The protagonist of British novelist Nick Hornby's lauded 1996 effort "High Fidelity" was an immature record store owner incapable of sustaining a functional relationship but able to rattle off descriptions of his top five favorite conversations with an ex-girlfriend at the drop of a hat.
By detailing the adventures of a man obsessed with numbers but afraid of reality and distrustful of love, the novel read like the diary of the world's most childish cynic ever. Hornby's swirl of pop culture references and arch prose made "High Fidelity" the literary equivalent of a Mexican feast -- tasty for sure, but it made you feel funny after the fact. Behind the cooler-than-thou posturing and oil-slick delivery was a very palpable sense of disconnection that left a harsh impression.
If "High Fidelity" was a monsoon masquerading as passing showers, Hornby's newest, "About a Boy," is more up-front about the hollowness at the center of its characters' lives. Will, the man-boy at the forefront of the novel, lives off of royalties from a Christmas tune that his dad penned and has never actually held a jobor
been involved in a healthy adult relationship during any of his 36 years on the planet.
Will admits that he is a bottom feeder, but he is so skilled at manipulation that he has tricked himself into believing that a responsibility and connection free lifestyle is the way to go. His patheticness reaches an all-time new low when he joins a single parent group called SPAT and invents a fictitious child in the hopes of attracting beautiful and desperate women. He succeeds but gets more than he bargained for in the process.
During a night out with some SPAT friends, Will meets Marcus, an introverted and painfully self-conscious teenager who feels that everyone views him as a freak and for the most part is correct in his assumption. Marcus sings to himself, is unable to communicate in or understand the sarcastic vernacular that his schoolmates have mastered and has a family life that is messier and more real than anything that Will is equipped to deal with.
Against his wishes, Will is sucked into helping Marcus blend in with his peers at school and cope with his depressed mother's suicide attempt. Sad and desperately in need of a male role model, Marcus tries to make Will fill a vacancy in his life that the egotistical ladies' man is incapable of satisfying.
The book is at its very best when the focus is on Marcus. Will is despicable in many regards, but Hornby writes as if he expects readers to be able to immediately recognize many of Will's undesirable qualities within themselves. He asks for more empathy for his lead character than even the most generous reader will comfortable granting.
Thankfully, Hornby never has Will do a complete 360 degrees, but his little-boy-lost act wears dangerously thin over the final third. The semi-rebirth that Will undergoes seems too forced for the novel's own good.
If the novel falls short with Will, the parts of "About a Boy" that concern Marcus easily atone for it. Saddled with a forward-thinking mother that often does not seem to have his best interests at heart, Marcus has a peculiar nature that is both caused by his environment and a rebellion against it. His total lack of cynicism is refreshing given how gratingly cool many of Hornby's characters can be, and Marcus' gradual move towards a more realistic but unfortunate hardness is bittersweet and perfectly executed.
While Marcus' dilemmas are more involving than Will's, the author's voice is always closer to the man's rather than the boy's. Relentlessly witty and self-possessed, Hornby never seems to let down his guard. Even when Will starts to change, Hornby retains his firm ironic stance. Coming from a "been there, done that" perspective, the narrator manages to empathize with Will and be protective of Marcus' innocence while remaining keenly aware of just how sensitive and malleable both of them are underneath their finely-constructed personas.
Hornby never goes for easy epiphanies, and his style makes this novel more difficult to decode than it seems at first since readers are asked to question the narrator's interpretations of the events that are described. Warm, fuzzy moments are given darker spins, and there's a faint melancholy behind all of that smirking.
Hornby's narrator argues that artifice is necessary for survival, but he does not seem comfortable with his own claim. Even if the self-awareness grows tedious after a while, this contradiction makes "About a Boy" a solid sophomore effort in which Hornby's jaded adult voice resonates more deeply than one would expect, even if it is against his own will.