A Long Way Down
Nick Hornby Viking, 272pp, £17.99
ISBN 0670888249
One of the things I most enjoyed about life on a psychiatric ward was the release from social obligation. An unwritten rule said it was perfectly acceptable to abandon a conversation without apologising or explaining. In the first few days, I couldn't listen to anyone; then it was the sound of my own voice that struck me as an offence against the sacred air. I'd run out of steam mid-sentence, panicked but safe in the knowledge that none of my compadres on Ward Three would badger me, Kirsty Wark style, until I started making proper sense.
I was interested to hear that Nick Hornby had taken on the challenge of conjuring the curious dynamic of people brought together by despair. The characters in A Long Way Down have nothing much in common other than the suicidal impulse that has taken them, on New Year's Eve, to the roof of Toppers House, a tower block in north London. First to the edge is "sleazy" Martin Sharp, a shamed breakfast TV presenter whose decision to jump is a "product of proper thought". He is followed by Maureen, a middle-aged mother who can no longer cope with life as sole carer of a severely disabled son. Their halting conversation is interrupted by the Geronimo whooping of 18-year-old Jess. They stop her going over the top and are then joined by JJ, an embittered former rock singer still smarting from the break-up of Big Yellow, a band that "a lot of critics and not many real people liked".
No one feels much like doing It in front of an audience, so they tell their stories, get on each other's nerves and fail to come up with any convincing reasons for recommitting to life. Someone suggests they go and look for Chas, the boy who has broken Jess's heart. They are not sure where he'll be, but a few calls confirm Jess's suspicion that he is still at a party in Shoreditch with "Tessa and that lot".
This was the point where the novel began to earn my trust. I had been jittery up until then, irritated by the set-up and unsure whether Hornby would be able to resist demoting his characters' flaws to the status of light comic foibles. I was structuring an indictment when that detail about the party pulled me back. Like JJ, I had expected "some Gettysburg address about why their damaged and pointless lives were worth living" to be the deciding factor in the characters' change of heart. In going to look for Chas - an act which, to me, felt more affirming than some rhetorical assertion of faith - they are opting for reality in all its random shitness.
Learning to live with shitness is one of the most important lessons a depressive (in most cases an idealist) can learn. My own resistance to it has enabled me to sympathise with fellow sufferers who, like JJ, cling to the notion that happiness is possible only if you are playing to packed houses. His sense of outrage at "being less famous than I thought I should be" would feel like simple vanity if we had not glimpsed the soul-igniting passions of the life he has left behind. Reading his account of how an album track evolved to become a "show-stopper" of a live anthem, I found myself agreeing with his conviction that life had to be lived this intensely - otherwise, what was the point?
Previous Hornby characters have clung to their illusions with a tenacity that has limited their potential for development. Exiled from this psychic safe house, JJ and the others are forced to seek a different perspective on their predicament. All are hampered in the first instance by the habits of mind that Martin characterises as "thinking inside the box". Frustrated by his failure to offer a credible explanation for why he behaves like an arsehole, he wishes for a second head that would be able to "observe and interpret" the behaviour of the first. "Asking the head I now have to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dialling your own telephone number on your own telephone," he says. "Either way, you get an engaged signal."
Like Martin, the book is poised between a desire for its characters to learn from their experiences and a deep suspicion of the culture of personal growth. It is easy to talk the talk, but actual transformations, as opposed to the psychic make-overs paraded by the guests on his show, are rare. A decade in therapy is considered a success if the subject's mental make-up shifts by two degrees. No wonder Jess feels gloomy about her chances of finding a way of being that "doesn't involve being sick outside some dodgy club and offering to fight people". Her narrative conveys the horror of being banged up inside a personality that gives you no room for manoeuvre. "Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and telling the water it can go where it wants. Try it and see what happens."
It is Jess who first suggests that the Toppers House Four reconvene, "just to see how we're all getting on". Martin is against it on the grounds that "you are not My Kind of People". I felt much the same when the idea of a "kind of support group thingy" was put to me: what on earth did I stand to gain from "recon- necting" with people no better equipped than I was to navigate the difficult post-hospital re-entry into work and life? I resisted, thinking I would be better off spending my time with Winners and Copers. Then, like Martin, I saw that I would be able to feel more myself in the company of my fellow Ward Three lash-ups.
"When you're sad, you only want to be around other sad people." Hornby's malcontents are drawn together even though each of them is too wrapped up in his or her own misery to offer much in the way of solace. They misunderstand each other, and therefore find it difficult to act effectively on the goodwill each of them feels towards the rest. Kindnesses misfire, well-intentioned plans are thrown off course and then, in the midst of all this randomness, something begins to shift. It is nothing dramatic; no one has made any strides towards self-awareness; but each is a little closer to finding an accommodation with the doubts and insufficiencies of life.
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