I read the other day that Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down” will be made into a movie soon. I’ve liked other movies that have been made from his work (“High Fidelity” & “About a Boy”… though I’ve neither watched nor read “Fever Pitch”). I’m sure this one too will be a good flick.

“A Long Way Down” is a great story, one of my favorite contemporary novels, but I find myself worrying about it as a movie. How can the cinema possibly capture the rythym of the book, the richness in the perspective of the characters? And what a tragedy that some people will never read the book, watching the movie and missing out on half the story! Quick! If you haven’t already, READ THIS BOOK!!!!!

Here’s a quick excerpt from a chapter told from the perspective of one of his characters Maureen (she’s British, so whether you read it silently or aloud, do it with a British accent):

Frank is Matty’s father. It’s funny to think that might not be immediately obvious to someone, because it’s so obvious to me. I only ever had intercourse with one man, and I only had intercourse with that one man once, and the one time in my entire life that I had intercourse produced Matty. What are the chances, eh? One in a million? One in ten million? I don’t know. But of course even one in ten million means that there are a lot of women like me in the world. That’s not what you think of, when you think of one in ten million. You don’t think, That’s a lot of people.

What I’ve come to realize over the years is that we’re less protected from bad luck than you could possibly imagine. Because though it doesn’t seem fair -having intercourse only the once and ending up with a child who can’t walk or talk or even recognize me- well, fairness doesn’t really have much to do with it, does it? You only have to have intercourse the once to produce a child, any child. There are no laws that say, You can only have a child like Matty if you’re married, or if you have lots of other children, or if you sleep with lots of different men. There are no laws like that, even though you and I might think there should be. And once you have a child like Matty, you can’t help but feel, That’s it! That’s all my bad luck, a whole lifetime’s worth, in one bundle. But I’m not sure luck works like that. Matty wouldn’t stop me from getting breast cancer, or from being mugged. You’d think he should, but he can’t. In a way, I’m glad I never had another child, a normal one. I’d have needed more guarantees from God than He could have provided.

And anyway, I’m Catholic, so I don’t believe in luck as much as I believe in punishment. We’re good at believing in punishment; we’re the best in the world. I sinned against the Church, and the price you pay for that is Matty. It might seem like a high price to pay, but then, these sins are supposed to mean something, aren’t they? So in one way it’s hardly surprising that this is what I got. For a long time I was even grateful, because it felt to me as though I were going to be able to redeem myself here on earth, and there’d be no reckoning to be made afterward. But now I’m not so sure. If the price you have to pay for a sin is so high that you end up wanting to kill yourself and committing an even worse sin, then Someone’s done His sums wrong. Someone’s overcharging.