Hornby, Nick – Just like you

"Just Like You" is a novel written by English author Nick Hornby, which was published in 2020.
In this novel, Hornby tackles the issue of the crisis of the present, between exclusionary forces, sentimental uncertainty and family fragmentation, a generalized chaos that deviates into a self-gratifying quest that is not mere appearance, external emptiness, social and racial inequality, but acceptance. , sharing and welcoming.
The protagonists are Lucy and Joseph.

They are as different as they can be: she is a white woman, forty-two, a literature teacher, with two children and a divorce from an alcoholic and cocaine-addicted husband. He is a twenty-two-year-old of color, a bit deejay, a bit butcher, a bit football coach. Despite their differences, a story of love and growth, sharing and reflection on yesterday and tomorrow is born between them. Soon, in fact, the relationship will lead them to have to become aware of what their respective points are in common and those of distance but it will also lead them to question themselves about stereotypes, clichés, the sense or not of belonging to a community and to the group, to prejudice and preconception, to living in an era where values have been overturned.

Hornby, through the voices of these two characters who immediately enter into symbiosis with the reader, creates a magnetic dimension that recreates the perfect settings of his titles, so much so that it suits them, but at the same time stands out from them. The connoisseur, in fact, as much as he feels at home and feels pampered by writing and by those common denominators that are constant in his labors, the result is a not indifferent maturation especially with regard to the social aspect and relative dynamics. He manages to make the reader's attention linger on peculiarities that are never predictable, transports him to the London years of the referendum, offers a perfect photograph of what was the life of the iconic place of redemption and possibility compared to our dear Italy, perfect perspective of the point of view of those who lived there and of what they had to face and of what on the contrary they thought they would no longer have to face from the moment of leaving the European Union.