Product Description

A fabulously engaging and exciting novel about a man who has to learn about life and love the hard way. Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one moment of madness, he chucks it all away. Man and Boy is the story of how he comes to terms with his life and achieves a degree of self-respect, bringing up his son alone and, gradually, learning what words like love and family really mean. It is very well written, pacy, funny, and heart-breakingly moving.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30519 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Some situations to avoid when preparing for your all-important, finally-I-am-fully-grown thirtieth birthday.
Having a one-night stand with a colleague from work.
The rash purchase of luxury items you can't afford.
Being left by your wife.
Losing your job.
Suddenly becoming a single parent.

If you are coming up to 30, whatever you do, don't do any of that.
It will fuck up your whole day.

So begins Man and Boy, Tony Parson's foray into fiction. Or non-fiction. Rumoured to be a roman à clef, the well-known journalist and broadcaster writes the story of a successful TV executive who brings up his child alone after a failed marriage--much like Parson's own life.

Harry Silver, the book's anti-hero, has it all: a beautiful wife, an angelic son and a high-paying job. His life is just about perfect, until one night he casually sleeps with a slim redheaded coworker who has "that kind of fine Irish skin that is so pale it looks as though it has never seen the sun". After the fateful night, his life falls apart. He loses his job and his wife in rapid succession, and finds himself a single, unemployed parent. It is an excellent education for a man who up until now has been immature and irresponsible, and Parsons has some strong points to make about the puerility of far too many contemporary males: "Being a man is like being chained to the village idiot." At times he piles on the disasters and plot-twists a little too thickly, but the ending is wildly romantic, redemptive and optimistic. In other words, Harry grows up. -- Christopher Hart

Review
'Wistful, touching and funny, it looks back at the glory days of the family without losing hope for the future. In the end, it is a deeply touching book: a love letter to a son from his father, and to a father from his son' Mail on Sunday 'One of the finest books published this year! Hilarious and tear-jerking in turns' Express 'Parsons has written a sharp, witty and wise book straight from his heart. His characters are all nitty-gritty, bounce-off-the-page, real people; his dialogue is brilliant' Daily Mail 'A touching novel! full of quiet tenderness, and written from the heart' Independent

'Love is what's left when being in love has gone. It's when you care about someone and hope they're happy, but you're not under any illusions about them... In the end it's the only kind of love that really matters' said Gina. I have absolutely no idea what you're going on about' said Harry. And that's exactly your problem,' says Gina - and walks out. When Harry, now a single father of a five-year-old son, meets Cyd, a single mother of a five-year-old daughter, his problems are quadrupled. There are now four grown-ups in the equation, and two children who share the genes of the four grown-ups. Harry and Cyd both have ghosts in their lives who come and go - one on a motor-bike, the other on the telephone from Tokyo. Harry worries about his son's future, with no parental role-models to give him relationship guidance and skills, or any sense of responsibility. Ignoring the thick scattering of expletives, this is a tender, realistic and sensitive novel to stimulate thought and concern for coming generations; which crosses existing generation and gender boundaries with comedy, pathos, common sense - and a smidgeon of optimism. After all, the human race has been around for a very long time - and not always in the form of the nuclear family. (Kirkus UK)

Parsons's first novel, a bestseller in his native England, is the unabashedly sentimental tale of a carefree husband suddenly thrust into single parenthood..Harry Silver approaches his 30th birthday with something like dread. In the grip of a severe if premature midlife crisis, he buys an expensive sports car and takes the new associate producer at The Marty Mann Show, the small-time TV talk program he produces, to bed. His loving wife Gina, a Japanese translator who gave up her own career to be a full-time mom, can forgive the first infraction, but not the second; within hours she's taken off with their four-year-old son Pat. And although Harry swears his life is nothing without Pat - especially once he gets fired - it gets a lot more complicated when Gina takes off for Japan to catch up on all her missed opportunities and gives him his wish. There follow the requisite scenes of Harry failing at cooking and cleaning, losing every telephone argument with Gina (who gets much better lines than he does), wilting under the gimlet eyes of the mothers who wait with him outside school, looking for romance with the improbably receptive Cyd Mason, and having an even more improbable job (better boss, more flexibility, part-time hours) fall into his lap. Parsons's main addition to this familiar casserole is Harry's need to come to terms with his own father, the hero he'd always longed to be - a wish that's now coming true in the saddest way imaginable.."This isn't Kramer vs. Kramer," Harry's lawyer tells him on Gina's inevitable return to England to fight for custody, but that's exactly what it is, right down to the "Star Wars" figures, the hard-won pieties, and the denial that the '80s and '90s ever happened. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll remember seeing this all before.. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
A fabulously engaging and exciting novel about a man who has to learn about life and love the hard way. Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one moment of madness, he chucks it all away. Man and Boy is the story of how he comes to terms with his life and achieves a degree of self-respect, bringing up his son alone and, gradually, learning what words like love and family really mean. It is very well written, pacy, funny, and heart-breakingly moving.

Customer Reviews

A mixture of great, and grating
I really liked the basic storyline and a lot of the characters. It was a refreshing change from the history, detective and chicklit which most novels nowadays seem to be.

It was 'great' to read a funny book, about family relations, from a male point of view.

But the 'grating' list is too long for me to want to wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Firsty, I loathe the way the writer gives his hero, i.e. himself, such beautiful wives/girlfriends. It makes the writer seem incredibly arrogant, or frustrated.

Secondly, using the dad's death to wring every ounce of sympathy out of the reader was just cheap.

Thirdly, the estranged wife's stay in Japan was an obvious and unconvincing plot device to allow the main character to be on his own with the kid (who of course also had to be incredibly beautiful).

Fourthly, the reasons for the introduction of the American girlfriend were utterly transparet. One, to make the book, and no doubt film, sellable in America, and two, so that

Fifthly, the book could feature that most lame, predictable cliché of all, lover's dash to the airport, and happy reunion there (sorry, don't mean to wreck the ending).

I really enjoyed this book - and the ones that followed.
I will admit that in parts it does tend to grate, but it`s the sort of grating that you would get if - say your brother had seperated from his wife and he`d sit there, chin on the floor, giving you the run down on what she said to him when she rang last night and what he said back to her and how he`d messed up the dinner, got drunk and didn`t sleep all night - in other words, it`s real. While he is dead miserable, you want to laugh out loud at him - and many times this book will make you do that. Maybe it`s a guy book - i don`t know - but i think the dry humour is great and i`m sure a lot of men could relate to the situations tony parsons describes.Thumbs up from me - but you do need to read them all.

'Nice'
Pretty engaging and heartwarming, as long as you've got a soft spot for 'bloke lit' and don't want to be challenged.