High Fidelity

British working-class literature often shocks Americans with its psychological cruelty and vulgarity. In this sly, humorous and somewhat softened example, author Hornby gives us a sympathetic look at flawed a young hero fumbling toward manliness. High Fidelity's narrator/protagonist--a callow young record store owner obsessed with the politics of his disappointing sex life--admits to being "self-centered, blind and stupid." At times, cockney David Cale seems excruciatingly dull and dense; at other times, to have dug deeper into his characters' angst than the author has. He also misses much of the humor in the story. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

July 31, 1995
British journalist Hornby has fashioned a disarming, rueful and sometimes quite funny first novel that is not quite as hip as it wishes to be. The book dramatizes the romantic struggle of Rob Fleming, owner of a vintage record store in London. After his girlfriend, Laura, leaves him for another man, he realizes that he pines not for sexual ecstasy (epitomized by a ``bonkus mirabilis'' in his past) but for the monogamy this cynic has come to think of as a crime. He takes comfort in the company of the clerks at the store, whose bantering compilations of top-five lists (e.g., top five Elvis Costello songs; top-five films) typify the novel's ingratiating saturation in pop culture. Sometimes this can pall: readers may find that Rob's ruminations about listening to the Smiths and the Lemonheads--pop music helps him fall in love, he tells us--are more interesting than his list of five favorite episodes of Cheers. Rob takes comfort as well in the company of a touring singer, Marie La Salle, who is unpretentious and ``pretty in that nearly cross-eyed American way''--but life becomes more complicated when he encounters Laura again. Hornby has earned his own place on the London bestseller lists, and this on-the-edge tale of musical addiction just may climb the charts here. First serial to Esquire.