Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63044 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Man and Wife, the sequel to Tony Parsons' bestselling debut Man and Boy, follows the marital and parental misadventures of Harry Silver, a mawkish North London television producer. Harry has remarried. Second wife, Cyd, and her feisty daughter, Peggy, provide him and his Phantom Menace obsessed son, Pat, with a family. Harry's luck couldn't be better. His television show, Fish on Friday, is a hit and Cyd's posh catering company, Food Glorious Food, is thriving. However, Harry is not the only one starting again. His ex-wife Gina has also remarried. Her partner Richard (who must be the only thirtysomething male on the planet who hates Star Wars) is Pat's "new father." When the couple announce they are moving to America--taking Pat with them--Harry reacts, in time-honoured fashion, by attacking Richard. Separated from his son by the Atlantic and struggling as Peggy's stepfather, Harry begins to yearn for a good old-fashioned "normal, family life"--the kind his lovely old mum and dear departed dad enjoyed. Rather surprisingly, he decides that Kazumi, an attractive Japanese photographer friend of Gina's, could be the answer to his prayers.

Male frailty and the perils of modern parenting are Parsons' forte, but Man and Wife, although occasionally touching, is overburdened by plot twists, unlikely conceits and whiffs of reactionary sentimentality. Parsons' fans are unlikely to be disappointed but, to indulge in a vaguely pertinent comparison, this follow up is definitely more Attack of the Clones than The Empire Strikes Back. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Harry Silver returns to face life in the "blended family." A wonderful new novel about modern times, which can be read as a sequel to the million selling Man and Boy, or completely on its own. Man and Wife is a novel about love and marriage -- about why we fall in love and why we marry; about why we stay and why we go. Harry Silver is a man coming to terms with a divorce and a new marriage. He has to juggle with time and relationships, with his wife and his ex-wife, his son and his stepdaughter, his own work and his wife's fast-growing career. Meanwhile his mother, who stood so steadfastly by his father until he died, is not getting any younger or stronger herself. In fact, everything in Harry's life seems complicated. And when he meets a woman in a million, it gets even more so! Man and Wife stands on its own as a brilliant novel about families in the new century, written with all the humour, passion and superb storytelling that have made Tony Parsons a favourite author in over thirty countries.

From the Publisher
Tony Parson's wonderful character,Harry Silver, returns to face life in the ‘blended family’. A wonderful new novel about modern times, which can be read as a sequel to the million selling Man and Boy, or completely on its own.

Customer Reviews

Tripe
Tony Parsons has been adopting the Chick lit approach of writing novels & passing them off as "blokish" as its from the mouth of a chap. Its just a repackaged Sophie Kinsella/Marion Keynes/Jill Mansell under a guy.

Dismal sentimental rehash
I can't believe I got through this book. It was like a Craig Brown parody of a Tony Parsons book. "Becase that was her. My wife. The woman I loved. Wife. My wife. who loved me." etc. The whole thing is like being cornered by some godawful self-obsessed drunk at a party, mumbling about how he's just an old romantic and if only women understood that he just wants to be loved- meanwhile the women who tried are left abandoned because they're not thrilling enough for Our Hero. To read this, you'd think the author knows nothing about children (did a child in the universe ever speak like the appalling Peggy? Did one ever radiate as much joyful sunlight as His Pat?) and nothing about women. Kazumi is nothing but a puerile male fantasy (ooh, gorgeous Oriental creative with her 'curtain of black hair' and her 'childlike innocence..') Frankly, the whole cynical misogynist rehash of every 'sensitive' lad-lit book ever written made me want to vomit. All over Harry's family. Family. His. Who he loves. Who love him. Good- because nobody else will.

Make this man stop all this drivel
Yes, Parsons knows how to string simple (creative writing course) sentences together - ad nausiam. I truly hate this novel, which is entirely steeped in self pity and self worship- it is all about the writer signalling to the reader what and where he comes from and why he shouldn't be held accountable for his own mistakes.

Behind this disco ball of fancy words and half-digested, second-hand research there is only emptiness - no emotion, no truth, or honesty, no genuine idea and no character development. The writing, to put it mildly, is weak. The author's style is hardly any style at all, unless you can call watered-down and clichéd a "style." Even the very few moments of the story that threaten to become interesting are dealt with so clumsily and pretentiously that they devolve into the same witless and lackluster mess that surrounds them.

It is a second-rate writer (tabloid hack), Parsons, asking himself: "What kind of challenge will I set myself for this next venture of a novel to impress my readers after the success of Man and Boy?"