And so it goes for pages and pages. Hornby’s knack for dialogue and the crackling wit he gives his characters makes the chapters fly.

It’s not giving much away to say that Lucy and Joseph commence a relationship. A relationship that shouldn’t work, but somehow mostly does. He begins as her babysitter, and then he’s a babysitter with benefits, and then he’s just all benefits. It’s touching and lovely and all the things that honest relationships should be in this day and age.

Or as Hornby deftly describes it from inside Joseph’s head: “If you’d asked him before… what made him happy, he wouldn’t really have understood the relevance of the question. Now he knew the answer: sleeping with Lucy, eating with Lucy, watching TV with Lucy. And maybe there was no future in it, but there was a present, and that’s what life consists of.”

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, of course. Joseph is black and Lucy is white, and that creates a degree of racial tension. Lucy’s neighbor calls the police when he sees Joseph knocking on her door late one night and not getting an answer. After the confrontation, Hornby writes some revealing dialogue, starting with Joseph’s voice:

“That wasn’t such a big deal.”

“That’s terrible, then. Because it should be.”

“You don’t want the police turning up when there’s a guy skulking around outside your window at night? I would.”