Christina Reviews *High Fidelity* by Nick Hornby

The first thing you should know about High Fidelity is that the movie was incredibly faithful to the novel, aside from the fact that the movie took place in Chicago and the book took place in England.  It’s actually quite interesting how the movie completely changed the setting and yet the tone of the novel remained almost intact.  The movie didn’t really improve on the book, but it’s a good substitute if you’re lazy.

High Fidelity is about a music snob who likes to create Top 5 lists for everything you can imagine.  He has recently broken up with his girlfriend and he ponders life and dating and music and how maybe his love life sucks because he listened to depressing music growing up.  He feels empathy for his fellow record collector.  For example, an embittered ex-wife offers to sell him her ex-husband’s record collection for an insanely low figure, but he can’t bring himself to do it.  He’s got his own sense of right and wrong, and his own sense of what’s important in life and what’s not.  For example, one of the things he feels strongly about is having girlfriends who like the same things as you do.  On page 117, he puts it like this: “…it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.”

 He works with these two guys named Barry and Dick.  Dick is shy and intellectual.  Barry is a wisecracking, madman.  Together, the three of them make a team. 

Hornby has got the voice of the semi-insensitive, 30 something year old single guy down.  Rob doesn’t even try to pretend that he’s a sympathetic guy.  He knows he’s not going to win any awards for being the best boyfriend in the world, but he’s self-deprecating enough that you can’t help but like him.  And he grows as a character, which is always good.

To be honest, though, I didn’t care at all about the moral of this story.  I just liked the funny parts.