Nick Hornby - About a Boy
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PENGUIN BOOK S ABOUT A BO Y
'A delightful, observant, funny and good-hearted novel... Done with the downbeat wit and charm which have become Hornby's trademark' Terence Blacker, Mail on Sunday
'About a Boy is really about the awful, hilarious, embarrassing places where children and adults meet, and Hornby has captured it with delightful precision' Arminta Wallace, Irish Times
'A stunner of a novel... Utterly read-in-one-day, forget-where-youare-on-the-tube gripping ... A brilliant book which tells you more about late 1990s cultural life than any number of flash mags and social treatises ever will -and it's wildly entertaining into the bargain'
Marie Claire
'It is absolutely unthinkable that you will be able to finish even the first chapter without seeing a little bit of yourself and everyone you know in both Will and his newly "adopted" progeny Marcus' Sophie Gorman, Irish Independent
'Hornby's sharp observations and his quirky comedic instincts ensure that our journey is entertaining, funny and occasionally affecting' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
'About a Bay is a logical extension of Hornby's territory, combining the humour and keen perception of his earlier books with a harsher set of facts, a north London landscape slightly reminiscent of Joseph Connolly or Martin Amis... The psychology of Hornby's characters is carefully, thoughtfully and gently done. There is a heart to Hornby's writing which sets its world apart from those of Connolly or Amis' Tobias Hill, Observer
ABOUT THE AUTHO R
Nick Hornby was born in 1957. He is the author of Fever Pitch and of three novels: High Fidelity, About a Boy and How to be Good. All four books have been international bestsellers and all are available in Penguin. He has also edited two anthologies, My Favourite Year and Speaking with the Angel. In 1999 he was awarded the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Highbury, north London.
About a Bo y
PENGUIN BOOK S
Published by the Penguin Grou p Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi -110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196 South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Copyright Nick Hornby, 1998 All rights reserved
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Love and thanks to David Evans, Adrienne Maguire, Caroline Dawnay, Virginia Bovell, Abigail Morris, Wendy Carlton, Harry Ritchie and Amanda Posey. Music provided by Wood in Upper Street, London Nl.
one
'Have you split up now?'
'Are you being funny?'
People quite often thought Marcus was being funny when he wasn't. He couldn't understand it. Asking his mum whether she'd split up with Roger was a perfectly sensible question, he thought: they'd had a big row, then they'd gone off into the kitchen to talk quietly, and after a little while they'd come out looking serious, and Roger had come over to him, shaken his hand and wished him luck at his new school, and then he'd gone.
'Why would I want to be funny?'
'Well, what does it look like to you?'
'It looks to me like you've split up. But I just wanted to make sure.'
'We've split up.'
'So he's gone?'
'Yes, Marcus, he's gone.'
He didn't think he'd ever get used to this business. He had quite liked Roger, and the three of them had been out a few times; now, apparently, he'd never see him again. He didn't mind, but it was weird if you thought about it. He'd once shared a toilet with Roger, when they were both busting for a pee after a car journey. You'd think that if you'd peed with someone you ought to keep in touch with them somehow.
'What about his pizza?' They'd just ordered three pizzas when the argument started, and they hadn't arrived yet.
'We'll share it. If we're hungry.'
'They're big, though. And didn't he order one with pepperoni on it?' Marcus and his mother were vegetarians. Roger wasn't.
'We'll throw it away, then,' she said.
'Or we could pick the pepperoni off. I don't think they give you much of it anyway. It's mostly cheese and tomato.'
'Marcus, I'm not really thinking about the pizzas right now.'
'OK. Sorry. Why did you split up?'
'Oh... this and that. I don't really know how to explain it.'
Marcus wasn't surprised that she couldn't explain what had happened. He'd heard more or less the whole argument, and he hadn't understood a word of it; there seemed to be a piece missing somewhere. When Marcus and his mum argued, you could hear the important bits: too much, too expensive, too late, too young, bad for your teeth, the other channel, homework, fruit. But when his mum and her boyfriends argued, you could listen for hours and still miss the point, the thing, the fruit and homework part of it. It was like they'd been told to argue and just came out with anything they could think of.
'Did he have another girlfriend?'
'I don't think so.'
'Have you got another boyfriend?'
She laughed. 'Who would that be? The guy who took the pizza orders? No, Marcus, I haven't got another boyfriend. That's not how it works. Not when you're a thirty-eight-yearold working mother. There's a time problem. Ha! There's an everything problem. Why? Does
it bother you?'
'I dunno.'
And he didn't know. His mum was sad, he knew that she cried a lot now, more than she did before they moved to London but he had no idea whether that was anything to do with boyfriends. He kind of hoped it was, because then it would all get sorted out. She would meet someone, and he would make her happy. Why not? His mum was pretty, he thought, and nice, and funny sometimes, and he reckoned there must be loads of blokes like Roger around. If it wasn't boyfriends, though, he didn't know what it could be, apart from something bad.
'Do you mind me having boyfriends?'
'No. Only Andrew.'
'Well, yes, I know you didn't like Andrew. But generally? You don't mind the idea of it?'
'No. Course not.'
'You've been really good about everything. Considering you've had two different sorts of life.'
He understood what she meant. The first sort of life had ended four years ago, when he was eight and his mum and dad had split up; that was the normal, boring kind, with school and holidays and homework and weekend visits to grandparents. The second sort was messier, and there were more people and places in it: his mother's boyfriends and his dad's girlfriends; flats and houses; Cambridge and London. You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended, but he wasn't bothered. Sometimes he even thought he preferred the second sort of life to the first sort. More happened, and that had to be a good thing.
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