"GoodNews has picked it all up already, of course. We sit down to a hastily assembled ploughman's lunch, and without invitation he wades into the stagnant, foul-smelling pond that is Mark's life.
'I'm sorry if you think I'm being a bit, you know,' he begins. 'But when we shook hands... Man, you nearly took my arm off''I'm sorry," says Mark, apologetic but understandably surprised: I saw the whole incident, and it seemed like a pretty straightforward handshake to me; at no stage did it look as though anyone would end up permanent disability. 'Did I hurt you?''In here you hurt me." Goodnews taps his heart. 'Because it hurts when I know fellow human beings are in trouble. And if ever a hand was shouting it was yours.'Mark cannot help it: he has a quick look, back and front, to see if there any evidence of his manual distress.'Nah you won't see anything there. It's not a, like a visible thing. I mean, I feel it physically. Ow. You know?' And he winces and massages his hand, to demonstrate the pain that Mark so recently caused him. 'But sadness is a right sod for keeping itself hidden away. A right sod. Gotta come out sometime, though, and it's pouring out of you.'
'Oh,' says Mark."
***
This is what I really like about Hornby, his writing is always tapped me in the heart. I got this book from a really good friend of mine, Enggar. I lent her my first Hornby, High Fidelity, and we really like it. Then she bought me "How To Be Good" on my last birthday and I read it until today. It's really a good book to show us that we are really lame. We forgot to treat others (or probably ourselves) properly and see things in other's view. Egocentric.
Another 'plus' is Hornby's superb music taste, he includes Air (yep those French electro band) in this book. This book might be written as Air's album 10,000Hz Legend was released because Katie saying some sentences in "How Does It Makes You Feel?" way.
"If Air are Conran, then Dylan is the greengrocers. Mushroom, lettuce, tomato, home to cook bolognese and prepare a salad, and how does it feeeeeeel?...'
Witty you, Nick!
