On New Years Eve, four strangers go to the rooftop of "Topper's House", each planning to jump to his or her death. There, rather begrudgingly, they manage to convince one another not to commit suicide. The story follows them over the next few months as they forge a type of friendship, try to re-build their lives and decide whether or not to go ahead with suicide.
Nick Hornby's introduction to the anthology, Speaking with the Angel begins with an explanation of why he wanted to produce this book of short stories: he humbly compares this rather small project benefiting a school for autistic children to the global ambitions of Bono. He then discusses how his son Danny has achieved so much because of the school, and places this in the larger context of the children with autism who will not be getting this specialized education. As he does so, he describes gently but evocatively the challenges parents face when trying to provide an education for their autistic children. The essay then asks that the reader imagine "a child who slept for maybe five or six hours last night", and Hornby briefly describes how some parents feel trying to look after their autistic child.
This novel is narrated by Katie Carr, who very much wants to be a good person. She is a physician and a mother of two, and lives with her petulant husband, David. David is the author of a column in the local newspaper called "Angriest Man in Holloway". As their marriage falls apart, David undergoes a conversion at the hands of GoodNews, a young guru, and ceases to be sarcastic and angry, embarking instead on an effort to improve the world with acts of kindness. Katie is forced to consider what it means to be a good person and how that affects whether to salvage her marriage, how to raise her children and how to be the type of physician she always considered herself to be.
