In his novel A Long Way Down , Nick Hornby uses four different points of view to explore the ramifications of one shared incident. On New Year’s Eve, these characters encounter one another on the roof of the most famous suicide tower in London. Ultimately they talk one another off the ledge and into a pact that will delay the decision for six weeks, until the second most popular night for suicides—Valentine’s Day. If any of them still want to die that day, they will honor those wishes. Despite their huge differences, the characters spend a lot of time together. Check them out: Maureen is a conservative middle-aged woman who has had intercourse once in her life—with a fiancé who then left her—and that act produced Matty, a brain-damaged son who even as an adult cannot speak or interact with her in any way. Maureen has no life; all of her time is spent caring for her son. And once you have a child like Matty you can’t help but feel, That’s it! That’s all my bad luck, a whole life...