I finally got round to reading this having seen the film a couple of years ago. If you enjoyed the film then you will certainly love this book.

Set in Nick Hornby's native North London, it's seen through the eyes of Rob, a DJ and struggling record shop owner who's latest in a long line of girlfriends, Laura, has just moved out of their flat. In his quest to search for where it all went wrong, he revisits old girlfriends while pining for his latest one. The results are very funny while a being scarily accurate picture of many men. Perhaps that is what makes it such a good book - the fact that you see so much of yourself within Rob's character.

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.

Every character in this book is frustratingly annoying and stubborn which makes them entirely human. They don't both sugar coating anything even it puts them in a negative light, which got under my nerves but also was so refreshing to read.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this book is filled with contradictions. And good music. Always.

Fabulous book. All music lovers should read it because it's full of remarks and music quotes.

Taking that aside, it's an excellent comedy full of sarcasm, and it depicts perfectly the man in different stages of the life. Not saying every guy is like Rob (the main character), but every man is like him in some point of the life.

It also approaches relationships from a super raw angle, and one can easily relate to how he feels or how Rob's girlfriends must have felt.

Overall, a 10-points (or 5-star) book.

Excelente, llego bien y a tiempo

A witty and insightful accounr of the life and loves of an unmarried college dropout who regards himslf as a morose lonely failure trapped in awkward adolescence (although he runs his own business and lives in a London apartment on his own or with one of a succession of girl friends). Ultimately he gets to realise that things aren't really all that bad and that he's popular and successful, and his true love helps him to understand the meaning of life. He runs a golden oldie record store and displays immense erudition in popular culture, music, TV and movies, which counterpoints the action.

I would not have thought I would have liked a book which is just about a guy running a record store and his current and past girlfriends, but he breaks through a lot of areas to bring out some 'truth' in it all and it's a really good read and clever and funny. A good read for anyone who has ever had a relationship. It makes you think.

I've never been a fan of Woody Allen and this novel reminded me of his self absorbed myopic nature to be honest. Nicks's got some good humour and introspection that I can relate to but not enough of it to really nail my interest. It just got a bit tedious for me and I was looking for the end of the book the further I got into it. It may have appealed more to the musos amongst us and perhaps that's why I skipped over these rants ...

Over the years I have bought about half a dozen copies of "High Fidelity" and given them all away to friends with the exhortation to "...read this, it's just wonderful"! Sadly none of my friends ever seem to find the same sense of unadulterated joy in Hornby's prose as I do.

My current copy came from a charity shop and has a small sticker on the back saying "50p - Good", obviously intended as a comment on the physical condition of the book, but which I mistakenly took to be a critical review. I still recall my embarrassment on marching to the desk demanding to know why it didn't say "excellent"!

The blurb inside the front cover starts with a quote from the Guardian: "The most frequent response to High Fidelity is `Oh God, I know people just like that'..." Well it's true; I do - me. Whenever I re-read the novel, which has been every couple of years, I find myself wincing with painful self-recognition. Right down to the obsessive list making (each new diary of mine used to start with a list of my top ten albums, novels and movies so that I could compare the lists back to previous years).

Hornby is such an astute writer, with a real gift for comedy. If you regard "Fever Pitch" as a memoir then amazingly "High Fidelity" is his debut novel and it is astonishing. I know all the jokes yet still find myself reading with an inane grin on my face, when I'm not laughing uncontrollably - not a book to read on a quiet train. In Rob Fleming he has created a totally believable and fatally flawed human being, and I still find myself rooting for him from the bottom of my heart.

Hornby's authorial voice is conversational with an immediacy that makes you feel as though he had written a confessional just for you alone. His dialogue is an object lesson in authenticity for any aspiring writer; effortlessly fluent and compulsively readable. It certainly makes its way into my list of my top five favourite novels, year on year.

A great novel, which for once, is not better than the movie.

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!

Do yourself a favour & read this. Easy reading, great characters - excellent story still relevant today. Highly recommend this classic novel.

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).