High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
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Editions of High Fidelity
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Riverhead Books |
Date 2000 |
Price $1.00 |
 Fair |
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Berkley Pub Group |
Date 1996 |
Price $1.00 |
Used, Very Good |
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Hardcover |
Publisher Putnam Pub Group |
Date 1995 |
Price $1.85 |
Very Good |
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Riverhead Books |
Date 2005 |
Price $6.50 |
Very Good |
Media Reviews
"More than depicting pop music fandom, HIGH FIDELITY is about love, and about the ways in which music (and film, books, and art) affect our experiences of real-life love....This self-consciousness grants HIGH FIDELITY a certain profundity, and heightens its readers' pleasure....[A] supremely satisfying read....Hornby portrays relationships with honesty and without sentimentality....Although [it] is a trip through territory that in real life is mundane, depressing, and trite--modern love and popular music--the novel is anything but."
Excerpt
"Are you being funny?"
People quite often thought Marcus was being funny when he wasn't. He couldn't understand it. Asking his mum whether she'd split up with Roger was a perfectly sensible question, he thought: they'd had a big row, then they'd gone off into the kitchen to talk quietly, and after a little while they'd come out looking serious, and Roger had come over to him, shaken his hand and wished him luck at his new school, and then he'd gone.
"Why would I want to be funny?"
"Well, what does it look like to you?"
"It looks to me like you've split up. But I just wanted to make sure."
"We've split up."
"So he's gone?"
"Yes, Marcus, he's gone."
He didn't think he'd ever get used to this business. He had quite liked Roger, and the three of them had been out a few times; now, apparently, he'd never see him again. He didn't mind, but it was weird if you thought about it. He'd once shared a toilet with Roger, when they were both busting for a pee after a car journey. You'd think that if you'd peed with someone you ought to keep in touch with them somehow.
"What about his pizza?" They'd just ordered three pizzas when the argument started, and they hadn't arrived yet.
"We'll share it. If we're hungry."
"They're big, though. And didn't he order one with pepperoni on it?" Marcus and his mother were vegetarians. Roger wasn't.
"We'll throw it away, then," she said.
"Or we could pick the pepperoni off. I don't think they give you much of it anyway. It's mostly cheese and tomato."
"Marcus, I'm not really thinking about the pizzas right now."
"OK. Sorry. Why did you split up?"
"Oh ... this and that. I don't really know how to explain it."
Marcus wasn't surprised that she couldn't explain what had happened. He'd heard more or less the whole argument, and he hadn't understood a word of it; there seemed to be a piece missing somewhere. When Marcus and his mum argued, you could hear the important bits: too much, too expensive, too late, too young, bad for your teeth, the other channel, homework, fruit. But when his mum and her boyfriends argued, you could listen for hours and still miss the point, the thing, the fruit and homework part of it. It was like they'd been told to argue and just came out with anything they could think of.
"Did he have another girlfriend?"
"I don't think so."
"Have you got another boyfriend?"
She laughed. "Who would that be? The guy who took the pizza orders? No, Marcus, I haven't got another boyfriend. That's not how it works. Not when you're a thirty-eight-year-old working mother. There's a time problem. Ha! There's an everything problem. Why? Does it bother you?"
"I dunno."
First Line
"So, have you split up now?"
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