Tag: Immature punks

As the vanguard of the last sixteen years of British literature, Nick Hornby has a lot to answer for. You can call what he writes what you like – "lad lit”, "dick lit” (as opposed to chick lit, obviously) – but that doesn't make it any better than what it is: fiction about people who never bothered growing up and show no intention of ever doing so.

This isn't true of his entire canon, but it holds up for both the instigator of the genre, High Fidelity and its spiritual sequel, 2009's Juliet, Naked. Reading about people who choose to wallow in lives that they consider wasted is not particularly fun or illuminating. It's High Fidelity 14 years after the fact: if you thought that collection of characters was developmentally arrested, you will not be at all impressed with this troupe.