Nick Hornby... well, he's ok. He's quite good at the male psyche, but he can't write women for shit, and his novels will last about ten minutes after the zeitgeist is over: they aren't universal. His first book, Fever Pitch, is the best football book ever written, I think, and really gets to grips with the origins and meanings and effects of the obsession which grips so many. He understands why football matters. The masterstroke was to personalise it, make it a kind of autobiography through the sport: it made it compulsive and moving and wondeful whether you like the beautiful game or not.
High Fidelity? Well... it's not bad for a first novel, but it's essentially just doing the same thing for music, only dressing it up as fiction. Enjoyable, but nothing that's going to make your head spin. But the occasional insight. Superior airport fiction, and it made a good film.
About A Boy? By now it's becoming increasingly obvious that our Nick has one note which he sticks to desperately. A lot of fun, and there's the occasional moment that makes you go 'hmm', but frankly this is instantly forgettable. Says nothing that hasn't been said before, and better.
How To Be Good - well, frankly, this is a load of shite. Hornby's middle aged female narrator is woefully unconvincing - she just sounds like the narrator of High Fidelity, but a bit posher - and the whole premise is a second-rate morality tale which doesn't work as simple story, the novel's most basic requirement. Makes you feel a bit uncomfortable about the fact that you don't do more for charity, a laudable aim, I suppose, but that's as far as it goes. I remember less about this book than any of the others, despite having read it most recently, which says a lot.
So a trend's emerging. Not looking forward to the next one, frankly.
(Having said all this, of course, it's true that I enjoyed each one enough to read the next. So he's doing something right.)