Rating: 
Summary: Bukowski? Is that Charles' criminally insane sister?
Review: Excellent! Feh to the Wall Street Journal's (unusually) mad review. Hornby has done it again...ABOUT A BOY is so fine that as a writer it makes one queasy. Marcus, for example, is an original and fresh character you instantly know and feel protective of. One immediately feels for everyone Hornby introduces. How he does this is a cruel mystery. ABOUT A BOY makes you cackle and then in the next beat, benefit from one of his frequent insights. How does he do it? How? And how may we ensure he never stops. Perhaps he needs to be locked in a hotel room and made to write books while room service is administered.ALL the caustic wit of HIGH FIDELITY, and he's added a few new flourishes, in the way that Porsche does every so often. Hornby, he's just dead great and makes it look easy.
Rating:
Summary: Light, Funny and Entertaining
Review: Nick Hornby writes a funny yet endearing novel, that kept me reading from the moment I opened the book. He is sharp and witty. The dialougue is quick and flows. The characters are often hilarious, and definitley ineteresting. This was one of the best reads I have had in awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and true to life
Review: I love the relationship between Will and Marcus. Their exchanges seem to have been overheard - not written. A very funny book, it range true to me.
Rating:
Summary: A funny beach book
Review: This was an entertaining light read. There were no serious social issues addressed and there were no thought-provoking ideas. It was just an escapist novel, and I enjoyed it being that way. I had fun reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, Fast, Read but not as good as High Fidelity
Review: A highly enjoyable contemporary work, but I don't think it was side-splittingly as funny as Hornby's previous work, High Fidelity. Perhaps it's because a main theme of the book is depression/suicide, which makes funny lines not quite as funny. Though one wants to laugh at the utter impossibility of a frech baguette killing a duck, moments later, another main character is overdosing on a couch with vomit all over herself. The best character is obviously the innocent, precocious, yet often naive, Marcus (the boy). His making lists of candy bars reminds readers of Hornby's lists from High Fidelity, and of course his inability to grasp sarcasm is hilarious. The book has a happy ending, though not the typical one where everyone falls in love and lives happily ever after. Perhaps the not-so-unique anymore situation of a, divorced, single mother, makes that too unbelievable, and Hornby makes for a more judicious ending. A good book for Generation X'ers on their way to maturity and real life issues.
Rating:
Summary: more needed insight into the mind of post-modern man
Review: A quibble first: the editor of this book seems to have over looked that fact that the protagonist is called Will Freeman most of the time and seems to have the surname Lightman once in a while. Odd. Both surnames are apt, however. Ironically, of course, since this is a Nick Hornby novel. "Freeman" is apt because Will has never had a job and doesn't need one because he lives off the royalties of much anthologized Christmas song written by his now-dead father. "Lightman" is apt because Will is a true lightweight, having cultivated an existence that seals him off from adult relationships and even strong emotions. His first name is also ironic because one of the many lessons that he learns in this story is that he does have the will to go on with his life. Although he does very little with his life, it is meaningful to him, which is more than most of the other adult characters in this book can say. Will is a full-grown man who acts like a boy and Marcus is a 12-year-old boy who has the emotional responsibilities of an adult thrust upon him by his emotional unstable and dogmatically "progressive" mother. Hornby switches the narrative perspective between Will and Marcus in alternating chapters and manages to believably emulate the point of view of both a 12-year-old and a 36-year-old. This is especially affecting when you read their separate interpretations of the same events; the similarities and differences are both hilarious and touching. The music of Nirvana and the last months in the life of Kurt Cobain as viewed from afar through the media figure in the second half of the novel and serve as a sort of star that all the characters follow toward their future and enlightenment. I'm not sure anyone will understand this part of the book 10 years from now, but so be it.
Rating:
Summary: This book is hysterical, one of the best I've ever read.
Review: Awesome book, it was a pleasure to read it all along. Every word and every thought in the right place. I felt so identified with and connected to the situations and characters of this book I almost thought someone had been monitoring my life! Not that anyone cares about my life anyway but what I mean is, it's is such an honest picture of what goes on within relationships and between people. Life looked at and lived from different angles, all of them equally true and real but still different and even sometimes in straight opposition. And there are so many hilarious details that no other author takes the time to write about and few people in real life pay attention to. The book is an amazing trip to discovering new highlights of human relationships not in a theory-like but rather a practical, wit, sharp and sometimes cynical version of life. A comic book featuring ourselves trying to survive our own selves in this world. Congratulations to the author.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I read High Fidelity and liked it a lot. About A Boy was even better. Nick Hornby is a riot.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: Outstanding book. The relationship between the man and the boy is greatly original and rings true throughout. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Almost 5 stars
Review: This being the second novel of Mr. Hornby's I read (High Fidelity being the first), I will definetly be reading any future novels by this author. Why? It is hilarious and real! Many of the conversations that take place between the charatcers are funny and ridiculous, but while reading them you can't help but think that you yourself had these same conversation with yourfriends and family they were just as quirky and odd in retrospect. That is the strength of Mr. Hornby's novels- the insight in our behaviors. Some of the scenarios were slightly predictable, but that isn't all that bad, because you find youself turning the pages anyway to see the spin on them. The book wrapped up a bit too quickly for me and there were one or two questions I would have likes addressed, but they are not critical in enjoying thsi novel. Looking forward to the next one.
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