Hornby has written about other female protagonists: Annie in “Juliet, Naked,” Katie Carr in “How to Be Good.” There’s something more expansive, though, in “Funny Girl,” which is as sedate a work as he has produced. You’ve got years before we have to start thinking about that.” She was knocking on a bit, and nobody was giving her romantic leads anymore, so she had to start making funny faces. “The way I remember it,” her agent says, “Lucille Ball wasn’t left with much choice. Sophie is obsessed with Lucille Ball and wants to bring her sort of energy to British television, but initially that’s a hard sell. Set, for the most part, during the 1960s, this is a departure for Hornby - the story of a young woman named Sophie Straw (née Barbara Parker), who after being named 1964’s Miss Blackpool, decamps from the north of England for Swinging London, where she becomes a TV comedian. It’s impossible to read “Funny Girl,” the author’s first novel in more than five years, and not think of such a line. It seems to me that the big passage to adulthood is accepting that you’re not special.
“What I’m interested in now,” he continued, “is the idea that anyone who persists and tries to become some kind of artist is emotionally immature.
“I think it’s still the thing that defines me,” he acknowledged in a 2005 interview, although this, of course, suggests some complications of its own. Hornby has explored similar fascinations in his criticism: “Songbook,” a collection of essays about 31 iconic rock songs, or the column “Stuff I’ve Been Reading,” which he has written for the Believer since 2003.
Revolving around a reclusive rock star and the fans who will not let him rest, it was a callback to Hornby’s early work - “Fever Pitch,” a nonfiction account of his soccer fanhood, or his first novel, “High Fidelity,” which takes place in a record shop. Nick Hornby’s last novel, “Juliet, Naked” (2009), felt like a culmination of a kind.
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