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High Fidelity Paperback – March 1, 2000

by Nick Hornby (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 3,801 ratings
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"I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."—Zoë Kravitz

From the bestselling author of Funny Girl, About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll.

Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films; top five Elvis Costello songs; top five episodes of Cheers. 

Rob tries dating a singer, but maybe it’s just that he’s always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft rock CDs might not be so bad. 
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Riverhead Books
  4. Publication date
    March 1, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.76 x 7.93 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1573228214
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1573228213
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."—Zoë Kravitz

"As funny, compulsive and contemporary a first novel as you could wish for."—GQ

 

"One of the top ten books of the year."—Entertainment Weekly

"It is rare that a book so hilarious is also so sharp about sex and manliness, memory and music."—The New Yorker

"Mr. Hornby captures the loneliness and childishness of adult life with such precision and wit that you'll find yourself nodding and smiling. High Fidelity fills you with the same sensation that you get from hearing a debut record album that has more charm and verve and depth than anything you can recall."—The New York Times Book Review

"Hornby's seamless prose and offhand humor make for one hilarious set piece after another, as suffering, self-centered Rob ruminates on women, sex, and Abbey Road. But then he's forced to consider loneliness, fitting-in, death, and failure—and that is what lingers."—Spin

"Keep this book away from your girlfriend—it contains too many of your secrets to let it fall into the wrong hands."—Details

About the Author

Nick Hornby is the author of six internationally bestselling novels (High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good, A Long Way Down, Slam and Juliet, Naked) and several works of  non-fiction including Fever Pitch, Songbook and Ten Years In The Tub, a collection of his 'Stuff I've Been Reading' columns from the Believer.  His screenplay for the film An Education was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives in Highbury, north London.
 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books; Media tie-in edition (March 1, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1573228214
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573228213
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.76 x 7.93 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 3,801 ratings

About the author

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Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

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Nick Hornby was born in 1957, and is the author of six novels, High Fidelity, About a Boy, How To Be Good, A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award)Slam and Juliet, Naked. He is also the author of Fever Pitch, a book on his life as a devoted supporter of Arsenal Football Club, and has edited the collection of short stories Speaking with the Angel. He has written a book about his favourite songs, 31 Songs, and his reading habits,The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. In 2009 he wrote the screenplay for the film An Education. Nick Hornby lives and works in Highbury, north London.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
3,801 global ratings
Gave me a used book
2 Stars
Gave me a used book
The movie is a cult classic in our family and I bought this as a gift for my brother but I have to exchange it because it came used and tattered. I might actually like the cover better but I don't like paying $13 for a new book and getting a used one with a different cover.
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Top reviews from the United States

Lynn
5.0 out of 5 stars Still a great read in 2013
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2013
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I have enjoyed a few other Hornby novels but figured this one may feel dated, especially since I had seen the film 12 years ago, and even then it was a dated story. But we booked a vacation (er, holiday) in London and I wanted to get in the right frame of mind. Now I wish the film was set there and not Chicago, another great town but not where it should have been in my opinion.

In the end I loved that it took place in another era. The flashbacks to life with vinyl albums, mix tapes and answering machines. That's how I grew up and it was fun to remember daily life. I especially enjoyed the concept that making a tape for someone is meaningful and each song (as well as the order of each) matters. And listening to an old favorite album back to back can definitely be cathartic and/or therapeutic.

Hornby, as usual, does not preach ideals or clobber you with an agenda, just hilarious everyday observations about people and relationships. I especially loved the description of the slow real seduction, which includes small talk, misunderstandings and that awkward moment where you know you will be sleeping together, so each takes a turn in the bathroom...

The book does get deeper at times, dealing with insecurity, breakups, death and marriage. But it never gets bogged down and always keeps true to its lighthearted and humorous self.
4 people found this helpful
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Bill Slocum
4.0 out of 5 stars Wise And Funny, If A Trifle Pat
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2009
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Rob Fleming would be pushing 50 today, a sobering thought for those of us who delighted in his arrested adolescence as presented in "High Fidelity", Nick Hornby's 1995 breakout novel.

"I want to go back to 1979 and start all over again", is how Rob puts it to us late in the story, and it's not just bell-bottom nostalgia he's thinking of - though you do get that, in a hilariously sent-up way. Its the menu of options that have since become closed to him, especially regarding love. Rob has just been ditched by his latest love, and he spends the first thirty pages going back to his youth recalling past dumping dames from his first kiss to his last roll in the hay.

He also is stuck in a dead-end job, selling old LPs at a tiny North London store called Championship Vinyl, where most of his day is spent listening to his two employees argue over whether the Righteous Brothers or Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels did the better version of "Little Latin Lupe Lu". If you care anything at all about pop music and its various offshoots over the last 50 years, you will find plenty of recognition comedy in "High Fidelity". For others, the send-up of nerdy one-upsmanship translates easy enough for laughter.

For most people, "High Fidelity" the book will be used to compare with "High Fidelity" the movie. The latter is a good one, definitely making my Top Five All Time John Cusack Movies list, but I wonder if the novel will similarly be on my Top Five Nick Hornby Novels in a few years' time. Not that "High Fidelity" isn't splendid company - it just goes on for a while longer than it needs to, and its narration seems a bit self-aware for someone whose life is supposed to be such a mess. Suffice it to say I don't want women thinking Rob is a typical male loser - he's a little too clever and sympathetic.

The novel does score points over the movie in some departments - Rob visits his parents in one chapter, and gets roped into a neighbor's wine party that brings out his self-pitying best. At one point, dragged to see a movie, he sees another young man in a similar predicament. The young man smiles sheepishly at Rob, who struggles to swallow down his disgust.

That gets at the heart of the message of "High Fidelity", that Rob's problem is one of snobbish selfishness, a desire to see himself as too important to accept the reality of his life for what it is. His relationship with ex Laura is not one of bitter feelings, but a dim sense of being cooped up by social expectations. Finding his way past his own narrow sense of self-satisfaction is the novel's central struggle, and its source of light. It's a common theme with Hornby - the main character in "About A Boy" later on will also need to get past his ideal of "island living" to find what it is about life that's really worth living for.

I like the message well enough. What I like more are the snappy one-liners. Maybe there's too many of them, and maybe Laura feels a bit too much like an echo of Rob's narration. But Hornby's often-unremarked gift for plot structure is well in evidence, and try not being entertained by it all the first time round.

"I get letters from young men, always young men, in Manchester and Glasgow and Ottawa, young men who seem to spend a disproportionate amount of their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and "ORIGINAL NOT RERELEASED" underlined Frank Zappa albums," Rob says of his clientele. "They're as close to being mad as makes no difference."

Paying Rob a call may seem mad to him, but it makes a whole lot of sense where "High Fidelity" is concerned.
2 people found this helpful
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Patrick F
5.0 out of 5 stars Coming of age for grownups
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2023
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So I saw the movie first when it came out - the 2000 John Cusack one - and loved it. Then I read the book and realized the movie was half as good as this thing - still great, and up to about the 90% mark a terrific adaptation (it needed to be about 15 minutes longer), but this book is so much better.
Last year I watched the show, an updated & gender & color flipped version, and IT was terrific, but still not as great as this book.
One person found this helpful
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Jacob G Corbin
3.0 out of 5 stars Lightweight but vastly entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2003
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I decided to give this book a read after seeing the excellent John Cusack film for the second time (and shame on you if you haven't seen it!). I wasn't sure what to expect of the novel, knowing as I did that, among other things, Cusack and director Stephen Frears had taken the liberty of relocating the story from London to Chicago. What other things might have been messed with?
Not much, as it turns out. Never in the history of book-to-film translations (with the possible exception of Fight Club) have there been fewer alterations and deviations from the novel than in the case of High Fidelity. This is aided, of course, by the fact that the book, in trade paperback, consists of a slim 323 double-spaced pages. The end result is that in the film, no important scenes are omitted, and hardly any characters got the axe either. The flip side of the coin is that the book, as fiction, is a bit of a light lunch. Like the movie, the novel is narrated by Rob, the beleaguered owner of one of those wonderful out-of-the-way (translation: customer-free) used record stores, this one being named Championship Vinyl. After being abandoned by his pretty and smart girlfriend Laura for an aging, hawaiian-shirt- and ponytail-sporting, incense-burning New Age hipster named Ian, the perplexed Rob - who thinks in Billboard-style lists - goes on to tell us the stories behind his "all-time desert island top five" breakups, while in the present day desperately trying to win back his skeptical ex. Comedy ensues.
This sort of story's been done before, of course, but one of the neat little twists is the tour Hornby gives us of the musical culture, where respect is earned by stumping people with encyclopedic knowledge of bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, and the undisguised contempt that the music elite, like the elites of all niche groups, express towards the everyday civilian. The pop culture at large permeates every facet of High Fidelity - certain passages don't make much sense unless you know what Rob means when he says, for instance, that someone reminds him of a character from Reservoir Dogs. This, of course, makes the book very much a novel of the 1990s - probably not something to be read twenty or thirty years from now - but unlike similar name-dropping books and movies, this novel is introspective about its own inseparable connection to the transitory. And this cuts to the heart of Rob's problems, because he's let the worship of the impermanent take over his life. "Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable," he muses, "or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?" Like all mass-culture junkies, Rob mourns for the loss of old favorites while simultaneously trying to get his hands on the next big thing. So it is with his love life.
Rob could easily come off as a narcissistic jerk, but Hornby neatly pulls off the trick of making us see where he's been sabotaging his relationships with women with sympathy rather than scorn. And the mistakes Rob makes are the mistakes that many men have made, though perhaps not so hilariously. The book is short (another way of putting it, of course, is that it never outstays its welcome) and full of suitably quotable lines. The London setting really makes no difference to the story one way or another (though the British school system continues to confound me: for a while I was under the impression that the "sixth form" was akin to our sixth grade, and thus was in for a shock when Rob's youthful counterpart began indulging in heavy petting). As a comedy, High Fidelity is excellent, though as literature it's basically junk food; but for the eight or ten hours I was reading the book, I was fully under its spell. If we're being honest, how many other books can we say that about? I don't want to seem like I'm damning with faint praise: good comedy is harder by far than it looks, and even rarer is a book that leavens the humor with thoughtful characterization and crisp prose.
33 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Mirela Singh
5.0 out of 5 stars Alta qualidade.
Reviewed in Brazil on November 1, 2023
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Muito bom. Livro altamente impactante e realista. entrega rapida, por um valor justo.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy entretenido. Gran libro
Reviewed in Spain on July 18, 2021
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Hilarante por momentos, te mantiene pegado a la lectura. Muy buenas recomendaciones musicales e historia de amor-desamor.
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Christian McJoe
5.0 out of 5 stars Überraschend - und gut wie die anderen
Reviewed in Germany on February 14, 2021
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Nick Hornby beschreibt Menschen, die kurios, liebeswert, oder auch abschreckend sind, aber immer glaubhaft. Obwohl es (wie in anderen Büchern von ihm) keinen im einfachen Sinne spannenden Handlungsstrang gibt, hat die Erzählung einen intensiven Sog, der einen mitreist, wenn man sich auf den Hauptcharakter einlässt. Er braucht keine Klischees, keine positiv oder negativ überhöhten "Guten" oder "Bösen". Man erkennt die Handschrift und Grundzüge seiner Geschichten, aber wenn man sie einem Genre zuordnen müsste, dann wäre es ein Genre für sich (was natürlich ein Widerspruch ist).
2 people found this helpful
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Peter Haro
5.0 out of 5 stars Rapidez
Reviewed in Mexico on August 27, 2019
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Rapidez y servicio
One person found this helpful
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ac
5.0 out of 5 stars Hornby al top. Impeccabile!
Reviewed in Italy on December 5, 2020
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Perché non lo avevo ancora letto, non me lo so spiegare. È il terzo libro che leggo di Hornby, è il mio preferito. Fresco nello stile colloquiale, un personaggio ironico, a tratti irriverente nei confronti del lettore, vero, sincero, credible e mai banale. Ho riso tanto. Fa riflettere sulle relazioni di coppia, partendo dalla quotidianità, le manie, i loop mentali e le paure che hanno un po' tutti, ma che pochi osano confessare. E nessuno lo sa fare in modo così efficace e sorprendente, come il protagonista. Lo rileggerò, di certo, nel frattempo lo consiglio!
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