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My Rating: 4 stars

On New Year’s Eve, four very different people, named Martin, Maureen, Jess, and JJ, meet at a very odd place: on top of a fifteen-story building. They are all up on top of that building all for different reasons, but one common purpose. None of them thought they would run into anyone else, although this building was known as a local suicide-jumpers’ favorite. A Long Way Down isn’t really about suicide, it is more about what happens when you don’t kill yourself…told through the eyes of four diverse people.
I feel as though my summary of this novel did not do it justice, although I honestly did not want to give a lot of the book’s plot away. Like I said before, this book is not just about suicide. It’s about opening your eyes and just seeing how great life is, how many opportunities there are, how things can and will change eventually for the better, no matter how terrible everything is at this moment. This great bit of wisdom is taught to the readers through Martin, Maureen, Jess, and JJ, whom are (as I previously stressed) very, very different people. They remind me of the characters from The Breakfast Club, they’re so unlike each other, and it is almost shocking that they actually acknowledge each other, but they are connected by one specific situation. All the characters are from different age groups (ranging from 18 to around 50) and live in totally opposite lifestyles.
The one thing I really admire about Hornby is his ability to make his characters unique and have their own writing style. In my opinion, having a story told by more than one narrator is very difficult. It can get confusing for the reader. Though, in this book, each character has their own distinctive voice and writing style. I found it very easy to decipher whose section I was reading just by the way they talked, described things and told their story. Hornby creates such strong, defined and realistic characters. It really is difficult believing that they are in fact fictional, and not someone you know in real life. Also, Hornby has a very exceptional way of writing himself. He is able to combine such a serious topic (in this case, suicide) and add humor to it, too. I love the sarcasm that just flooded out of some of the characters, especially Jess.
I think there was only one aspect of this novel that I wasn’t too crazy about. I have mixed feelings about the ending of this novel. I will not give away any of the details, but it ended in a kind of open way. I guess its purpose was to leave the story up to the reader. They could imagine however they wanted it to end, whether it is a happy, joyful ending or a sad, tragic ending. Sometimes I like these types of endings. I like leaving things up to the reader’s imagination; it gets them thinking. Although in this situation, I would have preferred a solid ending. I don’t want to guess what will happen next. But on the other hand, I kind of understand why Hornby ended the novel this way. While reading, the ending was something I was very curious about. I wanted to know how it was going to end because I personally could not have thought how it would end. While the plot had its surprises and kept me captivated, it just didn’t seem like a story that had a set-in-stone ending.
Overall, A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby is a great book with fantastic main characters that will generate lots of different opinions from its readers, which is something that makes it so great.