Recent Reads #7 | About A Boy

If you know me, you'll know that I like to shout from the rooftops how much I hate assigned readings.

That's not because I don't like reading, I actually love reading. I'm the biggest bookworm you'll ever meet, but I'm a picky reader, and that's exactly why I hate assigned readings.

My teachers always managed to pick out some book that sounds promising at first, and ends up being so bad that I don't want to finish it, but I obviously have to for class. I could pull out my hair thinking about it.

Keeping that fact about me in mind, I really wasn't thrilled when my English teacher told us she wanted us to read something over the holidays. However, that changed when I actually picked up the book in question, which is 'About A Boy' by Nick Hornby.

To my suprise, it was good. Not decent, 'I'll get through this somehow', but really good. At times, I even struggled to put it down.

Now you're wondering, what is that miracle book about, Franzi? Well, let's get into it.

This story is unfolds from two points of view, and what essentially makes that so oddly charming is the fact that those two are so very different.
One of the people telling the story is Marcus, a twelve year-old boy who moved to London with his mother after his parents' divorce. Marcus, a shy and rather intelligent kid, is strongly influenced by his mother, who is somewhat of a hippy - because of that, he's considered "uncool" and "weird" at his new school, simply because he dresses differently and doesn't listen to the mainstream music, which results in hideous bullying.
But then we also see the story through the eyes of Will Freeman, a 36 year-old who lives a life in luxury, even though he hasn't worked a day in his life. After inheriting a fortune from his father, Will enjoys the "good life", partying, drinking, and most of all, avoiding any form of responsibility, especially when it comes to having a family.

Now, how would one of those two people ever fit in the other's life?
After Will dated a single mother for a while, he realized how much better everything about that realtionship was compared to his previous ones, so he sets himself a goal to only date single mothers from that point on.

The only problem is that single mothers don't just fall out of the sky at random. Struggling, Will makes a horrifying decision - he makes up a three year-old son and joins a single parents group.
You think the situation is looking awkward now, but it gets worse.

When Suzie, one of the mothers Will starts seeing thanks to the single parents group, takes him out to a day in the park with some of the group's kids, he meets Marcus for the first time and, judging by how utterly different the two are, you can imagine how well they get along.

But then Suzie and Will bring Marcus home at the end of the day and find his mother lying unconcious the sofa, a pill of bottles in her hand, and shit hits the fan.
After the whole process of calling an ambulance, spending the night in the ER and living of vending machine food, Will and Marcus are inextricably linked with each other in a weird way. His mother's attempted suicide drives Marcus even further away from her, and seeing that he doesn't really have anyone else to go, he goes to Will.

At first, the relationship between the two is rather awkward, and how could it not be? But over time, they start to warm up to each other more and more - whether Will likes it or not. Will defends Marcus against his bullies and even goes shopping with Marcus to buy him clothes his mother refuses to get him.

But how long can a relationship like this one really last, especially when one half of it is an unreliable, unresponsible teenager in an adult's skin?


Now, I've got to say that while I did still enjoy this book quite a bit, there were still things that bothered me about it, so much even that I sometimes had to step away from it because I was getting a little too frustrated,

I loved the book's plot. I tried not to reveal all there is to it in my review because there was so much to it that it always kept me interested, sometimes even on edge. Not every author manages to construct a conherent story that doesn't get boring, so kudos to Nick Hornby for that.

Now to the characters, which were my main problem about this entire thing.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed Marcus - I hardly ever read books that are written from the point of view of someone this young, so that's one thing I found very interesting. He's also a character with quite a lot of depth, and he's so adorable in his own way that I sometimes wished that I could pat his back and ruffle through his hair.

But Will. Oh man, Will Freeman, sometimes I wanted to reach into the book and downright slap you.
It's hard to read someone's story when you don't relate to them one bit, and I really didn't relate to him at all. He completely has his head in the clouds most of the time, he's very selfish and, especially at the beginning, a downright jerk. He stops talking to his friends after they had a baby simply because he hates the idea of having a family, let alone children. Huh?
Even though he does, to an extent, show character development throughout the book, he never changes completely, so for the whole 278 pages, I either grunted in disgust or made some other feral noise that made people change seats away from me on the bus. Cheers guys.

And then there's also the issue with Fiona, Marcus' mother. The reader is introduced to her as someone who's struggling with a lot of emotional baggage, she's later revealed to deal with depression. Now, the reader can play the guessing-game to find out what more there is to her illness, but as Marcus is too young to fully grasp the concept of depression and Will doesn't care too much, we don't really find much about Fiona's struggles at all, even though she does attempt suicide quite early into the book.


Despite its issues, 'About A Boy' is still an enjoyable read. It tells the story of an extraordinary relationship, and an even more extraordinary young boy who is struggling to find his place in the world when the whole world seems to turn against him.
'About A Boy' is available on Amazon for 9.99€ - and if you're not one for books, 'About A Boy' was turned into a movie back in 2002, so you could check that out as well!


If you're interested in what other readings I get up to, you can check out my Goodreads - and while you're at it, please send me a friend request, I love meeting other bookworms like me!

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