'Just Like You' review: Author Nick Hornby proves he's still got it with his latest novel

The maddening thing about Nick Hornby’s writing is that it is so perceptive, it reads like something you could’ve sworn you’ve thought of at some point.

But of course you didn’t, because there’s no way your inner monologue is as articulate, funny, clever and sensitive as are those of Hornby’s characters.

That feeling persists throughout a breezy read of the prolific “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy” author’s latest novel, “Just Like You” (Riverhead, 368 pp., ★★★½ out of four), about an unlikely couple who shouldn’t work but sure seems to get along well in contemporary North London. 

There’s Lucy, a 41-year-old white mother and school teacher with clever quips about misused metaphors and no interest in gossiping about trivial things; and Joseph, an inquisitive black man nearly 20 years her junior who works at the local butcher shop, produces music and can talk for hours about soccer. (Of course he can. Diehard footie fan Hornby wrote “Fever Pitch,” after all.) 

It’s not an obvious pairing, what with their differences in age, race and also class, but there’s a connection.

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And there are also challenges: For example, Joseph calls out Lucy’s naive comments about race and worries that she compliments him like a mother would, and Lucy doesn’t know if Joseph is someone she can introduce to her parents or grow old(er) with. Topics of police mistreatment of Black people and the fetishizing of people of different races are covered, but not in an in-depth way that puts Hornby's credibility to discuss them into question.

Joseph and Lucy’s relationship is more about common ground: The way he adores her sons, their easy banter and comfortable routine. She’s not another girl just trying to hook up and he’s not another man on a dinner date telling boring stories, and he's nothing like her ex-husband.

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“Just Like You” asks the question: Should a relationship that feels perfect moment to moment be spoiled by looking toward the future? 

It's easy to root for Joseph and Lucy, because they both seem to be good. Their intimacy is described tenderly, and their unsaid feelings for each other get at truly knowing and appreciating someone. 

The story also contains plenty of wry commentary on other topics, from how ignorant most Brits truly are of Brexit to the banality of dating rituals and the awful way certain women talk about sex (often with “dismal euphemisms, from which all trace of eroticism have been surgically removed,” as Lucy muses).

Through Joseph's deejaying, Hornby touches on the difficulty of sharing one’s own art, writing: "He wondered how he was ever going to make anything, if it meant feeling like this every time. He couldn’t not make music, but he couldn’t expose it to the world either.”

It's a gift that Hornby decided to expose his writings to the world, including the highly readable “Just Like You."

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