Just Like You
By Nick Hornby
Blurb
The person you are with is just like you: same background, same age, same interests. The perfect match. And it is a disaster.
Then, when and where you least expect it, you meet someone new. You seem to have nothing in common and yet, somehow, it feels totally right.
Nick Hornby's brilliantly observed, tender but also brutally funny new novel gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person - someone who is not just like you at all.
Our Review
Nick Hornby has written a great romance in Just Like You but it contains so much more than that. There is a lot contained within this small novel, not least Brexit and racial prejudices.
This seemed like an incredibly long book and I have to admit there were a few times where I wasn't totally sure I even cared what was going to happen to them but then something would happen to suck me back in again.
Just Like You is a novel about a relationship between two people who on paper shouldn't ever work together. Lucy is a fairly affluent white schoolteacher with two sons. She is 40 and in the process of a divorce. Joseph is a black man in his 20's who works a series of jobs in order to get by.
I felt that Hornby wrote particualrly well on the issue of brexit and presented its many nuances and pitfalls extremely well. All the arguements and viewpoints represented by him are all viewpoints I have heard from various people in my life.
With regards to the issue of racial prejudices in all its forms I felt that Hornby examined it very well. I thought he particularly captured the guilt that is sometimes felt by privileged white people and also some of the ignorant attitudes seemingly well educated people can present.
Hornby captured well the awardness that can occur sometimes in relationships when you aren't quite sure if you are on the same wavelength or even heading in the same direction.
Joseph and Lucy are both warm, engaging and well rounded characters and this is what helped the story along so well.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 4 Times.
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