High Fidelity Literary analysis

High Fidelity is a novel written by Nick Hornby, published 1995. It was Hornby's first novel and his third book. Nickolas Peter John Hornby is an english writer, and he wrote his first book Fever Pitch 1992.  The novel High Fidelity is a story about Rob Fleming and his struggles to find purpose and love. Rob runs a record shop called Championship Vinyl and he has colleagues Di and Barry.

where he sells classic pop records and makes fun of his customers' music taste (which is most of the excitement in his life). Throughout the story, readers learn about Laura, Rob's ex-girlfriend, who he is hopelessly in love with though she left him for a man who lived in the apartment above them. After the death of Laura's father, they get back together, but still struggle with fighting and a slight hatred toward each other. A lot of the novel is on Rob's thoughts about everything that goes on and his life is one of a depressed, thirty-something year old man, who struggles with commitment and a lack of confidence. 

In this novel we can see the childish behavior that Rob has with his five ex girlfriends. For example when he was with his first ex-girlfriend in college  Charlie Nicholson, he decided to break up with her because he thinks that she is out of his league. Which can indicate that he is a superficial and arrogant person. Even Alison Ashworth who was his second girlfriend and dumped him after three days, has probably seen the childish behavior that Rob has. Rob was even in a relation with a young girl, but she would not give into his sexual demands.  And last but not least Rob was also so mean when he stole his girlfriend Jaike from his best and childhood friend Phil. 

High fidelity's greatest theme is dealing with is the advantage and disadvantage of love and that will lead us to sex and jealousy. This novel even deals with a lot of music because Rob has a record shop and he thinks that music is an important thing in life. As a reader I noticed that Rob is a depressed person especially when Laura left him, because when he finds out that loura is getting together with his old neighbor Ray, he did call all of his old girlfriends to check with them what went wrong in their relationship and why he always gets dumped, lonely and miserable. But the surprise was that he was not the real problem, because every one of his ex-girlfriend had a sensible reason to leave or to break up with him. 

Rob even tried to be together with an american singer who called Maria and he likes her songs because it makes him cry, but they could not be more than just friends. In the beginning of the story Rob does not want to marry or get children at all. But he changed his mind when Laura's dad died. Because he starts to think about death and that even makes him really scared. That's why he asked Laura if they can get together again but she said no. That was because she wanted to surprise him. I think even she did that because she wanted to show him how much she loves him.