High fidelity

Nick Hornby

Penguin, 1996 - Fiction - 323 pages

Now a major motion picture from Touchstone Pictures.

Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at his store, who endlessly review their top five films (Reservoir Dogs...); top five Elvis Costello songs ("Alison"...); top five episodes of Cheers (the one where Woody sang his stupid song to Kelly...). Rob tries dating a singer whose rendition of "Baby, I Love Your Way" makes him cry. But maybe it's just that he's always wanted to sleep with someone who has a record contract. Then he sees Laura again. And Rob begins to think (awful as it sounds) that life as an episode of thirtysomething, with all the kids and marriages and barbecues and k.d. lang CD's that this implies, might not be so bad.

What people are saying

Review: High Fidelity

User Review  - Ana - Goodreads

I loved this book. I LOVED it. Again, one of those rare reads that just make you feel so much better about everything around you. And not because the characters were shitty and their life story was ...

Review: High Fidelity

User Review  - Jay Busbee - Goodreads

Simply an exceptional book about growing up and growing older, and while its central conceit (the record collection) is a bit creaky in the days of the ipod, maybe that's the entire point. A couple ...

About the author

Nick Hornby is the author of the novels How to Be Good, High Fidelity, About a Boy, and A Long Way Down, as well as the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and the editor of the short story collection Speaking with the Angel. The recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award for 1999 as well as the 2003 Orange Word International Writers' London Award, he lives in North London.

Bibliographic information

• Title: High fidelity; “The” international bestseller
• Author: Nick Hornby
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 1996
• ISBN: 1573225517, 9781573225519
• Length: 323 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General