Man and Boy

Harry Silver, the book's anti-hero, has it all: a beautiful wife, an angelic son and a high-paying job. His life is just about perfect, until one night he casually sleeps with a slim redheaded coworker who has "that kind of fine Irish skin that is so pale it looks as though it has never seen the sun". After the fateful night, his life falls apart. He loses his job and his wife in rapid succession, and finds himself a single, unemployed parent. It is an excellent education for a man who up until now has been immature and irresponsible, and Parsons has some strong points to make about the puerility of far too many contemporary males: "Being a man is like being chained to the village idiot." At times he piles on the disasters and plot-twists a little too thickly, but the ending is wildly romantic, redemptive and optimistic. In other words, Harry grows up. -- Christopher Hart

Reader Reviews:

A mixture of great, and grating (0/0 people found this helpful)

I really liked the basic storyline and a lot of the characters. It was a refreshing change from the history, detective and chicklit which most novels nowadays seem to be.

It was 'great' to read a funny book, about family relations, from a male point of view.

But the 'grating' list is too long for me to want to wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Firsty, I loathe the way the writer gives his hero, i.e. himself, such beautiful wives/girlfriends. It makes the writer seem incredibly arrogant, or frustrated.

Secondly, using the dad's death to wring every ounce of sympathy out of the reader was just cheap.

Thirdly, the estranged wife's stay in Japan was an obvious and unconvincing plot device to allow the main character to be on his own with the kid (who of course also had to be incredibly beautiful).

Fourthly, the reasons for the introduction of the American girlfriend were utterly transparet. One, to make the book, and no doubt film, sellable in America, and two, so that

Fifthly, the book could feature that most lame, predictable cliché of all, lover's dash to the airport, and happy reunion there (sorry, don't mean to wreck the ending).

I really enjoyed this book - and the ones that followed. (5/7 people found this helpful)

I will admit that in parts it does tend to grate, but it`s the sort of grating that you would get if - say your brother had seperated from his wife and he`d sit there, chin on the floor, giving you the run down on what she said to him when she rang last night and what he said back to her and how he`d messed up the dinner, got drunk and didn`t sleep all night - in other words, it`s real. While he is dead miserable, you want to laugh out loud at him - and many times this book will make you do that. Maybe it`s a guy book - i don`t know - but i think the dry humour is great and i`m sure a lot of men could relate to the situations tony parsons describes.Thumbs up from me - but you do need to read them all.

'Nice' (2/4 people found this helpful)

Pretty engaging and heartwarming, as long as you've got a soft spot for 'bloke lit' and don't want to be challenged.

Charmless, lazy, bloke lit (1/2 people found this helpful)

Man and Boy emanates from a peculiar (and now, thankfully, passe) genre of British fiction best described as Bridget Jones for middle-class, middle-brow, middle-aged, middle-English blokes. Tony Parsons attempts to be self-effacing, human, down-to-earth and bittersweet, but isn't nearly a skilled or funny enough writer to pull if off.

The dust-jacket contains somewhat defensive praise for the book; the Observer's James Brown remarks "I cried five times and laughed out loud four", which is hardly a colossal strike rate on either count, and you do wonder what torment that reviewer must have been going through that he felt the need to count in the first place. In any case, he laughed and cried nine more times than I did.

Part of the trouble is Parson's protagonist, a flawed thirty-something dad who would be simply an uninteresting loser going through a midlife crisis (without explanation, motivation or justification he cheats on his wife) were it not for the suspicion that there is more than a little of the autobiographical about him. Parsons obviously likes Harry more than the character, in the abstract, deserves to be liked. Therefore Harry's wife - whom you would expect to be the victim and not the villain of the piece - is instead portrayed as unintentionally complicit in his adultery (by her standoffish behaviour) and we are told she has immediately rushed headlong into an adulterous relationship of her own, Parsons thereby letting his hero off the hook for his own misdemeanour altogether. Which doesn't exactly make for great drama or leave much scope for a character arc.

This might be excusable were the writing sharp or the anecdotes clever. No such luck: perhaps in his attempt to appeal the football-supporter constituency the book is aimed at, Parsons affects the patter of a self-important cabbie - or perhaps a columnist for the Mirror (which, quelle surprise, Parsons is) - telling you his life story, and the text is studded with ugly shorthand for descriptions Parsons can't be bothered to give himself: "all my images of this particular birthday seemed to be derived from some glossy American sit-com" and such things. All it's missing is a "know what I mean, Guv?" and a "I'm not being funny or nuffink..." - and that may be just because I didn't notice them.

Within that limited ambition, this book is effective enough, hence its popularity, and you'll rattle through it in a day, so it's not like you'll waste your life slogging through it.

But that's still faint praise, all the same.

Olly Buxton

Poor male attempt at 'Chick-lit'. (2/3 people found this helpful)

I bought this novel at an airport bookstore. I was hoping for a resonant exploration of the experiences of fatherhood, "son hood", marriage, divorce, remarriage, etc.

My expectations were not particularly great - Hornbyesque cleverness would have sufficed for a 3 1/2 hour flight. Sadly, even with the bar set this low, I was profoundly disappointed and surprisingly annoyed by this book.

Parsons' writing is lazy in the extreme; his characters are occasionally touching (a bit like the people in a Kleenex commercial) but are generally wooden and unconvincing. Tedious descriptive similes are repeated ad nauseum (I don't know how many times you want to hear someone's eyes described as "Tiffany-blue", but once was enough for me) and the authorial interjections are grating. Other Parson tricks include re-using the same similes over and over again. At three separate points in the book, certain children's toys are described as being as "big as a `fridge".

This book is a hugely wasted opportunity and reads like a cynical "lad-lit" cash-in, you'll probably find better writing in the brain-dead FHM lad's magazine.

"Being a man is like being chained to the village idiot." At times Pratsons piles on the disasters and plot-twists a little too thickly, and the ending is laugh-out-loud bad.

`Man and Boy' plumbs new depths of mediocrity. In fact, I felt no empathy or connection with any of the characters and the ending seemed a ploy to inadvertently explain this lack of depth.
Basically this book is a tedious effort from an amateur with delusions of being the next Nick Hornsby.

Tony Parsons

Editorial Review: