Bokrecension: High Fidelity av Nick Hornby

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

In the northern London of the late nineties you’ll meet Rob Flemming, a 36-year old man who got dumped by his girlfriend Laura. Laura is lawyer who don’t think music is as important as Rob does, and don’t really suit each other. Rob owns a record shop called Championship Vinyl. And he has two employees, Dick and Barry is completely different to one another, the only thing that they have in common is the music and drinking alcohol. Rob is a typical aesthetic person, he has many questions and thinks about plenty of stuff all the time, and I will nearly call him depressed. When he finds out about Laura getting together with their old neighbor Ray aka Ian, he searches up his old girlfriends, even the first one from his earlier teenage. Rob were able find out their phone numbers and called them all, one after another, to check what went wrong. Why he always got dumped, lonely and miserable. But Rob realized when he had spoken with everyone that he wasn’t the real problem, because every one of them had sensible reasons to have broken up with him. Rob tries dating a singer called Marie, an American who came to London with her odd “boyfriend”. Marie’s rendition of "Baby, I Love Your Way" makes him cry. But maybe it''''s just that he''''s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. So Rob leaves it there so he and Marie could be just friends. Rob doesn’t want to get married, get children and so on, but he knows that Laura wants all that stuff. And when Rob started to think about death, he got really scared. He realized he wanted to get married and all that, but just not now. But he knows the time was ticking and that he had to grown up radar soon. The whole story ends up with Rob and Laura getting together again and Rob ask Laura to marry him, but she told him no because she didn’t want to rush in to things like that to quickly. In the very end of the book Laura wanted to make something special for Rob, so she arranged a gig for Rob at a club where he once worked as a DJ. And he can finally see that Laura loves him and that he loves Laura back.
The largest theme “High Fidelity” is dealing with is love and its benefit and disadvantage and that leads us to sex and jealousy. But it also deals with music, a lot of music I’ve never even heard of. And Rob, have this sense of humor I like, rough and ironic, but he is as I said a depressed person which the reader also will deal with. Even death comes up, Laura’s dad died and she wanted Rob to come to the funeral, and that evening was the one Rob and Laura went a couple again.
“High Fidelity” is set in northern London. And it changes places mostly between Rob’s music store and his apartment, but also from Rob and Laura’s parents’ house and Marie’s apartment. And all the course of events is about some months.
One clear massage I get from “High Fidelity” is love is love, you can’t help it. I have heard of the spoken language “real love never dies”, and I believe in it. Even if you are depressed, stressed, sad or mad, it just won’t go away, even if you want it to…
“High Fidelity” was a bit tricky when it came to the language. So I’ll say it is a book for the older teenagers and grown ups in the age between 20 and 35 maybe. But if you’re really in to this kind of media I will highly recommend this book too anybody. Because if you really want to read it, even if it’s thought, you’ll do it ‘cause you know it will be worth it.
On the backside of the book you can find a few reviews from different writers in the press. And one of them, Elizabeth Young from the “Guardian”, wrote this; “The most frequent response to “High Fidelity” is “Oh God, I know people just like that!” his characters are truly archetypes, culled from sources and brilliantly reconstituted so that they evoke facets of many, many different friends and relationships.” And that’s what it is. A book where you can recognize at least one person you know. “High Fidelity” is a book you just can’t resist laughing, crying or be angry at. It’s too real, that’s kind of scary. But you’ll love it anyway, I can promise you that!
I loved “High Fidelity”, but the first chapter of the book frightened me a bit. It was just some “bull shit” about some girls, and I didn’t get the picture of anything at all. But when I had read that part the rest come easily, it was then I could finally get why Rob was ...