Everyone's Reading Bastard
By Nick Hornby
2012
First Published
3.30
Average Rating
65
Number of Pages
Newspaper columnist Elaine Harris has always written about her life with husband Charlie. Her editor and her legions of readers count on full disclosure from her, but what no one—least of all Charlie—anticipates, only a week after the couple decide to end their marriage, is the speed and inventiveness with which she begins to try him in the court of public opinion. On Monday morning, it’s a smirk by a forgettable former lover that first clues him in that something’s wrong. Then, before he’s settled in at his desk, another co-worker salutes Charlie with the title of Elaine’s new column: “Bastard!” A quick check online leads him to the column, the subtitle leaving little doubt as to what he’s in for: “Life with an Ex. He’s Gone but Not Forgotten.” Charlie’s only hope is that Elaine will get bored and abandon the weekly column—a colorful litany of his failures as a partner, father, breadwinner, and lover—or that it won’t catch on. But soon enough it’s a multimedia feeding frenzy, and everyone’s reading Bastard!
And for Charlie, that’s a bitch.
Avg Rating
3.30
Number of Ratings
1,818
5 STARS
11%
4 STARS
30%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
16%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads
Author
Nick Hornby
Author · 37 books
Nick Hornby is the author of the novels A Long Way Down, Slam, How to Be Good, High Fidelity, and About a Boy, and the memoir Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Shakespeare Wrote for Money, and The Polysyllabic Spree, as well as the editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. He is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award and the winner of the 2003 Orange Word International Writers’ London Award. Among his many other honors and awards, four of his titles have been named New York Times Notable Books. A film written by Hornby, An Education – shown at the Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim – was the lead movie at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival and distributed by Sony that fall. That same September, the author published his latest novel, Juliet, Naked to wide acclaim. Hornby lives in North London.
