I think you have to approach a collection like this with the expectation that you'll (hopefully) love a handful of the stories within it and feel indifferent about the rest of them. Those few that you love, though, the ones that proceed to live rent free in your head and randomly push their way to the front of your mind at the most inopportune moments weeks and months later, seem so worth it to me. I decided to rate each of the stories in this collection on a five star scale after reading them. I gave a small handful of them five stars (the ones with that push-to-the-front-of-your-mind quality). A few of them initially received four stars but, after realizing I'd been pondering them in moments between classes and before bed, received another scribbled star. My five-star stories are as follows: "The Wind," "Post," "The Beyoglu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra," and "Ten Year Affair." Each is uniquely its own, though I noticed alongside one of my professors that the second half of the collection has a distinct magical realism theme despite being alphabetically ordered by author last name. Strange how things work out coincidentally like that. I love "The Wind" for its attention to generational female trauma, "Post" for its delicate and masterful take on relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Beyoglu..." for using absurdity to showcase both beauty and pain during wartime, and "Ten Year Affair" for showcasing how sometimes women just need to be allowed to be delusional to cope with life. 


Some of my favorite quotes from my five-star stories:

​"And at this moment my mother saw with terrible clarity that everything depended upon her." ("The Wind")

"Her nose would know him anywhere." ("Post")

"Believing too that some door had forever closed between them with her words." ("Post")

"I realized that if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it all over again. In my next life, I want this one." ("Post")

"'I'm afraid for my books,' said Mehmet." ("Beyoglu...")

"She thought of him always in both timelines." ("Ten Year Affair")

"She knew her imaginings within imaginings would not translate." ("Ten Year Affair")

My one-sentence Goodreads review for this book is as follows: "A British guy can't quite figure out what he wants in life, and I can't quite figure out if I deeply dislike him or pity him." I think that sets me up pretty well to flesh out the rest of my opinions on this novel. From my reading, readers are not supposed to like this main character -- he's the epitome of an unlikeable as well as unreliable narrator. I happen to adore unreliable narrators, thanks to Mr. Shoults' dual enrollment Critical Thinking & Writing course I took as a high school senior. We devoted most of our classes to reading books with unreliable narrators (The Sun Also Rises being my fave) and watching movies with misleading characters (Fight Club reigning supreme). The narrator of Hornby's debut novel High Fidelity is, as I chose to describe him, trying to figure out what he wants to do with the cards he's been dealt. He's got a pretty cool-sounding, if not run down, record shop in London, a long term partner he seems relatively comfortable if not head over heels in love with, and an annoying affinity for making everything about his favorite music and list-making. I think the form of this book is so cool; we start out reading one of these lists from our narrator, Rob -- a quite long list detailing his top 5 heartbreaks or breakups. This list is addressed to someone named Laura which we find out not too far down the narrative road is Rob's current long term partner who's decided to cut things off and move out. Thus begins a slow and painful downward spiral for Rob, a descent that just keeps going due to Rob's inability to really look at himself and the decisions he's made. I had my moments of frustration with this guy, mainly due to some of the comments he makes about women that make me wonder if all guys think alike. But I also found myself undeniably rooting for him to finally face truths about himself it's clear he is willfully ignoring. Truths concerning unresolved trauma from past relationships, self esteem issues, possible dreams of a career beyond his humble record shop, etc. In short, this character had deeply buried potential I clung to throughout the entire book, wishing and hoping that he'd get his act together. And my opinion upon reaching the novel's end is that there is hope for Rob. We see him surrounded by community, with Laura in the exact same place they met, coming to a slow realization that he can be more empathetic to how she functions in their relationship. I think Hornby purposefully leaves this ending pretty vague, but I appreciate it all the same because it's better than the end of Catcher in the Rye (a book I love, but find unsatisfying in its unreliable narrator's growth). I'm gonna have to go watch the film adaptation of this now to see how they managed to make a book where relatively nothing happens into an hour and fifty three minute movie.

​

Some of my favorite quotes from High Fidelity:

​"It's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on."

"I can see everything once it's already happened---I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand."

"You know the worst thing about being rejected? The lack of control."

"... self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy."

"Sour. Bitter. Everyone seems to agree that I don't taste very nice."

"It's like everyone's a supporting actor in the film of your life story."

"Are you intending to stay the same for the rest of your life?" (Laura to Rob)

"She knew I needed a kick up the backside."

My favorite part about this book is that I probably never would've read it on my own. But read it I have, and alongside my nine fellow grad student friends at that. We've created a plethora of memes surrounding the plot and characters and get to meet the author sooner rather than later when she visits for a visiting writer event at my university. I mean to be blunt rather than accusatory when I say this, but this is not the most well-written book to ever exist. Its characters seem overly self-aware at times, the murder mystery element of the plot feels slightly out of place when examining the whole narrative, and I consistently questioned how seriously all the stuff about the "horse world" should be taken. But if this book is meant to follow the narrative journey of Heather Parker, former horse girl, current nouveau rich struggling mom and wife living vicariously through her horse girl wannabe daughters, then the satirical elements I suspect are supposed to be read into work very well. I stand by my statement of overly self-aware characters, but I advocate the author's decision to solely focus on the perspectives of the female characters (the title does have the specific word girls in it, after all). This lends a sense of mystery to the few male characters in the story, which, in turn, elevates the struggles and viewpoints of the girls and women. There are some truly laughable things that happen in this book, among them being a little girl smashing through a vinyl fence on the side of a horse, someone's dad murdering their kid's mom, someone else's mom nearly having sex with the guy who ends up getting her daughter pregnant, and said daughter thinking you can't get pregnant just from having sex. If that all sounds complicated, it's because it is. But I couldn't put this book down, and it lent my two-hour night class with plenty of content for conversation and debate. I'm still trying to figure out if the girl on the cover is a character or just a stock photo model. The case is yet to be closed. 


One of my favorite quotes from Girls and Their Horses:

"No one ever really explained what you were supposed to do with children. Were you supposed to make them happy, or were you supposed to make them good? And how could you do either when you were probably not happy or good yourself?"

(I can't find it right now, but there's literally a quote along the lines of, "You can't get pregnant just from having sex.")