About a Boy

About a Boy succeeds where [b:High Fidelity|285092|High Fidelity|Nick Hornby|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327928082s/285092.jpg|2961887] does not, with a heftier dose of humor and more believable, rounded characters.

Initially Will reminded me a lot of Rob -- the self-centered man-child, unable to commit. Will's actually even worse, because he doesn't have anything he cares about. Thanks to the royalties from a terrible Christmas song his father wrote, Will has never had to work. He drifts through life without purpose. His slimy realization that single mothers are good prey leads to making up a 2-year-old son, which turns into a rabbit hole of chaos that completely turns his self-centered existence upside down. By the end of the show more novel, Will has undergone believable character growth.

Marcus (the titular boy) is another highlight of the novel. Awkward & clueless (and quite possibly on the autism spectrum), Marcus isn't helped at all by his depressed, hippie mother or his largely absent father. Will becomes an unexpected role model for him.

Marcus provides most of the humor with his literal interpretations & blunt comments, although Will's assholery is also laughably awful at times. show less

“This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”

This is a coming of age tale but one about coming of age at middle age. Will is 36,does not work instead living off the royalties on a Christmas song that his father wrote decades ago, he spends his days lying around the house smoking,drinking and watching TV or listening to music or out shopping as he likes to consider himself 'cool'. His evenings he spends trying to pick up women for casual sex. In essence he is commitment-phobic. One days he meets and beds a single mother and discovers someone else who is also not looking for commitment. Suddenly he realises that here show more is a new source of casual sex that he had not previously considered so he invents a two year old son so that he can join a single parent group. While on a single parent outing he meets Marcus, a gawky pre-teen kid who allows his mum to choose everything for him,clothes,hair style,music etc. On returning to Marcus's family home they discover his mother slumped on the settee covered in vomit as result of a failed suicide attempt. Will soon learns that Marcus and his mum have recently moved to London from Cambridge and are finding it hard to adapt.Marcus's mum,Fiona, is clinically depressed and constantly tearful whilst Marcus is being bullied at school because he is new and different from the other kids thus realising that Marcus is having a really bad time of it. So when Marcus follows him home one day Will takes pity and allows him into his life. Later Will meets Rachel, a single mother,and falls in love with her whilst Marcus is befriended by Ellie,a rebellious 15 year old girl who is obsessed with Kurt Cobain and battling against authority.

The book is written with alternate chapters from both Will and Marcus so constructing a very interesting paradox between the too serious Marcus and the too irresponsible Will. This allows Hornby to show the same event from two differing perspectives with sometimes comic results that only the reader can visualize. Through their friendship we see both Marcus and Will grow. Will begins to realise that 'no man is an island' and that responsibility is not all bad whereas Marcus begins to stand up to his estranged parents and finds his own voice.

This is a relatively easy read with its language but not necessarily with its message which makes the reader examine their own relationships. I personally found Marcus's circus pyramid analogy very thought provoking. In a world of ever shifting relationships and changing family dynamics this is a very entertaining read. show less

Marcus, an unusual 12-year-old and Will, a detached 36-year-old cross paths in an unexpected way and find themselves forming an odd friendship. The two seem to have nothing in common, but somehow they bond. Marcus’ mother struggles with depression and his father lives out of town. In addition to that he is mercilessly bullied at school. Will provides a bit of objective advice about his life and a safe haven for the overwhelmed boy.

“Sometimes Marcus sounded as though he were a hundred years old, and it broke Will’s heart.”

I love the way Hornby writes and the characters he creates. You don’t actually have to like the characters to like the story. I really appreciated the fact that Hornby didn’t force some unbelievable show more romantic relationship into the story. He lets the friendship take center stage. His books often revolve around man-children who are terrified to grow up and accept any real responsibility. Will definitely meets those requirements and he bugged me throughout the book. He is supposed to be so incredibly cool, but he just came across as a complete loser to me. He has no real friends or family. He has never held a job in his entire life. Every single decision he makes is completely selfish and self-serving and he is a habitual liar. All of those are red-flags and if I found out a guy I was dating lied about having a child, I think that would be a serious deal-breaker.

Marcus was by far by favorite part of the book. His odd way of looking at the world (possibly autistic?) is so honest, but also heartbreaking. He’s completely logical, but can’t pick up on normal social cues or sarcasm. It’s his influence on Will, unknowingly encouraging him to take a risk and try to engage in his own life, which had the biggest impact on me. It made me a bit sad that Marcus changed so much by the end of the book.

“All three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and he got to walk home from school with his shoes on.”

BOTTOM LINE: I enjoyed this odd story about an unlikely friendship. It’s not my favorite Hornby novel (that would be High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked), but it’s up there. It’s also a good place to start with his work. I have a feeling that Marcus will stick with me for quite a while. show less

I picked this book up thinking it would be light, fluffy summer reading. A few pages into the book a depressive woman - mother of the 12 year-old protagonist, attempts suicide. Despite the gravity of the situation, this book still manages to be quite humorous and insightful. The main story revolves around the confused pre-teen Marcus having a miserable time at school and not finding much guidance from his suicidal mother thus befriends the jobless, aimless rich playboy Will. The obvious plotline would be for the man-boy to teach the real boy how to have fun and be a kid again, but Hornby doesn't go that direction and the novel is richer for it. Instead the novel works on two levels having Will and Marcus get involved in some riotous and show more absurd situations, but these really act only as background to their thoughts and reflections on events as they puzzle things out. I'm really impressed by it. show less

This book isn’t about much – I mean, there’s not much plot. What it is about is people trying to figure out their lives, just as we all are doing. Each character seems like someone you might know: a friend, an acquaintance, someone you glance at in a coffeeshop and wonder about. They bumble through their lives, and in the process, they come together and make one another’s lives a little better.

At the heart of the story is a boy – a 12-year-old outsider who can’t fit in to his London school and whose mother has recently attempted suicide. He meets a man – an aimless, rich, 30-nothing trying desperately to fill his days while avoiding becoming connected to anyone. Almost against their wills, the two become friends and manage show more to help each other make the human connections they’ve been needing. show less

Will has lots of money and no life experience. Marcus has no friends, no money and no hope of being rescued from his slide in social exile. Fiona is a depressed hippie, trying to raise a 12-year-old son in North London. They meet because Will decides single mothers are an as yet untapped resource. They actually end up having quite a good time together.

This is the first Nick Hornby I've enjoyed. He uses very different characters from the other two, which were replete with emo 30-somethings struggling with life. In this novel, Will has no struggles, Marcus is all struggle but is twelve (and excellently portrayed, I thought), and Fiona is depressed and really struggling - but crucially Fiona is never the narrator.

I do find it a bit odd show more that Hornby's novels are consistently and unrelentingly set in Holloway. Clearly I'm not cool enough to live there and to get the in-jokes.

All the spare characters were well-developed and witty as well - Rachel, the beautiful single mother with the homicidal son; Ellie, who worships Kurt Cobain and adopts Marcus; Clive, Marcus' absent father, and Lindsey, his dappy new girlfriend (and her omnipresent mother!). All of the characters are a bit crazy, but just on the right side of believably crazy - unlike the extras in How To Be Good.

The premise is bizarre - a single man, rich from the royalties of a single song his father wrote, goes in search of partners at a Single Parents' Therapy Group... and Marcus tries to feed a duck a whole loaf of baguette in one go, with disastrous consequences. All of it stays just on the credible line, which makes it funny but somehow never quite laugh out loud funny. show less

I've recently learned I love books where a random group of people connect to each other and become a family. These makeshift families are usually chaotic and noisy and in-each-other's-business and in-it-for-the-long-haul. They're appealing to someone who comes from a sometimes too polite biological family. I crave that kind of community. About a Boy is light and sentimental, but in a nice way. Young Marcus is the boy who realizes what his group of people is becoming--a human pyramid that supports him, where any one person can leave as long as another takes her place. Old Will is the boy who accidentally becomes part of a family, and grows up.

Fiona's depression is hard to read about, especially for someone who is adamantly in favor of show more medication and therapy rather than stiff-upper-lipping. And though Hornby hints it might, I don't believe that the human pyramid is enough to help her. I wish one of the team would get her to seek professional help. show less