Where The Fuck Are The Pictures? About A boy
About A Boy by Nick Hornby
Characters:
Will
A 36 year old unepmloyed self described "cool guy". He never has to work because of royalties he gets from a Christmas song his dad wrote.
Marcus
12 year old boy. Son of Julia. The smartest character in the book, and the one I liked the most, which isn't saying much.
Julia
Mother of Marcus. She is a depressed suicidal hippie. The worst character in the book.
The book is written from both Will and Marcus's point of view. Using two points of view does help the book, but not much.
Will is an ass. He lies about being a single father to meet single mothers. He's too insecure to meet women unless he's lying about having a kid. He meets Julia through a group called SPAT (Single Parents alone together). They end up going to a lake where Marcus kills a duck. Marcus gets in trouble and after that Julia tries to commit suicide.
Later, Will confesses about not having a kid. At this point I thought the book could make a turn for the better, but I was wrong. Will starts to use Marcus to date other women, continuing his lie. This is the point where I almost gave up on this book.
Luckily I finished it. The last third of the book is so awful its funny.
It all starts with Marcus's dad falling off a roof and hurting himself. Marcus and his friend Ellie go to visit him. This is on the same day that kurt cobain kills himself. Yup, thats how bad this book is. Marcus and Ellie get off the train and see a music store with a life size cardboard cut out of kurt kobain in the window. Ellie thinks the shop owner is trying to profit off of his death so she decides to break the window and take it. She and Marcus get arrrested for this and their parents and Will (who is still nobody's parent) come to get them. There is a hilarious scene in the police station between Ellie and the shop owner, who is "kurt cobain's biggest fan" who is also a goth, which makes her the most pathetic character in the book. Everyone ends up going home except for Marcus, who spends the night at his fathers house. There is a touching father son moment when Marcus gets his dads pot off the shelf for him. At least I think it was supposed to be touching, but I found it horribly disturbing.
The things I hated about this book was everyone lying to everyone about everything. There wasn't one moral character in the book. I also hated how Will chased after single mothers. Doesn't he realize that 99% of them are fucking crazy? The only somewhat relatable character was Marcus, but even he got annoyingly stupid by the end of the book.
I give it one out of five stars, just because of the unintentionally funny ending.
