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Book: How to Be Good
Author: Nick Hornby
Year: 2001

Review

This book was the first time that Hornby writes from a woman's perspective. The three main protagonists are Katie and David, a married couple, and DJ GoodNews. The book describes an eventful year in the life of Katie. Katie is a middle-class doctor in the UK, has two children and the angriest husband in the world: David. David is a bundle of verbal aggression, frustration, and stressful hyperactive unhappiness. He is no fun to live with. Not even for him. He is a part-time writer for a small local paper and authors a newspaper column entitled "The Angriest Man in Holloway". In this column his anger spills over, though with comical aspects. The primary joy for David is to put people or categories of people down and to aimlessly criticize society.

The interactions between Katie and David are verbal attacks, mind-games, and setting it each other up so that one can blame the other later. It is not surprising that the marriage plus the kids are suffering and it doesn't come unnatural for Katie to have an affair, although brief and guilt-ridden. Eventually -- after years of marriage and living next to each other rather than with each other -- Katie throws the towel. She is fed up and simply had enough. That's fine by David as long as she is the one to blame for breaking the marriage.

Pressed for this decision, Katie starts thinking. Why? How did it go so out of control? How come it went so far? She identifies David's anger as one of the main issues for her and wishes that he would lose his poisonous anger. Here the life situation is about to change. Something unpredictable, something incomprehensible is happening. Rapidly, nearly over night David gets rid of all his anger and negativity. He is like new born. That just creates another problem for Katie. She cannot recognize her husband anymore. What had happened to him? How is it possible that he changed, and so drastically? This is a profound spiritual change in David. It affects all is aspects. He gives up his part-time job as the "Angriest Man" in the newspaper. He starts being nice and honest, spends time with the kids. No more sarcasm anymore. It's hard to handle for Katie. Even worse to handle when he tells her it is because of a faith healer called DJ GoodNews. DJ GoodNews has certain hippie-ness to his personality and is like most dedicated spiritual people a somewhat surprising character. Unorthodox would be the word to describe him. His name is only the beginning.

In moments by laying his hands on David DJ GoodNews has taken away the anger from his heart. Suddenly David is a good guy. He donates to charities, talks well about other people, has no more need to criticize or put people down. Soon Katie finds herself thinking, "Can one be too good?" David is suddenly a saint. He hands $50 to a begging homeless, and spends his evening planning on how to improve the world and how to given even more of their belongings away. GoodNews, now David's spiritual collaborator, moves into their house and Katie is confronted with her estranged - although good - husband, two kids slowly taking sides with her husband, and a weirdo named DJ GoodNews. And the "being good" gets even more extreme. GoodNews and David come up with a scheme to take a group of half a dozen homeless teenagers off the streets by convincing their middle-class neighbors to take on one kid each. He and his spirituality suddenly take effect and bear fruits. His acts touch the heart of many people, at least nearly all the people in his street. He keeps planning more schemes to help and improve his immediate environment.

David puts being good in the context of a very real world, represented by his family, his neighbors, and the teens that eventually run away from their families that adopted them. Being good in a good world is easy, but David is good in a world like ours that is flawed. At the end when you get close to the last pages you start wondering: how will it finish? Will the good survive, will everything come crumbling down? Can they pull it off? Or is it too good to be true? Well, I won't tell you. You've got to read the book to find out.

Spiritual Message

The book is capturing, quite humorous. It is amusing to read. I had to laugh hard on occasions. It is certainly not your typical spiritual text. It has nothing to do with and doesn't try to be spiritual. But that doesn't mean there is no message or that it doesn't or can't make you think. It did make me think.

We all can identify with the live of this unhappy couple before their life got turned upside down. Not that our married life is like this every day, but certainly on bad days it feels like this. We leash out at each other with meaningless words that are just there to hurt, not to heal. Anger accumulates and we occasionally vent it. And when we do it frequently is directed towards people that are not the cause of our anger or frustration.

How come David can eliminate his anger and hate? We don't need someone to lay a hand on top of our head to magically vaporize our negative feelings and the factory thereof. If we are more conscious, more aware of what we are and what is happening to us on an external and internal level, we can avoid building up these aggressions. I firmly believe that we have a clear choice and that with consciousness we can remove at its nucleus the potential for creating these emotions. As a result we will eliminate or at least reduce the attacking or violent actions that follow this state of emotions. We can practice to be aware. When we notice that something negative is accumulating we can tell ourselves to unimportance of most of these matters and rationally understand that a) it is usually irrelevant (did it really matter that the guy on the freeway cut you off a bit?) and b) that anger will not resolve the issue (you will not fix the issue by giving him the finger). Allowing anger to get to you and giving the finger will not even make you feel better. You will just indulge yourself in your little private feast of anger.

We all have a little bit of the pre-goodness David in us, I certainly do. I have my days of bad humor and attitude where I can explode at any little thing like a wrong word from my girl friend or because my computer is slow. When I don't focus, when I let myself drift, I follow the path of the old David. But awareness of the situation and the drivers, realizing the insignificance are the tools for me to ovoid falling in the negativity trap. With more practice I hope to see more results.

As David starts out to be good it all looks so convincing. Suddenly he is good, he is unselfish, he is concerned about the others. This David was easy to admire. Now he is good. And shortly afterwards he is "better". Giving away one of the two computers, handing $50 notes to beggars. Now, this really good David is hard to identify with. That is at least what I found. And I found myself guilty for not being able to admire this too, without restraints. I started pondering the question (just like Katie): how good does someone have to be to be really considered a good person? Can one be too good? Giving away 50% of what we have is not seen as something good but as craziness. Where is the limit? You give away 10% and you are a saint. You give away 20% and you are a fool. Give away 30% and you are crazy. Is that it? How much have I given away? Very, very little of my wealth.

David demonstrates that we can be good, that we can improve the world, that it is simple, that anyone can do it, and that we have no excuses. He is a John Doe without special gifts or wealth, but his limited actions are so much better than the vacuum we find regularly in all of our cities. His idea was that nearly every house on his road had an unused spare bedroom. He convinced some of his neighbors to put up a homeless youth in this spare room. It is simple. Most of us have an unused room in our house. We are not going to poor because of putting someone up in it. And what a major difference it can make to people, both the receiver as well as the giver. The potential is so vast. David shows us that in a real world with all the shortcomings there are we can make a positive change. We always have all sorts of excuses for not being as "good" as we could be. No time, no money, not now, .etc. It is kind of scary to realize that these are all excuses. These are not reasons, just pretexts to not think about the fact that we all could be good.

The author doesn't give a spiritual message. It is between the lines. It is in the questions that you ask yourself while reading the book.

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