Beautiful Boy

I chose this Lennon song to refer to Man and Boy by Tony Parsons, my eleventh read this year (sorry for boasting about it all the time, but this way I can keep track of it instead of having to desperately look for titles at the back of my mind at the end of the year.)

I don't know much about this guy, but he seems to be a bestselling type. According to the description in the book he is (or was) a columnist for Mirror, and has written for Marie Claire, Elle, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, and stuff. I imagine him as a male version of Carrie Bradshaw, or like the guy played by Richard Gere in Runaway Bride. Perhaps less good-looking. The book itself was Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 1999, and it's up to you to decide if it's in favor of the book or not. Sometimes I feel I shouldn't let myself get bought by an award and a sounding praise on the cover. As to the popular tone of the book, my father, who has been learning German for like 20 years, and English for 2 only, said it was much easier to understand this book than the one he is reading in German now, though I have to add that he only read the first two pages.
The book hit the right note for me. The first paragraph seems too good not to quote, but too long to quote directly. In short, it's about turning thirty, and having to face your life so far, which is as you know a cherished topic for me. Three expressions frequently appear in the book referring to relationships and life in general, namely fucking around, fucking up, and fucking off. What we have here is a male protagonist, first person singular. Harry, whose surname we don't find out until about the hundredth page, is 29 going on 30, with a long-limbed beauty of a wife, a beautiful blue-eyed son, and a promising career as a producer of a TV show. He has it all until one day he sleeps with one of his colleagues. Her wife leaves him, and he loses his job (for different reasons.) There he is with a 4-year-old little Star Wars fan and a red sports car (though I have no idea what an MGF is,) and he has no idea of how to carry on.
As the story unfolded, it started to remind me more and more of Kramer versus Kramer, except that I haven't read the book, only saw the film, as written about here. But I suspect the big issue here is not the guy having to learn to look after his child and turning into a real father. He has to reconsider all his life: his decisions, his choices, and what he wants from life. His relationship to his father is a recurring theme. He would like to live up to his idea of a man and a father, which is embodied in his father. One of the critics said the book is "a love letter to a son from his father, and to a father from his son." In general I liked the humor and male talk of the narrator-protagonist, and in most cases he kept a careful balance between tenderness and sappiness. Towards the end, however, I think Parsons lost his breath and wit. The story ended in a predictable way, in addition, with an absurd wedding of the person he took for a one-night stand and the person who sacked him.
My father advised me to read Kramer versus Kramer, and he said it's nothing like the film. It was a bit surprising to hear from my father, as he hasn't been much of a reader in the past few years. I guess he doesn't have time for that. The other interesting thing is that these stories resemble the story of their marriage far too much, I mean not the one night stand part, but all the other small conflicts turning bigger and bigger. There was an interesting discussion in the Parsons book about the children raised by divorced parents. The question was whether they turn out just like their parents or just the opposite, meaning someone who cares more for their marriage and manages to keep it. I wonder which one is the tendency.

P.S. My father has been offered a position at the Hungarian branch of Mercedes, starting April 1. I'm just so glad for him. Hope it all turns out well.
P.P.S. Looking for a pic I found out that the book was turned into a BBC TV film. I might want to watch that because I usually like BBC productions.