It's been about a month since my last book review (given that I'm supposed to be reading fifty books this year for my Goodreads challenge, this doesn't bode well for me) but I have another Nick Hornby book that I have really really liked, and that one is About a Boy.
I had seen the film for About a Boy years ago and I remembered loving it, I'm actually rewatching it as I'm writing this and drooling over Hugh Grant. I don't know what it is about Hugh Grant but he just has me feeling a certain kinda way.. but foetus Nicholas Hoult is in it too so I loved the film, it was funny and Badly Drawn Boy did the soundtrack so that's a good start. After reading High Fidelity, I had to read more Hornby so I decided to read this as I had seen the film and already knew I would love it.
Synopsis:
The book focuses on two people: Will and Marcus. Will is in his mid 30s, he doesn't want kids, he's a pretty cool dude, but in attempt to pick up women he joins S.P.A.T (Single Parents Alone Together) and he pretends that he has a kid. It's through S.P.A.T that his story crosses over with Marcus, who is in year 7 and he's a bit of a loser. His parents are divorced, and his Mum is suffering from depression and tries to kill herself near the beginning of the book, so his home life isn't great. After a while, Marcus decides to visit Will at his house various times in an attempt to get him to go out with his Mum but after a while he gives up on this plan, and Will becomes his friend who teaches him to be cool. The book follows their friendship and focuses on the effects of depression on other people, and growing up.
My thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book, I thought it was very straightforward to read but not simplistic. Although, I didn't find it laugh-out-loud funny like High Fidelity and it was less of a conversational style but it still did have that aspect. I liked how the story focused on how depression can affect the people around you and how it looks to a naive child. I liked the surreality of the book because the initial concept doesn't seem all that realistic but once you've accepted that, it's really enjoyable.
I found some parts very funny, like Marcus was convinced that Kurt Cobain was actually Kirk O'Bane and that he was a footballer. I actually really loved the strong theme of Nirvana in this book, being a Nirvana fan myself, and the book covers Kurt's suicide attempt and then his death, and from researching the book it turns out the title 'About a Boy' is a reference to the song 'About a Girl'. I knew the song but I didn't really link them together, but Nirvana play a strong part in the book and they're referenced to quite a lot.
Overall rating:
I gave this book a 4/5 on Goodreads, I did really like it but it didn't captivate me quite as much as High Fidelity did and I think I was comparing it to that a lot just because they're both written by Nick Hornby. Although I did like this and it focused on more serious issues which I found interesting, the humour is a lot more subtle than High Fidelity so it did have funny moments but it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny.
Have you read or seen About a Boy?
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