There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Characters are still indecisive and over analyze how they are perceived, and the novel gets bogged down by these character traits. That was a total let down. More:New 'Friends' cookbook offers an actually edible meat trifle. Instead, I was left with a beige feeling of blah. Soon enough, this mismatched pair is sharing drinks, meals, and bed. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Nick Hornby’s writing had me falling in love with characters and then hating them and then falling back in love with them! by Riverhead Books. Can I have half a dozen pork and leek sausages, please? In other words, Lucy’s divorce provided a screen on which Emma could project endless fantasies. He kept enough to live on, if that, but he gave her the rest. Set in London with the Brexit vote looming in the background, a forty-something mom and a 22-year old hipster fall in love (sort of?) They soon develop a friendship which quickly escalates into more. Because it should be.”, “You don’t want the police turning up when there’s a guy skulking around outside your window at night? So I very much agree with you on that one! Just Like You is a poignant, warm, wise and highly entertaining twenty-first-century love story about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected. So I approached "Just Like You" with a bit of trepidation. Or as Hornby deftly describes it from inside Joseph’s head: “If you’d asked him before … what made him happy, he wouldn’t really have understood the relevance of the question. As a new wife, marooned in student housing near Julia’s house, I shopped at the grocery store across the street, home to her butcher. It was as if the people in the queue were extras in a film about women who are best friends despite being the opposite. It’s somewhat interesting, but it’s seems kind of affected, but maybe that’s because it’s British. It was a bit of a slog at times but I was glad I read to the end. But I am a reader who thinks that the stakes are a bit higher when they do. Nick Hornby's latest doesn't reinvent the formula. The story is at its best when it leans into the humor and personal connection between the two main characters. But I’ll always love Nick Hornby! An incredible story of dangerous and secret friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice. It’s not giving much away to say that Lucy and Joseph commence a relationship. “I could eat him up,” said Emma when they were both back outside. Her sons ate neither fish nor vegetable, and she had reluctantly decided that she probably did care about them ingesting antibiotics, hormones and other things in cheaper meat that might one day turn them into female Eastern European weight-lifters. Maybe in the context of the pandemic and the social reckoning, though, it's just harder to care about well-off suburbanites and their mid-life malaise. She was going to say something about her breasts, or breasts in general, he could tell, so he talked over her. “You let her in the queue,” said the woman behind.Lucy had forgotten that. She’s not another girl just trying to hook up and he’s not another man on a dinner date telling boring stories, and he's nothing like her ex-husband. It takes two people who it's hard to imagine together and plays with the idea of them trying to make it work anyway, despite racial and gender differences, Brexit and Trump landscape, different socio-economic backgrounds, oh yeah and a huge age difference. It is an exploration of country division, racism, classism and how to cope with falling in love with the right person under the wrong circumstances. Then, a few novels back, I stopped finding the delight and comfort I used to find in his books such as "A Long Way Down" and "About a Boy". “Don’t you see it?”  “Nope,” said Lucy. Love blossoms between a young black man and a middle-aged white mother in Hornby’s assured, if cosy, new novel. Next in line, Lucy, 41, a schoolteacher, almost divorced, insists she only wants a baby sitter for her two young sons; after all, “she could have gone to a supermarket … but then she would be Letting Local Shops Down.” Hers is an Islington neighborhood of liberals, who will vote stay in the looming Brexit election, a place where a man apologizes for a special-occasion three-figure order, something he couldn’t afford on a regular basis. She made jokes about sausages and pork loins, and Joseph had no idea what he was supposed to say or do in return, so he smiled with his lips but not the rest of him. It’s that he SUCKED. I so enjoyed this tale of a mismatched couple (she: mid-40s, divorced, white, university educated, middle-class, anti-Brexit; he: early 20s; single, black, working-class, pro-Brexit) who fall in love in spite of themselves. © 2020 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC Terms of Use/Privacy Policy, This cover image released by Riverhead Books shows "Just Like You" a novel by Nick Hornby. Just Like You review – Nick Hornby tackles race, romance… and Brexit. Having been a big fan of Nick Hornby since the early days of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, was looking forward to reading this. A mismatched couple she’s in her 40s, divorced(well in the process of divorcing), white, college educated, upper middle class, and anti-brexit, he’s in his 20s, single, black, working class, and pro-brexit(by 2%). Here's what it's like to make it. It was her deep, dark secret: that despite all the talk about eating people up and pork loins, Emma had done nothing and would never do anything. There's a problem loading this menu right now. It said so on his nametag. They hadn’t developed personalities, really, and their parents hadn’t yet decided what kind of people they were going to be. He has none of the things you’re telling me to look for, and you’re still with him.” Now she came to think about it – and she hadn’t really thought about it until earlier on that week – hygiene was more important than just about any other quality she could think of. Or funny? He narrates one half of it from the point of view of a working-class black man in his early 20s and the other half from the point of view of a 42-year-old middle-class white mother. It seems like madness that people would jostle each other in line at the butcher shop now. Does he long for Lucy? I envy you,” she said. [Was anyone else bummed that Lucy's annoying friend (Emma) never found out Lucy and Joseph were together? You can ask for more than that.”  “Hygiene is important.”  “You don’t want handsome? It was a particular stage of the queuing that she hated: the point at which one was right outside the door, kept shut in winter, and one had to decide whether there was room inside the shop. It’s perfectly readable but it all felt like very familiar terrain and didn’t add up to much in the end. After the confrontation, Hornby writes some revealing dialogue, starting with Joseph’s voice: “That’s terrible, then. Too much of the story followed the theme: "This relationship will never work. Lucy’s middle-aged novelist confesses he’s a bit hit-and-miss in the sex department. Order now! Though Joseph recognizes he’s having sex with a woman the same age as his mother and Lucy questions what she’s doing with a twenty-something, they’re nuts about each other. Lucy was spunky. “No.”  Again, a very short answer that didn’t tell the whole truth, or any part of it. The frequency of his novels has plummeted as he has tried his hands at screenplays (I like his books far better), and this is his first new one in six years. 'Just Like You’: Nick Hornby creates a couple worth cheering for | Book review. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. Joseph is candid about not being sure on the issue (“I thought you wanted us all to be British. Here's what it's like to make it. What’s more, she and Joseph actually listen to each other and ask questions. Lucy asks Joseph to babysit one evening (she’s going out to a dinner party where she’s to be match-made with a successful novelist whose ripe self-regard is nicely sent up), an occasional job turns into a flirtation and, to both their surprise, to something more. But because this was so well written I wanted to fling it across the room on more than one occasion. A handbag designer compares her romantic relationships to purse styles in this hilarious romcom. An (almost) divorced white 42-year-old mother and a 22-year-old single black man, an English teacher and an aspiring DJ, meet on opposite sides of a butcher counter in London and have an undeniable attraction. Will I be too saggy?”) and basic. Standalone. Unable to add item to List. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Hornby makes hay with all this. “And now she’s inside and you’re not.”  There was a metaphor in there somewhere. “Lucy wasn’t sure this metaphor worked,” writes Hornby. The bubble in which Lucy and Joseph’s affair begins – sitting at home having sex and watching The Sopranos – can’t stay a bubble forever if the relationship is to continue. As a big fan of Hornby's other work (High Fidelity, About A Boy, Fever Pitch), I was very excited to receive this book to review. “I was just saying to my friend we can’t,” said Lucy sharply. She had to live with their nudges and disapproval every Saturday. We meet her in 2016 standing in line at the butcher shop, reluctantly gossiping with a girlfriend. And that's not the author's fault, of course--books take a long time to get published. By setting most of Just Like You in 2016, what’s more, Hornby stirs in that great exposer of fissures in class, race and generation: the Brexit referendum. They had been neighbours, once upon a time, but after the separation, Lucy and the boys had moved to a smaller place. Buy now! You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Ok so let's stay together. “I could eat him up,” Emma tells Lucy afterward. “Cass, will you go out the back and tell them we need more sirloin?”  “Lucy.”  The loud blonde was gesturing at her friend, trying to get her to come to the counter, and the friend, smaller, prettier, dark hair, was waving her off and making an embarrassed face.