From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewAmong 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