Man and Boy - Tony Parsons

‘Unashamedly touching…….. funny and well-written’ said The Daily Telegraph, ‘Extremely average, and actually quite dull at times’ says Tripley. Oh dear, when people started to talk of a book being ‘better than Hornby’ I instantly decided that they were talking trash – its rare that I’m right about a book – but in my own opinion, I was this time. We open up the tale ‘Man and Boy’ seeing Harry, fast approaching his 30th birthday and still a successful producer on ‘the Marty Mann Show’ – a show he’s nurtured from Radio to TV. Harry has it all, a beautiful wife ...

I’ve just discovered Tony Parsons. Don’t snigger, you who’ve known him for ages, in case you’re old enough, from the seventies, first as a music journalist who has become a cult figure on the grounds of his interviews with The Clash, Sex Pistols, Blondie, Talking Heads, later, in the eighties for his journalistic work as a reporter for GQ, Elle et al, and in the nineties as a regular guest on BBC’s Late Review. And in 1999 he published the novel ‘Man and Boy’ which was on the British bestseller list for 50 weeks! It was Book of the Year and won the British Book Awards. How could I not notice him? Well, not ...

Tony Parsons is well known as a newspaper columnist for the Mirror. He has written for many other publications over the years, including The Daily Mail, Elle, Marie Claire, Sunday Times and GQ to name but a few. I was however interested to see how he faired when it came to writing longer pieces such as a novel, so I decided to try his first novel "Man and Boy". Once again this novel had been sitting on my bookshelf gathering dust for quite some time "Man and Boy" is actually a story of our times. It tells of a marriage that ends and deals with the issue of custody and raising children as a single parent. There are indeed quite a few books of ...