Swinging sixties reading: "Funny Girl" by Nick Hornby

I knew a while ago that Nick Hornby had a new book out, but the potted plot summaries I happened across didn't quite persuade me I should go out and get it. Although I have hugely enjoyed and highly rate some of Hornby's books (About a Boy, Hi Fidelity, Fever Pitch), he never quite qualified for me in that "automatic buy" category of author, being a bit too obviously located in that laddish-but-sensitive-contemporary-male-writer genre. In other words, I thought I could harmlessly give it a miss, as it would be more of the same. 

What persuaded me otherwise was a March 2015 episode of one of my favourite podcasts, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, in which the book was discussed. This show, which, as its title implies, focuses on the popular end of the cultural market, is both articulate and fun, and has proven itself, to me at least, as a reliable guide. Anyway, on this occasion, there was a clear consensus that Hornby's latest was a hit: engaging, touching, page-turning and funny. (You can listen to the podcast, if you like, embedded at the bottom of this post.)

In a sense, this NPR consensus was perhaps a little surprising, because Funny Girl is very, very English, and to understand it, you surely need all kinds of cultural reference points I would not expect to be common currency in New York City. That said, from what I hear, British is currently extremely cool stateside, so perhaps the pop culture cognoscenti are now completely clued up about Steptoe and Son, Hancock's Half Hour and Till Death Us Do Part. 

In any case, the story of Barbara (later Sophie) begins in the quintessential working class English North of Blackpool, where we first meet our heroine as the local girl winning a wind-chilled, goose-bumpy and mottled limb beauty contest to become Miss Blackpool. The scene oozes the aura of a rather bleak provincial England just beginning, though only at the margins, to discern the contours of a new post-austerity world. Barbara is one who seems to detect change in the air, and this, combined with the advantages of ambition, looks (she is in late-fifties, hourglass, "Sabrina" mode, we are told), and a comedic talent only she understands at this stage, is what drives her to renounce her beauty queen title and head for London, with the time-honoured objective of getting into show business, though, less usually perhaps, into radio or TV comedy in particular. The novel is the tale of how Sophie's (she changes her name at the suggestion of her agent) fortunes progress in London and of how she builds a career in a wildly successful BBC TV comedy series called Barbara (and Jim). 

Sabrina, in case you
were wondering

Hornby's story observes a changing society with a sympathetic and gentle eye. His cast of characters allows him to illustrate different aspects of the social revolution underway. Besides Sophie, we have the BBC comedy writing duo Tony and Bill, who live out their homosexuality (still illegal in England as the novel begins) in contrasting ways; the handsome co-star Clive, whose vanity and paradoxically naive eagerness not to miss out on any aspect of the sexual revolution are his undoing; and Dennis, the producer and loyal BBC man to his core, stuck in a loveless marriage with a humourless wife of Third Programme pretensions, who yearns silently for the lovely Sophie, but is far too much of a gentleman to compete with the more obvious Clive. Hornby does such characters well - according to the NPR podcast, better than Sophie herself - with delicate observation and wry humour. 

Nick Hornby

The story is one neither of desperate tragedy nor great glory. It is a story of success, but of real world, moderate success, the sort of success which also has a day after, a day after that and indeed more days years after that. Hornby has always written about the real world, the one normal people inhabit, and does so again here. For all the headiness of (albeit BBC) stardom, his characters live in a recognisable place where things fray, move on, and subtly change into something a bit different, as time, as is its wont, passes. 

Did I like this book? You bet I did. For one, it was one of those rare things, a one-day read. I just wanted to keep reading, and ended up irresponsibly finishing it at 2.00 am the night before what I knew would be a gruesomely gruelling day at work. But this book is simply a delight. Maybe you need to be English, or at least anglophile, to really get it, but, whatever, all I can say is I loved it.