Just Like You by Nick Hornby
Fall break has started, and the first book I swallowed in one huge gulp was Nick Hornby’s brand new novel, Just Like You.
I am a huge Nick Hornby fan. His novels are always funny and relatable and so very British. They are also incredibly profound. A Long Way Down, about an unlikely group who help keep each other from committing suicide, was probably my first, and I have ready my way through most of his catalog, even the tiny collections of his book reviews for The Guardian. I’m also wild about the movie version of High Fidelity, which he helped write, because that’s just the kind of author he is.
Just Like You takes a look at questions I’ve been asking repeatedly this year. How do you relate to people who are different from you? How do you talk about politics? How do you love people who disagree with you politically right now when every single aspect of modern life seems to have a political spin, and it all feels so personal?
The book follows the love story between Lucy, a white 41 year old woman who has separated herself and her children from her addict husband, and her Black 22 year old sometime-babysitter, Joseph. It opens in London in 2016 during the Brexit vote, which eerily echoed the 2016 election in America. They come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, faiths, families, and races, and they have divergent ideas on how to see the world. But they begin the awkwardness of trying to see the world through the other person’s eyes, not to change each other, but to understand and to love better.
I’ve struggled this year, mostly on Facebook, as people I love spout hate and, in my opinion, ignorant viewpoints. But when I want to get on my high horse about it, I need to remember that while I’m not usually posting it online, I talk just as much about the insanity of other people here at home, and sometimes even in front of my kids. I feel betrayed by the church, by my community, and by my country. Once I get going this way, I can spend a long time airing my lengthy list of perceived transgressions done against me, and I can be particularly indignant toward others who also have long lists of perceived transgressions.
It’s past time to take the plank out of my own eye.
I try to remember that this world has always been broken, and that while I believe that means we are supposed to work to fix it and to correct injustice, the best way to do this is going to be by doing what Jesus said: loving God and then loving my neighbor. Not trying to change my neighbor, not screaming my views, not defeating their diatribes with my own clever sarcasm online. Just loving them, without trying to change them. The work of change is for Jesus to do. My job is just to love.
I feel convicted by these words even as I write them, because I’m not good at it. But I can’t hide behind that either. Like Joseph and Lucy, I have to go to the dinner party and introduce myself. I have to make the phone call to the judgmental relative. I have to say that because justice matters to me, people matter to me, and I will open my eyes and my ears and my heart and try to know them, to see how we might fit together if I can step past my own prejudices and agendas.
Joseph and Lucy are not set up as models for the rest of us, but in the middle of this election season, their endearing and lovely story felt important for me to read and was thoroughly enjoyable all the way through. Hornby’s writing is typically beautiful, and while the story shows clearly that the important moments will also be uncomfortable, it also makes me realize that those uncomfortable moments are exactly where I need to be.
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