If there is a more insightful and funnier look into the male psyche out there than High Fidelity, I have yet to find it. Nick Hornby's debut is as astute an analysis of male neurosis as Bridget Jones's Diary is of female neurosis. It's a masculine Bridget Jones, really, and should be compulsory reading for every woman who has ever wondered how men really feel about life, the universe and everything -- everything here meaning sex, relationships and all that.

High Fidelity is about Rob, a thirty-five-year-old Londoner who owns an old-fashioned record shop run by three music snobs: Rob himself, bitter Barry and shy Dick. When the story opens, Rob has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Laura, and while he tries to act like he doesn't care, he is really quite devastated and feeling rejected. While obsessively trying to get Laura back, he sleeps with another woman (a cool musician, obviously) and visits ex-girlfriends to find out why they broke up with him. Needless to say, he gets back with Laura in the end, but that's not what the book is all about. It's about the journey, not about the ending.

Hornby's Rob is quite a creation. He is a cynical loner who can only make sense of life by relating it to music and who is cursed with serious OCD which causes him to turn his whole life into top-5 lists. He judges people by what they like rather than what they are like, and if they don't share his taste in music, well, tough. And he whines. An awful lot. He's aware that he's whining, but goes on doing it, anway, which makes him a bitter and self-indulgent but really rather entertaining hero.

All in all, High Fidelity is a successful look into the male psyche. The atmosphere of male camaraderie is well drawn, with sharp dialogue, lots of British humour and many a pseudo-existentialist debate about music, not to mention lots of top-5 lists. Most of all, though, the book is an excellent and honest look at the disintegration of a relationship from a male perspective, which shows how men really feel about all that female I-need-time stuff. It's bitter, it's sarcastic, it's funny, and it ends well -- what more could a reader want?