"It's not just that [Hornby] makes us laugh....It is that Hornby has an undisguisedly hopeful soul. There is scarcely a character here...towards whom we are not made to feel a pang of human empathy....Beneath his mantle of gloomy cool, Nick Hornby is still a softie, happily."
Times Literary Supplement - Candice Rodd (05/25/2001)
"[I]n the end, this oddly retro novel is hamstrung by the unequal contest between Katie and GoodNews, and by Katie's monotonous hand-wringing. HIGH FIDELITY and FEVER PITCH grabbed the reader by the lapels because the narrators...were true originals. Katie Carr, Hornby's marionette in HOW TO BE GOOD, is a far less entertaining M.C. She is the kind of intelligent, practical woman who builds first-class societies but second-rate novels."
New York Times Book Review - Joe Queenan (07/01/2001)
"[Hornby] has a wonderful sense of the comic value of rage....Despite some great moments of brutal, over-the-top comedy, there's a tenderness that runs through this novel-an anguished concern about the calamity of moral desire in a world whose needs exceed everything we can give it. What's most troubling, though, is the story's implication that the struggle to be always good is somehow incompatible with intelligence or even a sense of humor. The stark choice here is between ignorance of the world or tyrannical idealism."
Christian Science Monitor - Ron Charles (07/05/2001)
"[A] cosy, knowing, very readable satire....But don't expect any particularly penetrating or challenging conclusions--let alone, as the title seems to promise, an instruction manual for the virtuous."
Literary Review - Samuel Leith (05/20/2001)
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