Duncan Williamson: Book Review About a Boy hor.html

I saw this story in its film version well before this reading of the book. It's a film crying out for a Hugh Grant style of actor: the golly gosh Englishman type.

About a Boy is, well, about a boy: Marcus. It's also a stroy about Will, the man and a few other adults and one other notable child.

Will is in his mid thirties and he doesn't work. In fact, he's never had a job as he lives off the royalties from a song his father wrote decades ago. Will isn't married and he lives in a flat in London apparently passing his life happily alone but with the normal juices of a normal mid thirties man.

Will hits on a cracking idea: where to find nubile women. Where better that a single mother's group. He joins one and invents a child of his own. Of course, the child never accompanies him to any meeting. He finds a woman and then in true West End Farce style, things get complicated. Where's the child: ah, erm, with his mother ...

Marcus is the son of one of the women whom Will comes into contact with and Marcus rumbles Will. Marcus then spots Will in the street and follows him home. He then decides that Will deserves to spend some time with him. Marcus turns up every day after school for a while and there is a lot of good craik in those sessions.

Will is a bit of a man about town and it gets to the point where Will not only advises Marcus what to wear; but he buys him a new pair of trainers. Gratitude is unbounded when those trainers are stolen within 24 hours. Will is blamed by all and sundry for having had the temerity to interfere in such a way!

It's a very simple story from then on. Marcus has actually moved to London from Cambridge and so part of his problem centres around fitting in at his new school. Another problem is that his father stayed in Cambridge so he is living with his mother. Tragically, mother is a manic drepressive and attempts suicide hot on the trail of Marcus having killed a duck in the park as he accompanied Will and a girlfriend: the duck died following being struck on the head by a bit of a baguette he was throwing for the bird to eat!

Marcus is befriended by the big bad girl at school, Ellie: she thinks he's funny and even though Marcus is a wimpy 12 year old and she is a Kurt Cobain loving 15 year old they get on. Well, Marcus does as he's told really and just falls into line. He stays in line when Ellie lamps a boy who tries to interfere with her protege: a punch almost right between his eyes! Marcus is protected thereafter.

Marcus's mother survives the suicide attempt and the relationship that Will had been forging goes from strength to strength and then there is the Royston episode. Marcus is invited to spend a weekend with his dad in Cambridge. I won't spoil the story but Ellie learns about the trip and decides to tag along. This happens on the day that Kurt Cobain died. Ellie spends her waking hours wearing a Cobain tee and sweatshirt and she is in love with the man! This is central to part of what happens on the way to Cambridge ... they don't get there. Marcus's mum, Will and the girlfriend all end up in Royston. As does the dad and the dad's girlfriend.

What happened? Read the book and find out! It's a light read and if you haven't seen the film, no matter as it stands on its own merits very well.

Just an oddity. Did you ever get caught up in writing in that long thin font when you were a child. The font that you had to tip the page up to the horizontal in order to read what you'd written? Then you'll be whisked back to that time by the writing on the back cover of this book ... this is the 2002 film and TV tie in paperback edition.