About a Boy - Nick Hornby

[goodreads]

Title: About a Boy
Author: Nick Hornby
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 278
Date read: July 2023

Will is thirty-six but acts like a teenager. Single, child-free and still feeling cool, he reads the right magazines, goes to the right clubs and knows which trainers to wear. He's also discovered a great way to score with women at single parents' groups, full of available (and grateful) mothers, all waiting for Mr Nice Guy. That's where he meets Marcus, the oldest twelve-year-old in the world. Marcus is a bit strange: he listens to Joni Mitchell and Mozart, he looks after his Mum and he's never even owned a pair of trainers. Perhaps if Will can teach Marcus how to be a kid, Marcus can help Will grow up and they can both start to act their age.

I've never seen the movie, so I went into this read completely blind. It was very different from what I had expected, but well-written and poignant. I actually really appreciated that the main relationship wasn't romantic, but the relationship between Will and Marcus. I also liked Ellie a lot, and was happy to see how that friendship turned out.

It's not a book I'm likely to reread - and I don't know that it made me want to watch the movie either - but I'm glad to have read it.