Hi-fi love

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is a story about love and music - it is what the lover hopes for and the music enthusiast yearns for.

Rob is a thirty-something, single Brit who owns a music shop called ‘Championship Vinyl’ in London. He has just broken up with Laura, his live-in girlfriend, and in the pain of being separated reminiscences about all the heartbreaks that he has suffered since school. He becomes fairly promiscuous after his separation and retraces his love graph and gets in touch with all his ex-girlfriends to try and understand where he went wrong.

Nick Hornby

In the process, he begins to analyse himself and therefore men as a species and their relationship with women. It is hard to say whether this is autobiographical. But Hornby’s sentiments come across to readers through Rob who is emotionally vulnerable and yet, egotistically indifferent.

Hornby is unconsciously funny and deeply insightful. He makes Rob an unpretentious, musical being who expresses his emotions through songs. Rob and his shop assistants - Dick and Barry - are vinyl addicts and passionate about music. But they spurn every kind of pop, sentimental, tacky music for blues, soul, and jazz. Every song for them is a thought, a sentiment and for every event they have a ‘top five’.

Hornby, through first person narrative, masterfully depicts Rob’s soul-searching journey that every individual takes at some point in his or her life. Which is why the reader relates to the novel at every turn of corner: “You spend Christmas at somebody’s house…you see them in their dressing gown…and then, bang that’s it. Gone forever. And sooner or later there will be another mum, another Christmas, more varicose veins.”

Hornby uses music as a metaphor for life. “What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?” are questions that Rob asks himself. And in trying to understand his plight we find ourselves asking the same questions.

Marked with wit, sarcasm and humour, this novel is as much profound as it is ordinary. And although it might begin on a pessimistic note, Hornby gives it a hopeful ending. We sympathise with Rob because we sympathise with our own situations. And in making Rob happy in the end, Hornby fills those gaps in our hearts that are caused by too many disappointments.