One For My Baby - Tony Parsons

My first experience of Tony Parsons was reading Man and Boy, which at the time I absolutely loved, although I have to admit it was many years ago and I can't really remember all that much about it or why I loved it now. However, when I saw One For My Baby I decided I would love it and bought it straight away. Over the years I started to read it a few times, and stopped quite soon in to it, again this is recently so my memory fails me as to exactly why but obviously the book hadn't hooked me in for one reason or another. The book got packed away, and sometime later I read the Family Way, which I absolutely loved. Just before Christmas, I had nothing left to ...  Read the complete review

Tony Parsons, for those of you who don't know already, is a bit of a controversial bloke. In his youth, as a journalist at the then-edgy NME, he was married to Julie Burchill. She famously left him holding the baby, giving the inspiration for Parson's first novel, Man and Boy. As a proper grown up, he has now graduated to contributing challenging, angry pieces to various mags and papers, as well as spraffing pretentious yet compulsive drivel on the wonderful Late Review programme. He is famously outspoken on the subject of women’s equality (sample quote:'there is no sight more degrading than that of a drunken woman') and never ...  Read the complete review

“The same combination of self-deprecating humour and well intentioned bafflement that endeared “Man and Boy” to millions of readers.... A kind, affectionate book”. Observer. When I bought this book, I had no preconception about the author or knowledge of his former works. Tony Parsons has quite a history in journalism, and has been labelled as a “lad-lit” writer that is sometimes targetted by feminists. Former works include “Man and Boy”, “Wife and Man”, although I have not read these. The story Man, fed up with teaching in the UK, goes to Hong Kong, meets love of his life, loses love of his life, goes back to UK. Does life go ...  Read the complete review

…well, not necessarily at the same time, although, who knows! Do you believe in more than one chance at love? Or do you think that there is only one person for you to spend the rest of your life with? This is just what Alfie Budd thought – but then he lost his one true love and thought that he had seen his chance at happiness disappear. Alfie had gone to Hong Kong to escape his humdrum life in London. Fed up and disillusioned with trying to teach English literature to children who had no desire to learn it, the revelation that British people could get a one year permit to work in Hong Kong (while it was still under British rule) gave him an ...  Read the complete review

---Intro--- A few weeks back I was perusing the charity book list at work (25p for a book), and came across "One for my baby" by Tony Parsons. Although I haven't read his bestselling book "Man and Boy" I had heard the name Tony Parsons, and thought I might as well give it a go! I was thinking that his writing and style would be similar to Nick Hornby's. ---The Book--- The book was published in 2001, my Harper Collins paperback being published in 2002. My copy is 378 pages long. The cover has a picture of a man's shoe and a woman's shoe, and background writing with dictionary definitions of baby, babyhood, ...  Read the complete review