A Long Way Down was published by Viking in 2005, adapted into a 2014 film. The novel represents Hornby’s darkest subject matter — suicide — treated with his characteristic balance of comedy and genuine emotional engagement.
Four narrators, four voices, four reasons to die: Martin (a disgraced television presenter whose career ended when he slept with a fifteen-year-old), Maureen (a devout Catholic whose entire life has been consumed by caring for her severely disabled adult son), Jess (an eighteen-year-old whose sister’s disappearance has unmoored her family), and JJ (an American musician whose band has broken up and whose dreams have evaporated). They arrive on the roof of Toppers’ House (a real building in Archway, North London, notorious for suicides) and are surprised to find each other there.
The encounter disrupts the solitary logic of suicide: it is harder to jump when you are watching others prepare to jump, and the mutual embarrassment of shared intention creates a bond that none of them expected. They form a pact — stay alive until Valentine’s Day — and the novel follows their six weeks of reluctant community.
Hornby’s method is to make their problems both specific and representative: each has reached the same endpoint via an entirely different path, and the novel uses the contrast between their situations to explore what makes life feel unlivable and what might (accidentally, absurdly, without grand revelation) make it feel sustainable again.
Collecting A Long Way Down
First edition (Viking, London, 2005): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Signed first edition: $25–$60