Will Lightman is a Peter Pan for the 1990s. At 36, the terminally hip North Londoner is unmarried, hyper-concerned with his coolness quotient, and blithely living off his father's novelty-song royalties. Will sees himself as entirely lacking in hidden depths--and he's proud of it! The only trouble is, his friends are succumbing to responsibilities and children, and he's increasingly left out in the cold. How can someone brilliantly equipped for meaningless relationships ensure that he'll continue to meet beautiful Julie Christie-like women and ensure that they'll throw him over before things get too profound? A brief encounter with a single mother sets Will off on his new career, that of "serial nice guy." As far as he's concerned--and remember, concern isn't his strong suit--he's the perfect catch for the young mother on the go. After an interlude of sexual bliss, she'll realize that her child isn't ready for a man in their life and Will can ride off into the Highgate sunset, where more damsels apparently await. The only catch is that the best way to meet these women is at single-parent get-togethers. In one of Nick Hornby's many hilarious (and embarrassing) scenes, Will falls into some serious misrepresentation at SPAT ("Single Parents--Alone Together"), passing himself off as a bereft single dad: "There was, he thought, an emotional truth here somewhere, and he could see now that his role-playing had a previously unsuspected artistic element to it. He was acting, yes, but in the noblest, most profound sense of the word."

What interferes with Will's career arc, of course, is reality--in the shape of a 12-year-old boy who is in many ways his polar opposite. For Marcus, cool isn't even a possibility, let alone an issue. For starters, he's a victim at his new school. Things at home are pretty awful, too, since his musical therapist mother seems increasingly in need of therapy herself. All Marcus can do is cobble together information with a mixture of incomprehension, innocence, self-blame, and unfettered clear sight. As fans of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity already know, Hornby's insight into laddishness magically combines the serious and the hilarious. About a Boy continues his singular examination of masculine wish-fulfillment and fear. This time, though, the author lets women and children onto the playing field, forcing his feckless hero to leap over an entirely new--and entirely welcome--set of emotional hurdles.


The New York Times Book Review, Hal Espen
With any luck, we'll soon have lots of fab and funny writers emulating Nick Hornby, and his kind of accomplishment won't seem quite so foreign.


The Economist
About a Boy meets the essential test of a good novel: you want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens. Mr Hornby also writes acutely and amusingly about middle-class, urban England.... Mr Hornby is also sentimental, can be trite and likes to spell out the moral of the story.


The Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bukowski
Mr. Hornby's trademark wit, breezy writing and his characters' wry internal dialogues keep the reader cheerfully flipping pages. But once it ends, this TV sitcom-like tale ... doesn't haunt the reader with images or observations on human nature the way the best novels do. It just evaporates from memory.


The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
[I]f we can see the novel's conclusion coming far off down the pike, Hornby's sharp observations and his quirky comedic instincts ensure that our journey there is entertaining, funny--and occasionally affecting.


The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Richard Eder
...a pleasurable book ... both subtle and provocative but put together with a skill that makes it seem simpler than it is. It is, in fact, easier to read than either to forget or convey.


From AudioFile
British working-class literature often shocks Americans with its psychological cruelty and vulgarity. In this sly, humorous and somewhat softened example, author Hornby gives us a sympathetic look at a flawed young hero fumbling toward manliness. As a footloose, unambitious bachelor becomes strangely attracted to a suicidal unwed mother and her odd son, At times, cockney David Cale seems excruciatingly dull and dense; at other times, to have dug deeper into his characters' angst than the author has. While his reading is confident, he misses much of the humor in the story. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
How cool is 36-year-old Will Lightman? Sub-zero, according to the questionnaire in his favorite men's magazine. Not only does he own more than five hip-hop albums (five points), he's also slept with a woman he didn't know very well within the last three months (another five points). Targeting single mothers, he joins a single parents' group under false pretenses and is soon drawn into the lives of depressed Fiona and her bright 12-year-old son, Marcus. Suddenly, his life is messy and complicated, and he's horrified when he realizes that he's now hanging with the type of people who gather around the piano to sincerely sing songs like "Both Sides Now" with their eyes closed. This is Hornby's second novel (following High Fidelity, 1995), and it's obvious he has an uncanny ability for homing in on wholly contemporary, often serious topics and serving them up in truly hilarious fashion. His skillful analysis of hipster angst has obviously struck a chord--this novel has been sold to filmmakers for more than $3 million. Joanne Wilkinson


From Kirkus Reviews
The originality and fun spilling over in Hornby's acclaimed debut, High Fidelity (1995), run deep and strong through this second novel, as a playboy pretends he's a single dad so he can date single moms, but finds his fantasies warped by the real needs of an unusual 12-year-old boy. Set for life in London with royalties from a sappy Christmas song his father wrote, Will Lightman does nothing all day except be cool--something he does extremely well. And he chases women, with intermittent success. When chance throws a beautiful mom his way, he makes the most of the opportunity, even though she dumps him because she thinks he's ready for commitment and she isn't. No matter: He joins a single parents' group, inventing a toddler named Ned, and is well on the way to another conquest when frizzy-haired loner Marcus and his depressive hippie mother Fiona intervene. They all meet on the day Fiona tries to kill herself, and while Will's really just a friendly bystander, Marcus, in desperation, seizes on him as the solution to their problems. He follows Will to see where he lives, and, after quickly seeing through the toddler ruse, takes to barging in on his ``friend'' nearly every day after school. While hardly in agreement with this turn of events, Will is still enough of a boy himself to recognize that the lad needs a hand, and finds himself caring enough to buy Marcus cool sneakers, which are promptly stolen by the gang at school who harass Marcus daily. But Will provides the key that gives Marcus a first girlfriend, and then is repaid in kind when he meets another beautiful mom, falls in love, and persuades Marcus to act as his son to keep her from getting away. Far more than just boys will be boys, this has the right mix of hilarity and irrepressible characters to attract a wide audience: an upbeat, unqualified success. (First serial to the New Yorker; Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Among the chroniclers of contemporary British life, Nick Hornby is one of the select few whose books have found a welcome on both sides of the Atlantic. Hornby's previous novel, the hugely popular High Fidelity, was essentially a belated coming-of-age tale, centered on the hilarious misadventures of a music-obsessed Londoner in his mid-30s; About a Boy expands upon this proven formula to portray the dual coming-of-age rituals of a precocious adolescent and a terminally hip slacker on the verge of middle age.

Hornby's protaganist is Will Lightman, a perennial guest at life's eternal cocktail party. Due to a happy accident of birth, Will has never had to work; but, as his friends have drifted away into meaningful marriages and careers, he finds himself, at 36, mostly alone, desperately hip, and leading the quintessential unexamined life. Then, a chance affair opens his eyes to a unique opportunity for endless low-emotional-risk liaisons: lonely divorced mothers! Ever resourceful, Will passes himself off as a single father, signs up for the next meeting of Single Parents-Alone Together, then blithely sets out to hold auditions for his next conquest. But things don't turn out exactly as planned. Through a complicated chain of events, Will finds himself the de facto guardian of a peculiar 12-year-old trouble magnet named Marcus, who soon susses out the truth behind Will's rather dodgy secret but cultivates Will for reasons of his own.

How these two emotionally stunted misfits learn to build a meaningful relationship makes for an intensely affecting and genuinely comic story. Like its predecessor, this irrepressible joy of a novel synthesizes dead-on cultural references and keen observation of the human condition. Nick Hornby's prose may have an English accent, but his theme is universal. Greg Marrs

ANNOTATION

Winner of the 1999 E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Will is thirty-six and doesn't really want children. Why does it bother people that he lives so happily alone in a fashionable, Lego-free flat, with massive speakers and a mammoth record collection, hardwood floors, and an expensive cream-colored rug that no kid has ever thrown up on? Then Will meets Angie. He's never been out with anyone who was a mom. And it has to be said that Angie's long blond hair and big blue eyes are not irrelevant to Will's reassessment of his attitude toward children. Then it dawns on Will that maybe Angie goes out with him because of the children. That maybe children democratize beautiful, single women. That single mothers -- bright, attractive, available women - were all over London ... Marcus is twelve and he knows he's weird. It was all his mother's fault, Marcus figured. She was the one who made him listen to Joni Mitchell instead of Nirvana, and read books instead of play on his Gameboy. Then Marcus meets Will. Will belongs to his mother's SPAT group (Single Parents, Alone Together), and Will is cool. Marcus needs someone who knows what kind of sneakers he should wear, and who Kurt Cobain is. And Marcus's mother needs a husband. They could all move in together! Marcus and his mother, Will and his son, Ned. Then Marcus follows Will home to his flat, where there are no toys or diapers, no second bedroom, even -- and certainly no Ned. This was valuable stuff. If Marcus went home and told his mother about this right away, that would be the end of it. But something tells Marcus that he should hang on to this information until he knows what it's worth.

FROM THE CRITICS

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

Boy [is] a lot of fun to read....[I]f we can see the novel's conclusion coming far off down the pike, Mr. Hornby's sharp observations and his quirky comedic instincts insure that our journey there is entertaining, funny -- and occasionally affecting.

New Yorker

Hornby has established himself...as the maestro of the male confessional.

People Magazine

An amusing male-bonding theme...stylish, well-observed.

Boston Globe

Hilariously loopy.

Hal Espen