★★★★★☆☆
Title: High Fidelity
Author: Nick Hornby – Narrator: Russell Tovey
Genre: Fiction/contemporary
First published: 1995
Edition: Audio book
Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex. He’s got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behave as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can’t move on. He’s stuck in a really deep groove – and it’s called Laura. Soon, he’s asking himself some big questions: about love, about life – and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.
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I listened to this on a whim as an Instagram ‘book club’ I love was reading this. It is one of those books that had been on my radar for years, but I just never really felt like actually reading. I knew I had watched the movie in the 90s, but could not really remember it at all.
It was an interesting trip reading this book. It is kind good and bad at the same time, which is a curious thing to achieve! The book is mostly about relationship and emotional attachment and is told from the point of view of a guy, who is a bit of an arse really.
I like my music, so I loved how much the main character, Rob, loves music and the fact that he owns a record shop, but apart from that…. He needed a good slap. To be honest, so did his (ex?) girlfriend Laura, also a bit of an arse. I got way too annoyed with all the characters at one point or another, but kind of rooted for Rob at the same time.
I do like this type of oddball book, which is sort of about nothing, but simply looks at human nature and the world from a rather ordinary perspective.
Russell Tovey’s narration was fine for the most part. His tone was a bit off sometimes, especially when doing the ladies’ voices, but overall I liked it.
When I finished it me and my husband sat down to watch the movie for the first time in 20 years.
The book feels very British and I kind of enjoyed that about it. The movie adaptation (with John Cusack) sort of misses that Britishness (obviously being American it would!).
5 out of 7 stars
Lola Et La Vie 