One for My Baby |
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Tony Parsons
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Pages: 330 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0002261820
Pub: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Pub date: 2001-07-02
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 224992
Editorial Review:
In One for My Baby Hong-Kong-based language teacher Alfie Budd is about to ingest several gallons of the stuff. Returning to London to nurse a broken heart, he finds a world he barely recognises. Terry Wogan plays REM on Radio Two, there are Tai Chi classes on Highbury Fields and the England of Alfie's youth seems a distant dream. Alfie's father is now sporting disco gear and pitifully clinging onto his relationship with a Czech au pair half his age. Alfie's mother, meanwhile, cares a great deal about her rose bushes and not at all about getting her husband back.
Dazed by these changes, Alfie drifts--on a cloud of Tsingtao beer and Sinatra-fuelled reverie--into a new teaching job and into a string of pointless affairs with his students. But a man can only drift for so long before he starts to sink--and Alfie must learn some bitter lessons before he can regain the happiness he once knew in Hong Kong.
Tony Parsons' second novel deserves to match the phenomenal success of his first, Man and Boy--although there are reasons why it might not. One for My Baby lacks the cutesy appeal of single fathers bringing up sons and some readers may find it--with its double portion of deaths and mid-life depressions--a more demanding read altogether. The book deals with tough realities, with people who have ceased to love themselves and each other, with snobbery and prejudice and the acute loneliness of city life. But the tale is redeemed, ultimately, because humour and warmth pervade even its darkest corners. The laughable antics of Alfie's father are balanced beautifully by George Chang, Alfie's serene and dignified Tai Chi instructor. And while our hero's journey is an arduous one, we are invited to laugh with and at him and never to pity him. Mr Parsons deserves praise for creating a book that is not merely different to his first but also bigger, tougher and cleverer. --Matthew Baylis
Reader Reviews:
You must read to make your own mind up. (0/0 people found this helpful)
There are few negative reviews on this, and I can see where some are coming from, but I feel that the book as it stands is a great read, after getting through the first few chapters I was gripped, I feel that Parsons has something to offer everyone in his writing, and this is no exception. If you want a good summer read you will not go wrong with one for my baby!
A worthwhile read!
Touching (1/1 people found this helpful)
I am really surprised with the last two reviews I have seen about this book... I can only imagine those people never really loved someone!
I found One for My Baby absolutely touching... And I have cried, and I have laughed... And it made me think... I really, really liked!
Read all his other books but this one....................... (0/2 people found this helpful)
Having read and enjoyed Parson's other books I looked forward to this read. As with some other reviewers I found it so desperately dull, depressing and predictable.....I have never stopped reading a book but this one does not deserve finishing. Don't waste your time with this one.
a different story about the same things (1/1 people found this helpful)
Tony Parsons is great, but One form my baby isn't as good as Man and Boy, which was so great/wonderful/lovely. But I definitely likes One for my baby too. It's a different story about the same things. The only thing that really is missing is adorable little Pat!
This time the main character is called Alfie (what a stupid name by the way). He is also looking for true love. The only thing that makes him different from the main character in Man and Boy (help, what was he called?) is that his wife has died and he thinks he has already got his chance... But othervice most things are quite much the same. Tha Asian girls that turn out not to be right for Alfie, the English woman (single mother with not so respectable job (here called Jackie, in M&B called Syd, so even the names are similiar, names that I assotiate firsthand with men) who turn to BE the right one...
In "Baby" there is of course more of the Asian culture. The happy east and the lousy modern west... That the book definitely states. Alfie admires for example the Chinese and wants to learn Tai Chi. (Tai Chi, that's our taitsí, "Pappa e på taitsí", we even refuse to pronaunce it right.)
Poorly researched. (0/1 people found this helpful)
I picked up this book not knowing anything about the author thinking from the sleeve notes that it would be a good read. I was sorely disappointed. It had a lot of potential as a story but what got to me most was the fact that it was so badly researched. The medical facts are all muddled up and it seems the author used what sounded cool from a few diseases and in the end it makes no sense. Also the diving accident left me with little sympathy as, being a diver myself, I sincerely hope no one does recreational diving under those conditions. I know I wouldn't.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards -> Popular Fiction