---
product_id: 15073861
title: "How to Be Good"
price: "€ 34.18"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.at/products/15073861-how-to-be-good
store_origin: AT
region: Austria
---

# How to Be Good

**Price:** € 34.18
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** How to Be Good
- **How much does it cost?** € 34.18 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.at](https://www.desertcart.at/products/15073861-how-to-be-good)

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## Description

A wise and hilarious novel morality and what it means to be a "goof person" from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince , Just Like you , Funny Girl and High Fidelity. A brutally truthful, compassionate novel about the heart, mind, and soul of a woman who, confronted by her husband’s sudden and extreme spiritual conversion, is forced to learn “how to be good”—whatever that means, and for better or worse… Katie Carr is a good person…sort of. For years her husband’s been selfish, sarcastic, and underemployed. But now David’s changed. He’s become a good person, too—really good. He’s found a spiritual leader. He has become kind, soft-spoken, and earnest. Katie isn’t sure if this is deeply felt conversion, a brain tumor—or David’s most brilliantly vicious manipulation yet. Because she’s finding it more and more difficult to live with David—and with herself.

Review: funny and heartbreaking insight into marriage and spituality - I was very surprised that Mr. Hornby could write a book like this from a woman's point of view. The couple in this book are in deep trouble with their marriage. The husband, David is a cynical man who seems to have complaints abpout everything. He writes a small column in a English newspaper where he lives called "The angriest man in Holloway". It even has a picture of him scowling. He writes about old people and their "antics" on public transportation. How they never have their money ready for a bus ride, they never use the seats set aside for them in the front, and the most hilarious, why they stand up ten minutes before their stop only to fall over in an "alarming and indignified fashion". I know it is completly "politically incorrect" to laugh at others misfortune. I was actually enjoying the hilarity of this man taking the time to think and write about these things with such seriousness. He also gets his friends in the act with complaining about things like the decsion making process at Madame Trussaud's. Of course they think he is fall over funny and laugh and laugh. The author explains the friends are laughing with him not at him.I belevie they are unaware of how deep his anger is and how it shows itself in private with hi family, particularly with his wife. His wife, Katie, is a doctor who explains frequently that she is a good person and can't understand how she got into her marital mess. She does have an affair with a man only because he pays attention to her and gives her what she does not get from David. Positive reinforcment and tenderness. all the time she does still want her husband but she hates the fights they get into and how they seem to know excatly how to "get to each other". They also have two children who are caught in the middle. They seem to do what, I remember from personal experience, is to ignore the parents and hope things will get better. Then they become more vocal about the situation and start to behave with anger and hurt. They also ask questions which in most cases are ignored or explained away by the parents. Enter "DR. GOODNEWS. This guy is a piece of work. David goes to this guy, he finds in an ad, for his constant back pain.Modern doctors where unable to help him so he gave up on them. Miraculously David is healed by this DR. GOODNEWS using his hands. He then send his daughter who has cronic eczema. He also heals her. Somehow this DR. ends up moving in with the family. He actually helps David to become "spiritually enlitened" which not only end his anger but sends his family on an unbeleivable emotional odyssey. This book is hilarious despite the almost sickening relationship between David and Katie.I highly recomend this book to anyone who enjoys this kind of humor and insight into marriage.
Review: Good as it gets, unfortunately - Was this "darkly funny", "marvelous", or even "more than a little surprising" to me? No. "A hoot" ? Now, that's hilarious... It was "a zip to read" though, as I readily identified with the middle-aged narrator who is unsettled in her marriage, and just wants to find out and judge for herself what the author has to say about How to Be Good. Though the language flows easily and fluently, I found the sarcastic tone of conversations between the characters to be sadly commonplace. I heard same old voice we often do in screen dramas, internet forums, blogs and other places (like home) where people are only too happy to unleash their anger and unhappiness onto each other. Awaiting the "daringly different" to emerge with the arrival of mystical healer GoodNews, I was again disappointed with a plot that was not fantastical (yes, I was looking for escape) but almost familiar enough to me to seem painfully unoriginal. In the end, I think it's the failure to achieve the big mission of spreading good as much as it's the failure to live up to personal ideals of being good which allows the characters some saving grace; that is, to recognize that we are Only human/Born to make mistakes. And it's only through our struggles that we can evolve, for better or worse-- because nothing stays the same.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #401,490 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #370 in British & Irish Humor & Satire #8,818 in Contemporary Women Fiction #44,559 in Contemporary Romance (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 3.7 out of 5 stars 1,027 Reviews |

## Images

![How to Be Good - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81brhPL326L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ funny and heartbreaking insight into marriage and spituality
*by S***M on July 1, 2002*

I was very surprised that Mr. Hornby could write a book like this from a woman's point of view. The couple in this book are in deep trouble with their marriage. The husband, David is a cynical man who seems to have complaints abpout everything. He writes a small column in a English newspaper where he lives called "The angriest man in Holloway". It even has a picture of him scowling. He writes about old people and their "antics" on public transportation. How they never have their money ready for a bus ride, they never use the seats set aside for them in the front, and the most hilarious, why they stand up ten minutes before their stop only to fall over in an "alarming and indignified fashion". I know it is completly "politically incorrect" to laugh at others misfortune. I was actually enjoying the hilarity of this man taking the time to think and write about these things with such seriousness. He also gets his friends in the act with complaining about things like the decsion making process at Madame Trussaud's. Of course they think he is fall over funny and laugh and laugh. The author explains the friends are laughing with him not at him.I belevie they are unaware of how deep his anger is and how it shows itself in private with hi family, particularly with his wife. His wife, Katie, is a doctor who explains frequently that she is a good person and can't understand how she got into her marital mess. She does have an affair with a man only because he pays attention to her and gives her what she does not get from David. Positive reinforcment and tenderness. all the time she does still want her husband but she hates the fights they get into and how they seem to know excatly how to "get to each other". They also have two children who are caught in the middle. They seem to do what, I remember from personal experience, is to ignore the parents and hope things will get better. Then they become more vocal about the situation and start to behave with anger and hurt. They also ask questions which in most cases are ignored or explained away by the parents. Enter "DR. GOODNEWS. This guy is a piece of work. David goes to this guy, he finds in an ad, for his constant back pain.Modern doctors where unable to help him so he gave up on them. Miraculously David is healed by this DR. GOODNEWS using his hands. He then send his daughter who has cronic eczema. He also heals her. Somehow this DR. ends up moving in with the family. He actually helps David to become "spiritually enlitened" which not only end his anger but sends his family on an unbeleivable emotional odyssey. This book is hilarious despite the almost sickening relationship between David and Katie.I highly recomend this book to anyone who enjoys this kind of humor and insight into marriage.

### ⭐⭐⭐ Good as it gets, unfortunately
*by J***U on October 27, 2011*

Was this "darkly funny", "marvelous", or even "more than a little surprising" to me? No. "A hoot" ? Now, that's hilarious... It was "a zip to read" though, as I readily identified with the middle-aged narrator who is unsettled in her marriage, and just wants to find out and judge for herself what the author has to say about How to Be Good. Though the language flows easily and fluently, I found the sarcastic tone of conversations between the characters to be sadly commonplace. I heard same old voice we often do in screen dramas, internet forums, blogs and other places (like home) where people are only too happy to unleash their anger and unhappiness onto each other. Awaiting the "daringly different" to emerge with the arrival of mystical healer GoodNews, I was again disappointed with a plot that was not fantastical (yes, I was looking for escape) but almost familiar enough to me to seem painfully unoriginal. In the end, I think it's the failure to achieve the big mission of spreading good as much as it's the failure to live up to personal ideals of being good which allows the characters some saving grace; that is, to recognize that we are Only human/Born to make mistakes. And it's only through our struggles that we can evolve, for better or worse-- because nothing stays the same.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hornby Survives Literary Cliff Dive
*by R***P on July 11, 2010*

My favorite (so far) of Nick Hornby's books, A Long Way Down, impressed me as an extremely ambitious achievement. One reviewer called it "a tight-rope walk;" a spot-on description, if I've ever heard one. To set about narrating the same story from the points of view of four separate characters is bold enough, in and of itself. That these four voices came from such varied social stratum and disparate generations impressed this greenhorn novelist no end. But, the most daring challenge of this circus act was this: two out of four were female. How a male author dares to speak from a woman's point of view is beyond me. I won't even write a song with a strictly female lyric, unless I'm working with a female collaborator. But, Hornby pulled this trick off seamlessly. But alas, Hornby has now leapt into the breach. This master of first-person personal has penned an entire novel inhabiting the voice, the thoughts, the emotions of a woman. I don't know how many male authors have attempted this insane stunt; but it's a feat that surely rivals Evil Kneivel leaping the Snake River on a motorcycle. Talk about a long way down! I imagine that How To Be Good was born of some kind of dare. I doubt that it was Hornby's agent who goaded him into trying this perilous task. More likely, the novelist challenged himself: "Okay, I've written from the POV of a pre-pubescent boy, a teenaged boy, and most all of the stages of adulthood. I've even spoken on behalf of a rebellious 20-ish punk chick and a frumpy spinster. What's next? Ah, yes," he might have pondered out-loud, upon a chilly, London morning, eyeing himself in a foggy bathroom mirror, "an upper-middle-class, professional woman. That's the ticket." The ticket to where? What exactly is the upside here? This, it seems to me, is a guaranteed lose/lose proposition. Fail, and women readers all around the globe will blow raspberries at you. Pull it off, and... well, what are male readers gonna think? Even a guy like myself, who personifies the term metrosexual and nearly always finds machismo the least attractive of all human traits (the exception being when five-foot-nine, 180 lb Courtland Finnegan throws a six-six tight end outweighing him by 100 pounds to the turf -- I find animal aggression on behalf of the Tennessee Titans very appealing), anyway, even I would never be tempted to take this plunge. Surely, men of letters have depicted female characters for millennia, put them into all sorts of situations, and dared to guess how they might think, feel, and act. But, to actually narrate an entire story from inside the head of the opposite sex? That is some kinda risky business! I mentioned this to my wife the other day. She basically said, "So what?" I was incredulous that my smart, funny, literary-savvy better half didn't see the precariousness in Hornby's limb walk, nor did she seem to resent it a whit. She being in every way a very modern woman, I assumed she'd at least take a "we'll-see-about-that" attitude. I had to remind myself that, although Stacey has always been an avid reader, she has never written a novel, and has not-a clue (and, I'm afraid, very little curiosity) as to how we authors go about it. She, in fact, has read a scant few pages from my books (for fear she might discover something about me that she doesn't like. While her turning a blind eye to my life's work occasionally hurts my feelings, her "see-no-evil" attitude may also be contributing to the preservation of our 23-year marriage. Sad, yes; but, potentially in the end, a mixed blessing.) "I would never, ever attempt that," I equivocated, referring to Hornby writing from a female perspective. "Why not?" she queried, with uncharacteristic naïveté. "Because I have a penis," I reminded her. "You act girly sometimes," she dug. "No mammary glands, no ovaries, no menstrual cycle, no massive hormonal swings," I recounted. "Being in touch my own feminine side doesn't qualify me to speak on behalf of a woman." Stacey harrumphed the discussion closed, as if I was making a Grand Teton (pun intended) out of a chicken pock. What I'd thought would be a hot-button issue worthy of substantial discussion was of little concern to her. Too much Oprah, I pontificated -- silently. Anyway, having read and enjoyed the heck outta the book, I stand in awe of Hornby's literary cliff dive. How To Be Good is exactly what its jacket advertises: "Hilarious" and "Fearless." Never having owned a vagina, I have no way of knowing how authentic Dr. Katie Carr's voice is. However, her ultra-conflicted emotions rang completely true to me. And, as always, Hornby has created a complex human being who unabashedly shares a personal journey through uncharted territory with honesty, frankness, and an inventive sense of humor. Katie's spontaneous fling that begins the book spins her into questioning her own marriage to David, a cynical, overweight columnist. More than anything, she wishes that David would change. Then, miraculously and unexpectedly, he does; and she dislikes the new guy he's become even more than the chubby curmudgeon he left behind. In the long run, after a period of ambivalence and surrender, Katie finds solace and respite in books, accepting her lot in life by acknowledging how very hopeless, meaningless, and perfectly beautiful it all is. We all feel desperate and exhausted at times. Real life ain't easy. It wears your ass out. But, when has it ever been a piece o' cake working to support a family, being both parent and role model to one's children, and a friend/lover/partner to a spouse -- especially when they all have ideas of their own? Unfortunately, modernity allows us the time and leisure to contemplate just how futile and fragile life's brief candle flicker is. In the long run, Katie's challenge is not much different from mine (or, presumably, yours). Although her circumstances and supporting cast are unique -- and somewhat bizarre, I might add, without spoiling anything -- her quandary is universal. Finally, that one of my favorite authors is fool-hearty enough to crawl under the skin of a 40-year-old woman makes him the man for me. Rand Bishop, author of Grand Pop, Makin' Stuff Up, and the forthcoming The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success.

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*Product available on Desertcart Austria*
*Store origin: AT*
*Last updated: 2026-06-07*