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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Nothing could top "High Fidelity," but this is a sweet story and I thought the movie was decent, too.
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Hornby riesce come sempre ad infarcire una storia divertente ed in grado di tenere incollato il lettore.
Nick Hornby’s writing makes me smile. His dry British wit, his honesty, his quirkiness, his nerdiness. It’s all so damn charming! I cannot file him as junk food reading because he is much too earnest and positive: reading his book has an uplifting effect on me and that if definitely not a guilty pleasure.
This is the book that inspired the movie with Hugh Grant, which inspired the TV show with David Walton and Minnie Driver. I will shamelessly admit to liking all 3, but the original work is still the best! I think that the movie and TV show (while it lasted) worked as well as they did because Hornby created wonderful and endearing characters you want keep seeing over and over again.
The book takes place in 1993, which is important in terms of musical references (the title is a wink to Nirvana’s “About a girl”, which is only one of the many references to Nirvana peppered throughout the book) and current events that end up influencing the plot, but not crucial to the overall arc of this wonderful little story. Will is a mid-30’s slacker man-child, living off the royalties of a terrible Christmas song written by his father. He had musical aspirations of his own at some point, but he abandoned them in favor of simply enjoying the lifestyle his inheritance could afford him. In his quest for single women, he winds up at a single parents meeting – and can only justify his being there by posing as a single parent himself… This leads to an accidental friendship with Marcus, a hopelessly eccentric (read: lame) 12 year-old, raised by a depressive hippie mother. This friendship will ultimately change Will and Marcus’ lives and help them both grow up.
Hornby describes some tough situations in this book, and while his style is light, it never makes fun of or trivializes the issues tackled, such as depression, suicide, single-parenthood. I admire Hornby’s capacity to be honest and sensitive about these topics: he avoids melodrama while being very touching, which is not an easy feat.
The narration alternates between Will and Marcus’s POV and they play off each other so well. Will is cynical, selfish and immature. Marcus is naïve, candid and much too literal, but uncannily aware of what is going on around him. Children who are old for their age often can’t relate to other kids in their age groups. Marcus doesn’t want to bother his mother with his problems, as he sees her own issues are taking their toll on her and he doesn’t want to add to her worries. All of Will’s friends are married and have children while he just sits around being “cool”. Both of them are effectively isolated until they meet and find a weird place where they can talk to each other. Their friendship is unconventional but they obviously care about and understand each other the way no one else in their lives does. They have plenty to learn from each other and their evolution is often hilarious as Marcus tries to become a little more hip and as Will attempts to enter into a real relationship with Rachel. I also love Fiona, the wacky hippie mom who infamously sings “with her eyes closed”; Will and Marcus’ opposite perceptions of her never fail to make me giggle.
This is a lovely, surprisingly deep little book about friendship, coming of age, love and family. It’s a heartwarming story that will not change your life nor will it reinvent the wheel, but it’s a pleasure to read and I warmly recommend it to everyone.
This is the book that inspired the movie with Hugh Grant, which inspired the TV show with David Walton and Minnie Driver. I will shamelessly admit to liking all 3, but the original work is still the best! I think that the movie and TV show (while it lasted) worked as well as they did because Hornby created wonderful and endearing characters you want keep seeing over and over again.
The book takes place in 1993, which is important in terms of musical references (the title is a wink to Nirvana’s “About a girl”, which is only one of the many references to Nirvana peppered throughout the book) and current events that end up influencing the plot, but not crucial to the overall arc of this wonderful little story. Will is a mid-30’s slacker man-child, living off the royalties of a terrible Christmas song written by his father. He had musical aspirations of his own at some point, but he abandoned them in favor of simply enjoying the lifestyle his inheritance could afford him. In his quest for single women, he winds up at a single parents meeting – and can only justify his being there by posing as a single parent himself… This leads to an accidental friendship with Marcus, a hopelessly eccentric (read: lame) 12 year-old, raised by a depressive hippie mother. This friendship will ultimately change Will and Marcus’ lives and help them both grow up.
Hornby describes some tough situations in this book, and while his style is light, it never makes fun of or trivializes the issues tackled, such as depression, suicide, single-parenthood. I admire Hornby’s capacity to be honest and sensitive about these topics: he avoids melodrama while being very touching, which is not an easy feat.
The narration alternates between Will and Marcus’s POV and they play off each other so well. Will is cynical, selfish and immature. Marcus is naïve, candid and much too literal, but uncannily aware of what is going on around him. Children who are old for their age often can’t relate to other kids in their age groups. Marcus doesn’t want to bother his mother with his problems, as he sees her own issues are taking their toll on her and he doesn’t want to add to her worries. All of Will’s friends are married and have children while he just sits around being “cool”. Both of them are effectively isolated until they meet and find a weird place where they can talk to each other. Their friendship is unconventional but they obviously care about and understand each other the way no one else in their lives does. They have plenty to learn from each other and their evolution is often hilarious as Marcus tries to become a little more hip and as Will attempts to enter into a real relationship with Rachel. I also love Fiona, the wacky hippie mom who infamously sings “with her eyes closed”; Will and Marcus’ opposite perceptions of her never fail to make me giggle.
This is a lovely, surprisingly deep little book about friendship, coming of age, love and family. It’s a heartwarming story that will not change your life nor will it reinvent the wheel, but it’s a pleasure to read and I warmly recommend it to everyone.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt
Moderate: Vomit
A sweet, touching story about unexpected connections. One of Hornby's best.
I have enjoyed the screen adaptations of Nick Hornby's books—High Fidelity, About a Boy—and I have had this one on my TBR shelf for (maybe, embarrassingly) years and finally dug it out because I needed a palate cleanser.
Caveat: when I say "adaptation," in this case, I mean the television version with David Walton and Minnie Driver; I have not seen the Hugh Grant version and now having read the book, I cannot imagine that casting working nearly as well as David Walton playing Will Freeman . . . that said, back to the book.
We start the book with a selfish, aloof man in his thirties (Will), who has never done anything because he's the equivalent of a trust fund kid and didn't aspire to be anything else, and a clearly autistic-coded boy (this will hence forth be known as problem #1, although it wouldn't have been in 1998) who is struggling to adjust to new surroundings (Marcus) and the two have no reason to ever come into contact with one another until Will concocts the convoluted idea that pretending to be the father of a toddler would be a good in for dating single mothers, a dating pool left desperately untapped.
Through a series of events, Will and Marcus meet and while this is an opportunity to really live up to the reviews, making this a hilarious and heartwarming story of two people helping one another find their true selves, no scene really does anything more than scratch the surface, as if the third-person past tense narration is that of a documentarian or a disinterested third party, perhaps the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen Jessica. Though I can see HOW the interactions between Will and Marcus could be eye-opening on both sides, I am left with a level of disbelief.
Maybe it's a question of showing vs. telling, as is so often the advice given to new authors and writing students. In this case, I felt the narrator did a lot of telling us what had happened and how the characters had felt about it. We are told Marcus is angry, rather than shown his accelerated heart rate or sweaty palms or whatever other visual cues might suit a might-be-autistic twelve-year-old boy in 1994.
At the end—and this is where the autistic problem lies—Marcus has either been deprogrammed from twelve years under his mother's quirky influence or has learned wildly successful masking techniques, all in a matter of months. If he were five, this might be believable, but at twelve, I'm skeptical.
All in all, I finished the book. It took a month, which is a lot for a book with 300 pages, but I was curious where it was all going. And my takeaways were as follows:
The television adaptation was better and still resurfaces when I hear One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful. I can't imagine Hugh Grant in the role of Will Freeman (or, if I'm being realistic, Nicholas Hoult as Marcus) but maybe I need to dig up the movie to find out.
I'm a little concerned the other Hornby books I have are going to be written in the same superficial way and I don't think I have the patience to power through them the way I did this one.
Caveat: when I say "adaptation," in this case, I mean the television version with David Walton and Minnie Driver; I have not seen the Hugh Grant version and now having read the book, I cannot imagine that casting working nearly as well as David Walton playing Will Freeman . . . that said, back to the book.
We start the book with a selfish, aloof man in his thirties (Will), who has never done anything because he's the equivalent of a trust fund kid and didn't aspire to be anything else, and a clearly autistic-coded boy (this will hence forth be known as problem #1, although it wouldn't have been in 1998) who is struggling to adjust to new surroundings (Marcus) and the two have no reason to ever come into contact with one another until Will concocts the convoluted idea that pretending to be the father of a toddler would be a good in for dating single mothers, a dating pool left desperately untapped.
Through a series of events, Will and Marcus meet and while this is an opportunity to really live up to the reviews, making this a hilarious and heartwarming story of two people helping one another find their true selves, no scene really does anything more than scratch the surface, as if the third-person past tense narration is that of a documentarian or a disinterested third party, perhaps the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen Jessica. Though I can see HOW the interactions between Will and Marcus could be eye-opening on both sides, I am left with a level of disbelief.
Maybe it's a question of showing vs. telling, as is so often the advice given to new authors and writing students. In this case, I felt the narrator did a lot of telling us what had happened and how the characters had felt about it. We are told Marcus is angry, rather than shown his accelerated heart rate or sweaty palms or whatever other visual cues might suit a might-be-autistic twelve-year-old boy in 1994.
At the end—and this is where the autistic problem lies—Marcus has either been deprogrammed from twelve years under his mother's quirky influence or has learned wildly successful masking techniques, all in a matter of months. If he were five, this might be believable, but at twelve, I'm skeptical.
All in all, I finished the book. It took a month, which is a lot for a book with 300 pages, but I was curious where it was all going. And my takeaways were as follows:
The television adaptation was better and still resurfaces when I hear One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful. I can't imagine Hugh Grant in the role of Will Freeman (or, if I'm being realistic, Nicholas Hoult as Marcus) but maybe I need to dig up the movie to find out.
I'm a little concerned the other Hornby books I have are going to be written in the same superficial way and I don't think I have the patience to power through them the way I did this one.
I absolutely adore Nick Hornby's writing style. This book is quirky and endearing and heartbreaking and makes you soul search all in one package. Will and Marcus are unforgettable characters who grow so much throughout the book, but not all neat and tidy. Somehow they grow, but it's gritty and messy and altogether uncertain...but in a very good way.
With the exception of the Klosterman books and the last Harry Potter novel, I've been trying too hard to read books that I should read. I do want to read them, sure, but the books a person should read can be a chore. So I'm making sure that I change things up every once in awhile by reading for (GASP!) fun! Thank you, Nick Hornby, for ushering in this new age for me. I've owned this book for a long time, long after the film version became one of my favorite movies. What's also great is how both the movie and the book work really well even though the last act of the film differs completely from the original source material. Since the book is based in 1993 and focuses so much on Kurt Cobain, I can see why the filmmakers made the changes.
2015 Reading Challenge
Read a book based on or turned into a TV show
I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I kept expecting something *else* to happen. I don't know what.
Read a book based on or turned into a TV show
I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I kept expecting something *else* to happen. I don't know what.