karenika - books - about a boy

About a Boy

They decided to have a quiet, normal evening. They ordered a delivery curry, and Marcus went to the newsagent's to get a video, but it took him ages: everything he looked at seemed to have something about death in it, and he didn't want to watch anything about death. He didn't want his mum to watch anything about death, come to that, although he wasn't sure why. What did he think would happen if his mum saw Steven Segal blast some guys in the head with a gun? That wasn't the kind of death they were trying not to think about tonight. The kind of death they were trying to not think about was the quiet, sad, real kind, not the noisy, who-cares kind. (People thought that kids couldn't tell the difference, but they could, of course,) In the end he go Groundhog Day, which he was pleased with, because it was new on video and it said it was funny on the back of the box.

They didn't start watching it until the food arrived Fiona served it up, and Marcus would the tape on past the trailers and adverts so that they would be ready to go the moments they took their first bite of poppadum. The back of the box was right: it was a funny film. This guy was stuck in the same say, over and over again, although they didn't really explain how that happened, which Marcus thought was weak - he liked to know how things worked. Maybe it was based on a true story, and there had been this guy who was stuck in the same day over and over again, and he didn't know himself how it had happened. This alarmed Marcus. Supposing he woke up tomorrow and it was yesterday again, with the duck and the hospital and everything? Best not to think about it.

But then the film changed, and became all about suicide. This guy was so fed up with being stuck in the same day over and over for hundreds of years that he tried to kill himself. It was no good, though. Whatever he did, he still woke up the next morning (except it wasn't the next morning. It was this morning, the morning he always woke up on).

Marcus was really angry. They hadn't said anything about suicide on the video box, and yet this film had a bloke trying to kill himself about the thousand times. OK, he didn't succeed, but that didn't make it funny. His mum hadn't succeeded either, and nobody felt like making a comedy film about it. Why wasn't there any warning? There must be loads of people who wanted to watch a good comedy just after they'd tried to kill themselves. Supposing they all chose this one?

I had read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity several years ago and loved it so when I found About a Boy at the airport in England, I jumped on it. Hornby's sense of humor and his cyncism appeal to me. This book is about two men. One kid who acts like an adult and a man who has never grown up. It's fun and funny and didn't disappoint me.