About a Boy (Movie Tie-In)

About a Boy (Movie Tie-In)
by Nick Hornby

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Book Summary Information

Author: Nick Hornby
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-04-30
ISBN: 1573229571
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Riverhead Trade

Book Reviews of About a Boy (Movie Tie-In)

Book Review: Heaven Is Other People
Summary: 5 Stars

Marcus, the 12-year-old protagonist of "About A Boy", arrives at a realization late in the book that sums up Nick Hornby's message of enlightened humanism, a theme running through his books: Connecting with new people is one of the only real good things life offers.

"You could create little patterns of people that wouldn't have been possible if his mum and dad hadn't split up and the three of them had stayed in Cambridge," Hornby writes. "It didn't work for everyone. It didn't work for mad people and people who didn't know anybody, or for people who were sick, or drank too much. But it was going to work for him..."

Marcus's journey begins when he discovers Will Freeman, a thirty-something living off his father's songwriting legacy (one song, a Christmas number he hates) who gives himself points for such things as using the right prophylactic and lives his life of comfortable unemployment in thirty-minute increments. Will's foray into picking up single mothers by pretending to be a single dad brings him into Marcus's world. Marcus sniffs out Will's fakery but promises silence in exchange for some company and ideas on life.

Hornby was still a humor writer when he published this in 1998. "About A Boy" uses humor extremely well if rather darkly in laying out the quiet desperation of both Will and Marcus's lives. Will "was one of life's visitors; he didn't want to be visited". Marcus wins his company with amusingly dogged persistence, ringing the doorbell of Will's flat in time with the music Will is listening to. Yet he's no operator; in fact Marcus is painfully obtuse and needs all the help he can get.

Hornby constructs the book in a clever way, with alternating chapters written from Marcus's and Will's perspectives. He keeps you on your toes by breaking off with sudden plot twists and unexpected dramatic arcs. All this makes for a fun read, but also buttresses Hornby's point about people needing people in order to survive: You never know when someone will come in handy, or how badly.

The book was made into a very solid but quite different 2002 movie with Hugh Grant, which preserves Hornby's voice but injects a lighter tone. Readers coming to this book from the movie may be caught off-guard by the differences (Where's Roberta? Where's Will's "island living" soliloquy?) One early scene in the book and movie has Will turning down an offer to be an infant girl's godfather; in the film he tells the parents casually what could well happen when the girl turns 18. In the book, Will isn't so rudely out there. The jokes in "About A Boy" the novel are less obvious, more observational.

The book's ending is far more challenging than the movie's. You can almost imagine Hornby laying down his comedy-writer's pen in the last fifth of the book, perhaps more than needed; he delivers a mildly upbeat ending that nevertheless speaks to the pain of everyday living as something never overcome, only delayed.

I'm in awe of Hornby's writing and his way of constructing a plot, and his cold view of life commands respect. "About A Boy" brings all this out, and his caustic wit was never on finer display. It's definitely one that sticks with you.

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Summary of About a Boy (Movie Tie-In)

Now a major motion picture from Universal Pictures.

Will Freeman may have discovered the key to dating success: If the simple fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women?women who would not ordinarily look twice at Will?might not only be willing, but enthusiastic about dating him, then he was really onto something. Single mothers?bright, attractive, available women?thousands of them, were all over London. He just had to find them.

SPAT: Single Parents?Alone Together. It was a brilliant plan. And Will wasn't going to let the fact that he didn't have a child himself hold him back. A fictional two-year-old named Ned wouldn't be the first thing he'd invented. And it seems to go quite well at first, until he meets an actual twelve-year-old named Marcus, who is more than Will bargained for...

Will Lightman is a Peter Pan for the 1990s. At 36, the terminally hip North Londoner is unmarried, hyper-concerned with his coolness quotient, and blithely living off his father's novelty-song royalties. Will sees himself as entirely lacking in hidden depths--and he's proud of it! The only trouble is, his friends are succumbing to responsibilities and children, and he's increasingly left out in the cold. How can someone brilliantly equipped for meaningless relationships ensure that he'll continue to meet beautiful Julie Christie-like women and ensure that they'll throw him over before things get too profound? A brief encounter with a single mother sets Will off on his new career, that of "serial nice guy." As far as he's concerned--and remember, concern isn't his strong suit--he's the perfect catch for the young mother on the go. After an interlude of sexual bliss, she'll realize that her child isn't ready for a man in their life and Will can ride off into the Highgate sunset, where more damsels apparently await. The only catch is that the best way to meet these women is at single-parent get-togethers. In one of Nick Hornby's many hilarious (and embarrassing) scenes, Will falls into some serious misrepresentation at SPAT ("Single Parents--Alone Together"), passing himself off as a bereft single dad: "There was, he thought, an emotional truth here somewhere, and he could see now that his role-playing had a previously unsuspected artistic element to it. He was acting, yes, but in the noblest, most profound sense of the word."

What interferes with Will's career arc, of course, is reality--in the shape of a 12-year-old boy who is in many ways his polar opposite. For Marcus, cool isn't even a possibility, let alone an issue. For starters, he's a victim at his new school. Things at home are pretty awful, too, since his musical therapist mother seems increasingly in need of therapy herself. All Marcus can do is cobble together information with a mixture of incomprehension, innocence, self-blame, and unfettered clear sight. As fans of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity already know, Hornby's insight into laddishness magically combines the serious and the hilarious. About a Boy continues his singular examination of masculine wish-fulfillment and fear. This time, though, the author lets women and children onto the playing field, forcing his feckless hero to leap over an entirely new--and entirely welcome--set of emotional hurdles.

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