Product Description

The superb first novel by the internationally acclaimed playwright.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17556 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 506 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Wrong Boy is the debut novel of Liverpudlian playwright Willy Russell, famed for his plays-turned-films Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, and the West End musical stalwart Blood Brothers. Both Rita and Valentine were star-making roles and if (and when) The Wrong Boy makes it to the screen, the main character Raymond is likely to have the same effect on one lucky young actor.

Teenager Raymond Marks has not had a charmed life. His profligate, instrument-loving father made an early exit, leaving him with a struggling mother and doting Sartre-fan grandmother. Fifteen minutes of potential glory when he saved a boy from drowning are cruelly compromised when it's discovered that the boys were near the canal indulging in what they called "flytrapping", and Raymond becomes "the precocious pervert, the evil influence, the filthy little beast". Eventually packed off to "Gulag Grimsby" at the suggestion of his despised Uncle Jason, Raymond pours out his life's woes in a series of missives to his idol, one-time Smiths' star Morrissey.

Writing his letters with improbable speed, Raymond is ingratiating, unstoppable and superbly miserable, as befits a Morrissey devotee--and lucky enough to be surrounded by a bevy of gift-wrapped Northern character parts. Russell's genius is to take situations and characters that are firmly placed in the banally familiar--and then push them to their comic limits. In The Wrong Boy those limits are tested to the full. --Alan Stewart

From the Publisher
A master of the stage proves he's master of the novel
THE WRONG BOY is, perhaps surprisingly, Willy Russell's first novel and it is, not at all surprisingly, a triumph of the art.

As Alfred Hickling puts it in his review in The Guardian, Willy Russell's novel is "expressed in unpretentious language, which heavyweight critics, in the words of his own educated Rita 'probably won't like, because you can understand it'."

However, the majority of critics have liked it, a lot:

"Willy Russell has created a character [in Raymond Marks, the 'Wrong Boy' of the title] to stand alongside his celebrated progeny, Shirley Valentine and Rita...his real achievement is to present the exaggerated horrors of childhood and adolescence with an unusual wit and sympathy." STEPHANIE MERRITT, The Observer

"The Wrong Boy shows that he's still got that magic touch...With a dead pan delivery that Alan Bennett would be proud of, and a grasp of the teenage psyche not seen since the creation of Adrian Mole, this is one for square pegs in round holes everywhere." ANDREA HENRY, The Mirror

"Willy Russell's first novel is warm, funny and poignant." JESSICA MANN, Sunday Telegraph

"Unusual, funny, unsettling and rich with sadness, The Wrong Boy manages to work on a multitude of levels. It also showcases Russell's gift for sinking deep into the minds and motivations of his characters, offering a voice to the dispossessed. Russell can now add the label of novelist to the tags of playwright, lyricist and composer. Onec again he has proved himself to be a multi-faceted Renaissance man." DOMINIC BRADBURY, The Times

If you're looking for the perfect gift to lift the spirits of your mother, father, daughter or son, look no further!

From the Back Cover
In The Wrong Boy, Willy Russell tells the unforgettable story of the ultimate outsider.

Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. Until, on the banks of the Rochdale Canal, one single incident changes his life forever. For Raymond, and for everyone with whom he comes in contact, nothing is ever quite so normal again.

Full of memorable characters and heartstopping moments, The Wrong Boy is one of the funniest, and most moving, novels you will ever read.

Customer Reviews

Read This Book
I actually picked this book up first in a second hand shop. It's a wonderful story of a young man negotiating adolescence and both being and perceiving that he is misunderstood; a reflection of the way adults so often turn the most innocent of things into something lewd and inappropriate; and that all important message that to 'fit in' is for many of us impossible and therefore we should feel freed to be who we are. Raymond is a funny and poignant character and made me both laugh, and not just cry, but actually sob.

One of my favourite books.

Not easy to categorize
I found reading this book an odd experience. Russell genuinely can write sparkling dialogue and narrative, and the book is quite compelling reading. The characters blaze with life and the plot combines the farcical and the tragic with great skill.

Just don't read the book expecting something naturalistic. I found it disconcertingly cartoon-like; ALL authority figures are stereotypically two-dimensional and horrible, fate conspires over and over again to pile on the suffering and his two best friends come straight out of musical theatre. The ending has the air of pure fantasy, as if he couldn't bear to make his loveable hero suffer for a single page longer.

If you start reading it, you won't stop until you have finished; but I am sure I am not the only person who has occasionally wished he would calm the emotional temperature and give me someone more quietly and subtly drawn.

Funny and charming
Raymond Marks is the Wrong Boy. Through a series of misunderstandings and accidents, he is accused of being a pervert, and ends up in an institution. His journey through early life forms the story of Russell's first novel, told in the form of a series of letters to former Smith's front man Morrissey.

The novel is very funny in places, but also touching and frequently sad. The vicissitudes and coincidences of life are well-observed, as Raymond frequently comes out worse through no fault of his own. This novel is not deep and penetrating, but it is amusing and easy to read.