How to Be Good

How to Be Good is a novel by the English writer Nick Hornby, published in 2001.

Katie tells the story herself, and her voice is the book's main pleasure: she is funny, self-justifying and entirely aware of how convenient her own reasoning has become. Her husband David has been writing a column about the things that annoy him, and then a spiritual healer called DJ GoodNews converts him into a man who wants to give the family's spare room to a homeless person and hand out money in the street. Their two children are unimpressed; David's new charity turns out to require everybody else's participation; and Katie has to work out what she actually believes while being lectured about goodness by a man she no longer recognises. Hornby keeps the argument about how to live inside a domestic comedy, so the moral questions arrive through arguments about bedrooms and shopping.

The novel is set in London, and its title comes from the book David intends to write about his own conversion, which he never finishes.