(Warning: spoilers)

High Fidelity opens with a turn: a stylistic departure from the current plot. It makes for an interesting introduction, seeing as there is no plot in the beginning to turn from. Laura, the almost-antagonist of the plot, is established from the beginning: not through anything that applies to her own character, but through the narrator’s description of just how unaffected he is by her break-up. Of course, this says more about the narrator’s feelings for Laura than any other opening break-up could have been: if the narrator truly didn’t care about Laura, there would be no reason for him now to recite his former break-ups in retaliation.

(Warning: spoilers)

The opening is a complete aside from the main novel: High Fidelity could be read without that introduction without any considerable change in the plot. It’s used, however, to quickly contruct a narrator from his own point of view: we see his past from early on, which indicates that High Fidelity is a story about the present, not about problems of the past. We see, of course, the five girls that most broke Rob’s heart, as well as the style of conveying personal information and obsessive cataloguing through lists. Probably most importantly, however, and probably the most overlooked aspect of the introduction in terms of formal analysis, is this: by starting with a list of glorified break-ups, Nick Hornby immediately draws in his readers. The introduction is catchy and memorable to casual readers – even when it later appears to be nearly superfluous.