About a Boy
May 1999 · Sold by Penguin
4.1star
26 reviews
Ebook
336
Pages
family_home
Eligible
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About this ebook
A wise, hilarious novel from the beloved, award-winning author of Dickens and Prince, Funny Girl and High Fidelity
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 a 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 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 a 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…
Ratings and reviews
4.1
26 reviews
A Google user
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I love Hornby's ability to create odd, flawed, weird -- yet wholly sympathetic characters. In About A Boy, a nerdy 12 year-old is getting bullied at school, and he turns to a disconnected, slacker 30-something -- who invented a two year-old son to make it easier to meet single moms -- for help.
Along the way we become acquainted with a whole raft of interesting people, and like all Hornby's stuff, the dialogue crackles with energy.
Hornby's protagonists are usually cynical 30-something males who are lost and rudderless, and by the end of the book, this one is moving in a purposeful direction, though it's all done without any cloying, Hollywood-style (re: unbelievable) miracles.
It's another reason Hornby has become a favorite writer.
A Google user
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October 1, 2012
of course way better than the movie, although the movie was pretty great.
christine higginbottom
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December 29, 2012
Very depressing
About the author
Nick Hornby is the author of seven internationally bestselling novels (Funny Girl, High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to be Good, A Long Way Down, Slam and Juliet, Naked) and several works of non-fiction including Fever Pitch, Songbook and Ten Years In The Tub. He has written screenplay adaptions of Lynn Barber’s An Education, nominated for an Academy Award, Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn. He lives in London.
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