Novelist, essayist and journalist Nick Hornby's first two books, 1992's Fever Pitch and 1995's High Fidelity, established him as the leading exponent of 'lad lit' and an almost indispensable observer of contemporary British society.

Hornby's gift as a storyteller is his ability to weave startling insights about human nature into wildly enjoyable prose. And so his bittersweet novels sell as hip, pop-culture entertainment and something altogether more cerebral and enduring.

The 1990s was a stellar decade for Hornby, but he has been just as prolific this decade. Many regard 2005's A Long Way Down as his most remarkable work of the decade thus far. It's an ambitious and darkly comic novel that turned Hornby from a lad lit author into one too accomplished for a qualifying tag.

The action begins with four strangers meeting unexpectedly on top of a North London tower block. It's New Year's Eve, and each of them has come intending to leap to their deaths.

The members of this awkward Hard Luck Club end up rewarding themselves by agreeing to put off their suicides until Valentine's Day when they will reconvene. But, as John Lennon said: 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.' And so the random and chaotic world of the living reclaims these losers, whether they like it or not.

You'd have a heart of stone not to get moist-eyed at some of the passages in A Long Way Down, which highlights the interactions, foibles and the disastrous judgment of each of these depressives.

There's a fading television celebrity whose midlife crisis began when he was busted for sleeping with an underage girl; a failed rock star turned pizza-delivery boy; a single parent of a disabled son, and the wild-child teenage daughter of a high-profile politician. The confluence of their narratives becomes a broad, meandering river in Hornby's emotional landscape, shimmering with the gift of life, as shafts of sunlight manage to poke through the clouds.

Narrated in the first person by all four of the story's protagonists, the perspective constantly changes but never within chapters.

A Long Way Down is a life-affirming story about mortality, written with an emotional generosity that is evident in all Hornby's work. Suicide, mental illness, and promiscuity are covered with sensitivity and wry humour.

Hornby's next novel, Juliet, Naked, is due out in September, and is said to feature a reclusive has-been recording artist and the tribulations of his being forced back into public life. Just the kind of story you'd expect Hornby to turn to.

And, just as predictably, it'll probably be another poignant gem.