It's Newyears' Eve at Toppers' House, North London's most popular suicide spot, and four strangers realise that committing suicide isn't as private as they thought it would be.

Martin Sharp is a disgraced breakfast tv host that had it all - Kids, wife, house and a great career, and he lost it all. Suicide was his logical and appropriate answer to an unreal situation.

Maureen had to do it tonight because, her son Matt, is home. He has never been able to do normal stuff that other kids do, like walk or speak, and Maureen can't deal with it anymore. Being a dutiful catholic, she's ready to commit the biggest sin of them all.

Half-crazed by heartache, loneliness, teenage angst and alcohol, Jess is now ready to end it.

Finally we have JJ, tall, cool, american and thinks he looks and plays guitar like a rock-star. He's been weighted by enough problem to just end it all.

Four strangers who were convinced that they were alone and would end it at that night got off the roof, and decided that they would share a pizza instead. They started talking only to realise that they had less in common than they thought..

I didn't enjoy this book very much. All the characters are very different. They don't have the same religious belief, class, geography and family relation, but still they seem to agree on the most of the things they talk about. You rarely see them clash together in a way you would hope for in a group of very different and suicidal people. I felt that the characters often kept me hanging and never pulled in any interest from me. There wasn't much to like about any of the characters. I also felt that it was a bother following the plot of the four characters since it kept switching around, which maybe took away some depth from each character. Whenever you got in the same pace as the character you ended up reading about someone else of the protagonists.

"A Long Way Down" is written by Nick Hornby. He's a 53 year old writer/editor who's also well known for his books High Fidelty, About A Boy and his football memoir Fever Pitch. His work touches upon music, sports, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.