Product Description

It should be the most natural thing in the world. But in Tony Parsons' latest bestseller, three couples discover that Mother Nature can be one hell of a bitch. Paulo loves Jessica. He thinks that together they are complete -- a family of two. But Jessica can't be happy until she has a baby, and the baby stubbornly refuses to come. Can a man and a woman ever really be a family of two? Megan doesn't love her boyriend anymore. After a one-night stand with an Australian beach bum, she finds that even a trainee doctor can slip up on the family planning. Should you bring a child into the world if you don't love its father? Cat loves her life. After bringing up her two youngest sisters, all she craves is freedom. Her older boyfriend has done the family thing before and is in no rush to do it all again. But can a modern woman really find true happiness without ever being in the family way? Three sisters. Three couples. Two pregnancies. Six men and women struggling with love, sex, fertility and the meaning of family. And one more bitter-sweet bestseller from the author of MAN AND BOY.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15444 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for The Family Way: 'His best since the very fine Man and Boy' GQ 'Parsons goes head to head with controversial issue after controversial issue!jam-packed with Parsons' trademark perceptiveness and sensitivity' Daily Mirror 'Heartwarming and highly recommended!his most sensitive book yet' Heat 'His stories show all too well how we muddle along in search of love and fulfilment, and when we fluff it!sometimes that's just because it's easier' Observer 'Unquestionably readable and perfect for whiling away the hours' Daily Mail Praise for Man and Boy: 'One of the finest books published this year!Hilarious and tear-jerking in turns' Express Praise for One For My Baby: 'One For My Baby is stylish, polished, complex and it really gets its teeth into the big issues of sex, love, family and friendship' The Mirror

From the Author
Sometimes a writer feels like he has bitten off more than he can chew. I frequently felt like that during the year I spent writing The Family Way. The Family Way is the story of three sisters. That’s a big change for me right there, a completely different perspective from Man and Boy, One For My Baby and Man and Wife. To make it even harder, The Family Way is the story of three sisters and their adventures in fertility.

I wanted to write a book that covered the waterfront of procreation - unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy that is desperately wanted but just doesn’t happen, and the uncertainty of a woman not knowing if she wants children or not, not knowing if she wants them with this particular man, and not knowing if it will happen.

I think that the subject matter of The Family Way - making babies, or not - is one of the great modern subjects, and I wanted to address it. There were times when I felt it I couldn’t do it as well as I wanted to - luckily, women will talk to you about this stuff. Women will talk to you about pregnancy, abortion, and all the rest of it. A woman would say to me, "What you have to understand is that pregnancy is like flying - the difficult bits are take off and landing," and I knew I was being given the raw material I needed.

I also watched my son and my daughter being born, so I do have some modest experience in the field. But The Family Way is a book that I could not have written unless all different kinds of women had been prepared to open their hearts and tell me their stories. Some of those stories were incredibly uplifting and moving, and some of them would break your heart.

The book is also about men - the joy of becoming a father, the terror of becoming a father, and all the emotions in-between. In The Family Way my male characters speak more honestly about love and sex and women than they have ever done in the past. But in the end The Family Way is a book about three sisters.

Megan, the youngest sister, is a trainee GP who breaks up with her long-term boyfriend and gets pregnant from a drunken one-night stand. Should she have a baby with a man she doesn’t love?

Jessica, the middle sister, the real beauty of the family, who is in an idyllic marriage but can’t get pregnant because, she believes, of a teenage abortion. Can a marriage be truly complete if it doesn’t have children?

And Cat, the eldest sister, who practically brought her sisters up after their parents’ marriage broke-up. Cat, who is a high-powered career woman who never thought she wanted children, and who is going out with an older man who has done the whole family thing and is not anxious to do it all again. Can a woman be truly fulfilled without having a baby?

There were times when I thought writing about this stuff was professional suicide. But in the end, I am more pleased with The Family Way than anything I have ever written. Writing the book has taught me that a writer has to stretch himself or herself, and take a few chances sometime.

I am proud of The Family Way, and I hope my millions of loyal, lovely readers will think it is the best thing I have done since Man and Boy - and maybe ever. It is a story that, one way or another, touches all of our lives.

TONY PARSONS

About the Author
Tony Parsons is the author of Man and Boy , published in 36 countries and winner of the UK's Book of the Year Award. He is also the author of One For My Baby, Man and Wife, The Family Way, Stories We Could Tell and My Favourite Wife, which were all international bestsellers. He began his career on the NME and is currently a columnist on the Daily Mirror and GQ, and a regular guest on BBC TV's Newsnight Review. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

An interesting read.
I have read a few of Tony Parsons' books but would not describe myself as a particular fan. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Other reviewers have already described the plot so I won't go over it again. I thought the concept was slightly trite though useful for assessing different women's responses. I was amazed by how the author managed to get into the female psyche -I found all the women credible and sympathetic. (Interestingly I think he did worse with the women after children than he did with the women before children).
I was far more disappointed by the male responses - particualrly Michael and Rory which I found to be very one-dimensional and stereotyped "Women change after having babies and men are no longer so important to them; woe is me". Other than Paulo I found the male characters a bit pathetic and unbelievable. Also I was disappointed by his level of research - I'm a GP myself and Megan's path to general practice was just describe wrongly on quite a few levels; equally with the adoption bureaucracy there were just too many errors.
However despite commenting mainly on the negatives I do think this is a good book and it makes an interesting and easy read.

The real meaning of Family
It is unusual to read novels about such emotional issues as families and parenthood that are written by men. Tony Parsons does it amazingly well and with The Family Way he has produced another story of love and fulfilment with great emotion and humour.
Cat , Jessica and Megan three sisters whose mother deserted them when they were eleven, seven and three respectively. The day she left was the day Cat's childhood ended and she was left with her father and a series of au-pairs and nannies to help her sisters grow up. They are now all grown up with partners, struggling to cope with work, sex, love and the real meaning of family.
The issues are all sensitively dealt with and one feels able to empathise with all the characters. Basically a story about love and parenthood it all seems to come right in the end. Well for most of the characters anyway!

Terrible novel
Try as I might, I still can't stifle my perpetual yawn having read this garbage. Excited to see if the author (Tony Pratsons) improved on his other poor novels (all best sellers), I began this book with great expectations. Yet I was instantly disappointed by writing that was trite, uninspired, and one-dimensional--prose as flat as the walls in my sittingroom.

And what makes matters worse is this tired prose tries to tell the story of women getting pregnant, and people adopting babies from China (Parsons has described a scenario that is so far away from what would be acceptable to the UK authorities and the Chinese government, that anyone considering adoption would be very badly misled. The couple has 3 months of bureaucracy - in real life it is more like 3 years.
What a shame some simple research wasn't carried out).

Anyhoo, it all results in one series of contrived cliches after another--trite storytelling that is literally agonizing to read. 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.

Quick. Give me some gravel to gargle so I can get the icky taste out of my mouth.