About a Boy by Nick Hornby

Book to Movie: This is our July discussion--the book discussion will be on Thursday, July 24 at 12:30 or 7:00 p.m. and a movie screening of "About a Boy" will be on Friday, July 25 at 2:00 p.m.

We have copies of the book at the checkout desk, and if you register for one of the discussions, we'll be happy to hold a copy for you. We'll view the movie (rated "Two Thumbs Up" by Siskel and Ebert and "Comedy of the Year" by US Weekly and starring Hugh Grant, Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette) down in the library community room. Come to one or, even better, come to both!

"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, Barnes and Noble review