Tittle: High Fidelity
Author: Nick Hornby
Publisher / Year: Penguin, 1995
Pages: 245
Summary:
After being dumped by his girlfriend Laura, Rob decides that he will try to find out why none of his relationships has worked. As a music junkie, he has his own Top 5 most memorable split-ups, those who really hurted, so he decides he will meet those five women that has broken his heart in the past to ask them.
Rob is the manager of Championship Vinyl, a small music collector's shop in London, where Dick and Barry work. Dick and Barry were contracted and paid to work only three days a week, but they turn up every day (even on Saturdays) and thought they are weird, they are Rob closest people.
Though the story we will know more details about Laura and Rob, their relationship and how they met.
With his story, Rob reflects how his vision about women and sex has changed though the years, how our fears prevent us from being happy and that is not what we like but what we are like that is important. And everything salted with music references.
Opinion:
With his funny touch Hornby explains why men are as we are in a way that makes you feel reflected in Rob's actions. He uses archetypes (music junkies in this case) that evoke facets of very different kind of people that you can identify in your own daily life.
The action and the situations are so cleverly engaged, that you would get sticked to the story from the very beginning. Furthermore, if you like music you will find a lot of winks about bands and songs.
This novel is a contemporary classic and, like many other books by Hornby, was adapted to the screen.
Language / Style:
The language used is colloquial, as the story is about middle-class people. The characters use a lot of times slang expressions like: fuck, fuck off, bloody and bollocks.
