How To Be Good

By Nick Hornby

'Listen, I'm not a bad person. I'm a doctor. One of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was because I thought it would be a good - as in Good rather than exciting or well-paid or glamorous - thing to do … Anyway, I'm a good person, a doctor, and I'm lying in a hotel bed with a man I don't really know very well called Stephen, and I've just asked my husband for a divorce.'

What does it mean to be good? This is Nick Hornsby trying to answer that question in his usual humorous way.

Katie and David Carr are married. Katie is Good. She recycles, she's against racism and even became a doctor to help people. However, Katie is having a mid-life crisis, not sure how she feels about her life and children. She feels is ready for a divorce and a new life. In fact, she is already having an affair with another man and ends up asking her husband for a divorce via cell-phone!

David is selfish, sarcastic and underemployed. He writes the "Angriest Man in Holloway" column for the local paper. Now, rather than acting in the expected manner when his wife asks for a divorce, he re-examines his own life and agrees with everything she says and becomes Good.

Enter Goodnews. A homeless person who seems to have powers of healing. He has a strange effect on David and David even lets him stay up in the spare room. Goodnews is making David look at the injustices in the world and try to put them right. Katie is trying hard to come to terms with this change. Having a hateful husband was horrible but is not sure whether it is much better having a super husband either.

Very funny, especially the old David, and well worth the time.

Instances of the Number 3

By Salley Vickers

'A person ... isn't only flesh and blood. A person exists inside one, informing one's state of mind'.

This is a thoughtful story full of humour and surprises. Peter Handsome dies suddenly in a car accident and leaves behind a wife and a mistress. After his death the mistress, Frances Slater, a London art dealer and sometimes artists' model, contacts Peter's wife, the Shakespeare-loving Bridget Hansome. What the women do not know is that Peter was also involved with a third woman, a prostitute named Zelda.

Bridget has over the years accepted her husband's many love affairs but is, nonetheless, very hurt when she learns about Frances and Peter's loving relationship over the past seven years. I have to say that although Bridget might not be the most likeable of people, I could not help but feel her pain when finding out about Frances and Peter. A little surprisingly, the women become friends and discover that they have in common what is most important to them: the memory of the man they both loved. Slowly the women get to know each other and even spend weekends in the country together.

One day an Iranian boy, Zahin, shows up on Bridget's doorstep. He seems to have known Peter and so she lets him stay with her. Zahin is a whiz at housework as well as a natural flatterer, but has an even more mysterious sister...

After having read Miss Garnet's Angel I have to say I was a little disappointed with this novel. It did not live up to my expectations, so not a book I would read again.