Thousandapologies

After reading Nick Hornby’s awesome book High Fidelity (which also has a brilliant movie version with one of my top 5 actors John Cusack), I decided to check out more of his work, and I stumbled across the novel About a boy. I already saw the movie before reading the book, and found the story quite interesting. Normally, a movie featuring Hugh *Vomit* Grant is reason enough for me to quickly turn off a movie, but surprisingly his appearance in this movie was not too nauseating. The book is quite similar to the movie and tells us about Will, an enormously rich and jobless single who’s life does not contain any form of stress or excitement whatsoever. By a chance encounter, Will discovers that beautiful, single mothers, who normally would not think of dating him twice are prepared to go out with him now, and out of boredom and desperation he decides to subscribe for SPAT, a single parent talk group, even if this means he has to create an imaginary two-year old son Ned. Via SPAT Will gets to know Marcus, a 12 year old real boy with a manic depressive mother; an encounter which will change Will’s life for ever. Again Nick Hornby surprises with a wittingly written book that addresses a very serious topic in a light way. Even if the tone of the book is not dramatic at all, the events in it make you reflect, and the way Hornby addresses the main topics of loneliness, growing up, and friendships, is just brilliant. The irony and humour make it that you can follow the story with a bit of emotional distance ,which make the main topics all the more clearer. If you liked the ironic, sarcastic, sometimes absurd, and definitely British humour of High Fidelity, you will definitely like About A Boy too.