A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

This is really such a lovely novel to read when you're already feeling a little down. I mean, it's darn well written and stuff. And it sort of all turns out pretty well, and there are some really funny lines. But they're funny like Pulp Fiction is funny, where you're laughing because it's all too true and sad to not laugh, and as soon as you stop laughing you cry because, no matter how much you laugh at it, it's still all too true.

You could say suicide is a fairly major theme in the book, but you couldn't say it without stating the bleeding obvious. The only thing that the four main characters have in common is that they are all suicidal. They met, in fact, on top of a tower block from which they'd all been planning to jump. And then they saved each other. Sort of.

The ending isn't that uplifting, it's just okay, which doesn't really cut it when you've spent the last three hundred pages contemplating your own mortality and trying to figure out what keeps you away from the top of tower blocks. But at least it avoids platitudes, which can't be easy with a heavy subject like suicide. No, on balance it's a good read, but read it with Prozac.