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A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

At the beginning of A Long Way Down, four people gather on a tower block roof nicknamed Toppers House. They've each come to jump to their death, but find that without being alone, none of them are able to complete the act of suicide. The novel is told from the perpective of each of the four. Jess is the daughter of a government minister mourning a sibling's death and rebelling against a boring bourgeois life. Martin is a former TV star disgraced by an affair with an underage girl. Maureen is a middle-aged single mother with a severely disabled son. J. J. is an American musician whose recently split with both his band and his girlfriend. Their common despair provides themselves an instant support group, but each of them must still deal with the underlying causes of their suicidal tendencies. Nick Hornby's book has received mixed reviews with the Sunday Times saying, "Although A Long Way Down is not an evenly successful novel, it justifies Hornby's decision to write about that misery which we have no need to beg or borrow, and which makes such strong, strange connections between one desperate soul and the next."