focalization, but also through textual aids and in doing so,
also manages to make the reader critically reflect on the influence the media has nowadays.
!
!
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7. Conclusion
!
Nick Hornby has managed to be successful with a variety of people from different age groups. He is
the prime example of a so-called ‘pop author,' meaning that nearly all of his novels feature elements
of the famous genre of pop literature. Common features of the genre include an everyday use of
language, a rather simple plot, and themes that are easy to identify with. However, while Hornby’s
works have certainly not been characterized as high literature, his novels are not only read when on
holiday but are also featured in academic analysis. (Cf. Weigel 2011: 235)
!
It was the goal of this thesis to show how Hornby manages both thematically as well as
narratologically to be a good author. While analyzing the three books, it became clear that his
characters, as well as their problems, offer a high degree of identification. Because the themes dealt
with in Hornby’s works stem from everyday life, the reader can take on the perspective of the
characters very quickly and thus also develops an enormous amount of empathy.
!
However, not only the themes contribute to Hornby being a good author but also his way of
narrating a story. By using focalization, the reader has access to the mindset of the different
characters, or, as it is the case with How To Be Good, to Katie’s mind alone. The use of focalization
becomes extremely fascinating in combination with the aspect of multiperspectivity. Both in Juliet,
Naked and About A Boy, there is not only one but several different focalizers, who narrate their
perspectives to the reader. Hornby’s brilliant use of focalization becomes most apparent in About A
Boy which is told from Will’s and Marcus’s perspectives. By letting both characters narrate the
same event from differing perspectives, like in the ‘Dead Duck Day‘ scene, the reader receives the
biggest amount of information possible and is thus able to identify him-/herself with the currently
dominant perspective. (Cf. Gurr 2007: 191)
!
In How To Be Good, Hornby, in contrast to the other two books analyzed in the thesis, used first
person narration while dealing with similar themes as in his other works. While he certainly
managed to bring across the thoughts and feelings of his protagonist Annie, the constant rendering
of her life while not featuring a lot of dialogue made the book not as enjoyable as the others.
Additionally, due to her self-centeredness and her egoism, Annie was not as identifiable as his other
characters, which was probably intended by Hornby; I, for example, ended up feeling more
empathy towards her husband than towards her. Nevertheless, the book was a good example of
78
Hornby’s use of themes from the genre of pop literature as it dealt with divorce, family struggles as
well as the notion of goodness. It certainly touched upon a highly discussed topic since nowadays,
people hardly know what is good anymore and the reader is motivated to think about the idea of
goodness and maybe even reconsider his/her opinion on it.
!
Juliet, Naked, the third book analyzed in this thesis featured something that I had not come across in
Hornby’s works before reading it: the internet. By inserting multimedial text types into the text, the
reading process was extremely enhanced. Additionally, the plot would not be able to develop
without including Annie’s and Tucker’s e-mails, since they are only able to communicate on the
internet for the first part of the novel. The novel intended to show just how much space the internet
and other media have taken up in our lives. Moreover, it outlined both the advantages and the
disadvantages of using media. While it can certainly prove helpful when wanting to stay in contact
with others who live on the other side of the world, the internet can also be very dangerous, for
instance when producing lies about someone or providing people with the opportunity to create
different identities for themselves online.
!
To conclude, Hornby’s use of both narratological as well as thematic techniques cleverly manages
to attract a broad range of readers. His characters are close to real life, easy to identify with and as a
reader, one has the feeling that the themes presented in the book could very well be part of one’s
life. The use of focalization also plays an important part in creating characters that represent real
people and in giving the reader the idea of having direct access to their thought processes. While the
themes Hornby uses in his book may seem rather trivial, he certainly also touched upon more
serious issues like depression, suicide or the search of goodness. Although it may seem that due to
the trivialness of his texts, Hornby cannot be considered a serious writer, his success among his
readers has proven all critics wrong. At 59, Hornby has already published eight books, all of which
have become popular among his fans; by writing screenplays for Academy Award nominated
movies such as An Education, he has also managed to make a name for himself in the movie scene.
His novels have long become part of the classics and his unique style of writing, his wit and the
clever use of everyday themes will make sure that Hornby will remain amongst the group of
popular authors for a long time. "
79
8. Bibliography
!
8.1. Primary Literature
!
Hornby, Nick (1998). About A Boy. New York: Pengiun Putnam Inc.
!
Hornby, Nick (2001). How To Be Good. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
!
Hornby, Nick (2009). Juliet, Naked. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
!
8.2. Secondary Literature
!
Allrath, Gaby (2013). “But why will you say that I am mad? Textuelle Signale für die Ermittlung
von unreliable narration“. In: Unreliable Narrration - Studien zur Theorie und Praxis
unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher
Verlag Trier. 59-69.
!
Beckenkamp, Jonas (2008). Do you believe in pop? Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity as ‘Popliteratur‘ -
a case study. Graz: Institut für Anglistik.
!
Chifane, Cristina (2015). From High Fidelity (1995) to Funny Girl (2014) or What Makes Nick
Hornby’s Novels so Popular. Karabuk: Karabuk University.
!
Gurr, Jens (2007). “Neue Entwicklungen in der Populärliteratur: Nick Hornby. In: Vera Nünning,
ed. Der zeitgenössische englische Roman. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 181-197.
!
Hallet, Wolfgang (2009). “The Multimodal Novel: The Integration of Modes and Media in
Novelistic Narration“. In: Sandra Heinen, ed. Narratology in the age of cross-disciplinary narrative
research. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. 129-153.
!
Jahn, Manfred (2013). “Das Phänomen der Unverlässlichkeit in den Erzählsituation“. In: Unreliable
Narrration - Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen
Erzählliteratur. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 81-105.
80
!
Kusche, Sabrina (2011). “Der E-Mail Roman und seine Spielarten - Eine typologische
Annäherung“. In: Ansgar Nünning, Jan Rupp, ed. Medialisierung des Erzählens im
englischsprachigen Roman der Gegenwart: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, Genres und
Modellinterpretationen. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. 153-169.
!
Nünning, Ansgar and Neumann, Birgit (2008). An Introduction to the Study of Narrative Fiction.
Stuttgart: Klett Lernen und Wissen GmbH.
!
Nünning, Vera (2003). “Brit-Pop im literarischen Gewand? Erzählerische Vermittlung und die
Inszenierung ethischer Fragen in Nick Hornbys About a Boy. In: Literatur in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 36: 31-49.
!
Nünning, Vera (2007). “Der zeitgenössische englische Roman: Ein Kartierungsversuch“. In: Vera
Nünning, ed. Der zeitgenössische englische Roman. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
1-13.
!
Nünning, Vera (2014). Reading Fictions, Changing Minds - The Cognitive Value of Fiction.
Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
!
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1983). Narrative Fiction. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
!
South Australian Certificate Of Education (2011). Stage 1 English - Assessment Type 1: Text
Analysis. South Australia: SACE Board of South Australia.
!
Weigel, Anna (2011). “Internet und Roman: Medialisierung des Erzählens in Nick Hornbys Juliet,
Naked“ In: Ansgar Nünning, Jan Rupp, ed. Medialisierung des Erzählens im englischsprachigen
Roman der Gegenwart: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, Genres und Modellinterpretationen. Trier:
WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 233-253.
!
Weigel, Anna (2013). “The rise of the new genre ‘fictions of the internet’: Hybridized and
medialized reading and writing practices in Jeffery Deaver’s Roadside Crosses. In: M. Basseler, A.
Nünning, & C. Schwanecke (Eds.), The Cultural Dynamics of Generic Change in Contemporary
81
Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model Interpretations. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher
Verlag Trier. 365- 380.
!
!
8.3. Online Sources #
!
Ana (2009, May 25). “How to be Good by Nick Hornby“. Things mean a lot - a reading journal.
[Online]. http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/2007/02/about-me.html [2017, February 25].
!
A&E Television Networks (2016, July 15). “Nick Hornby“. Bio.. [Online]. http://
www.biography.com/people/nick-hornby-091615 [2017, February 25].
!
Bartels, Gerrit (2001, August 29). “Glaube, Liebe, tiefster Sinn“. Taz. Die Tageszeitung. [Online].
http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/?dig=2001/08/29/a0108 [2017, February 25].
!
Brenda (2012, October 17). “Effective Narration 101: first-person narration“. Eclecticeditor
[Online]. http://www.eclecticeditor.com/2012/10/effective-narration-101-first-person-narration/
[2017, February 25].
!
Brownwyn, Hemus (2013, October 30). “Does The First Person Point Of View Make People
Care?“. Standoutbooks [Online]. https://www.standoutbooks.com/first-person-point-view/ [2017,
February 25].
!
Frost, Shelley (2017). “The Disadvantages of the First-Person Point of View“. Seattle Pi. [Online].
http://education.seattlepi.com/disadvantages-firstperson-point-6926.html [2017, February 25].
!
Gaulier, Sylvain (2014, March 21). “Book Review: Nick Hornby’s Juliet Naked“. Suffolkvoice.
[Online]. http://suffolkvoice.net/2014/03/21/book-review-nick-hornbys-juliet-naked/ [2017,
February 25].
!
“Irony“ (n.d.) Merriam-Webster. [Online]. Merriam-Webster Dictionaries. https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/irony [2017, February 25].
82
!
jbvm (2009, November 16). “How About That Ending?“. Library Thing. [Online] http://
www.librarything.com/topic/75021 [2017, February 25].
!
Miller, Laura (2001, July 25). ““How To Be Good“ by Nick Hornby“. Salon Media Group [Online].
http://www.salon.com/2001/07/25/hornby_2/ [2017, February 25].
!
Mullan, John (2002, July 27). “The uses of a sex change“. The Guardian. [Online]. https://
www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/27/nickhornby [2017, February 25].
!
Nick Hornby (2005, May 5). “How To Be Good Interview“. Nick Hornby Official. [Online]. http://
www.nickhornbyofficial.com/how-to-be-good-interview/ [2017, February 25].
!
Penguin Readers (2008). “About a Boy - Teacher’s Notes“. Penguin Active Reading - Teacher
Support Programme. [Online]. http://www.penguinreaders.com/pdf/downloads/par/level4/tn-
aboutaboy.pdf [2017, February 25].
!
Rubilandia (2013, August 11). “Literary Analysis - “How To Be Good“ by Nick Hornby.“ Is there
anybody out there. [Online]. https://rubilandia.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/literary-analysis-how-to-
be-good-by-nick-hornby/ [2017, February 25].
!
Sara (August 29). “The Last Line“. GoodReads. [Online]. http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/
51716-the-last-line#comment_1660779 [2017, February 25].
!
“Slapstick“ (n.d.) Merriam-Webster. [Online]. Merriam-Webster Dictionaries. https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slapstick [2017, February 25].
!
Queenan, Joe (2001, July 1). “Three’s Company“. New York Times. [Online]. http://
www.nytimes.com/books/01/07/01/reviews/010701.01queenat.html [2017, February 25].
!
Vidalia (2010, June 6). “How About That Ending?“. Library Thing. [Online] http://
www.librarything.com/topic/75021 [2017, February 25].
!
83
Wofford, Jeff (2007, June 8). “Book Review: How to be Good by Nick Hornby“. Jeff Wofford.
[Online]. http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=33 [2017, February 25].
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