''High Fidelity'' is a novel by British author
Nick Hornby first published in 1995. It has sold over a million copies and was later adapted into
a feature film in 2000,
a Broadway musical in 2006 and
a TV series in 2020. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's survey
The Big Read
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey wa ...
.
Plot summary
Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old man who owns a record shop in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
called Championship Vinyl. His lawyer girlfriend, Laura, has just left him and now he's going through a crisis. At his record shop, Rob and his employees, Dick and Barry, spend their free moments discussing
mix-tape aesthetics and constructing
desert-island "top-five" lists of anything that demonstrates their knowledge of music, movies, and pop culture. Rob uses this exercise to create his own list: "The top five most memorable split-ups." This list includes the following ex-girlfriends: 1) Alison Ashworth, 2) Penny Hardwick, 3) Jackie Allen, 4) Charlie Nicholson, and 5) Sarah Kendrew.
Rob, recalling these breakups, sets about getting in touch with the former girlfriends. Eventually, Rob's re-examination of his failed relationships, a one-time stand with an American musician named Marie De Salle, and the death of Laura's father bring the two back together. Their relationship is cemented by the launch of a new purposefulness to Rob's life in the revival of his
disc jockey
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...
career.
Also, realizing that his
fear of commitment In self-help literature, fear of commitment is the avoidance of long-term partnership and/or marriage. In popular culture and in psychology, the concept is often much more pervasive and can affect an individual's school, work, and home life as well ...
(a result of his
fear of death
Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of one's own death, and is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death). Death anxiety differs from necrophobia, which is the fear of others who are dead or dying.
Psychotherapist Robert Lang ...
of those around him) and his tendency to act on emotion are responsible for his continuing desires to pursue new women, Rob makes a token commitment to Laura.
Characters
* Rob Fleming: 35-year-old music lover in London who is going through an existential crisis and trying to figure out where he goes wrong in romantic relationships
* Laura: Rob's ex-girlfriend who works as a lawyer and is having a fling with a former neighbor named Ian
* Barry: Rob's co-worker at Championship Vinyl who longs to be a musician
* Dick: Rob's co-worker at Championship Vinyl who is socially awkward and extremely into music
* Marie LaSalle: An American musician who has a one-night stand with Rob
References
1995 British novels
British bildungsromans
British novels adapted into films
Novels by Nick Hornby
Novels set in London
Novels about music
Victor Gollancz Ltd books
British novels adapted into television shows
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