Rating: 
Summary: Hornby at his best!
Review: "About a Boy", is a story about growth, maturation and the beauty in friendship.
It also is about sadness and how people face the hardship in their lives.
Marcus is a boy whose life forces him to become prematurely old, while Will is a playboy of thirty-years old, with the attitude and lifestyle of a teenager.
When the two of them meet, the change that enters their lives is remarkable.
This book is really touching and often very funny as well.
It is very quick (like all Hornby novels), and definetely worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: the book versus the movie
Review: This was a wonderful story of a boy teaching a man to act like a grown up, and the man teaching a child how to act like a kid. The book was great and I loved it all, but I must hand it to Hollywood. The movie blew the book out of the water with wonderful casting, cinematography, and music. The movie changed some things about the book, but I think it was much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly, highly overrated.
Review: Nick Hornby writes reasonably well, and the premise of About a Boy is, in theory, promising. However, the characters come across as flat and fairly unconvincing, and the effect of the novel does not do justice to the potentially great themes contained therein. It seems fitting that Hornby's books become popular movies; they are quick and dirty entertainment, which is fine, but I would not call this a powerful, or even very interesting, work.
Rating: 
Summary: Clearly NOT a book worth reading
Review: Nick Hornby clearly can't write. You can't 'feel' the characters of this book. They seem to have a very contradictory personality, and you have the impression that Hornby himself doesn't seem to know whom he is describing. At times the hero is a bored middle age man, and the next paragraph he is a dynamic young man with an exciting personality.A shame, because the story could be interesting. A fascinating subject ruined by lack of talent.
Rating:
Summary: A really funny and fast reading book
Review: This book is really funny and Nick Hornby found the right words to describe the characters of the book. Will and Marcus are hilarious. I laughed so many times when I read the book! I love Will's sarcasm.
I watched the movie two years ago and thought it was a good one. Hugh Grant is the perfect casting for Will. Now I've read the book and I've never read a more entertaining story at school! But there is also a serious and touching side to it. The relationship between Marcus and Ellie is really cute and that's one thing that is missing in the movie. And when I thought about Will sitting in the SPAT group I almost cracked up.
The ending is a little disappointing. I expected something greater than that. Still I highly recommend the book! It is not "About a boy" it's "About life".
Rating: 
Summary: mixed feelings
Review: The story is not everyone's taste. It's quite emotiaonal and there is hardly any action at all. It's a story about relationships and friendships, about very special ones. But during the whole reading I had the feeling the story hadn't begun yet, and when it was over I still had this feeling. The progress of the relationship between the main personalities, Marcus and Will, is not at an end, not at a point where it could stay. The tension is not solved. And exactly that is what I expect of a story. I want to have a completed story.
Well, not all was bad naturally. The author created interesting personalities, really particular ones, but not altogether unreal ones. The reactions of the people in the story are always convincing. Sometimes it even seems to be a psychological study of a group of rather odd people on the fringe of society.
For who is interested in personalities and not in action or great stories this book is worth reading. A hint: Don't watch the film, it's much more boring than the book and even more uncompleted. First read the book!
Rating: 
Summary: Nick Hornby is amazing.
Review: Every book of his you read you will love. THey are all great reads and this is no different. He always used unique writing techniques and in this one he has each chapter rotating naration between the two characters. It is a great story.
Rating:
Summary: A Quirky Riot
Review: Nick Hornby has a way of making self-centered characters likeable and sympathetic. Maybe that is because his characters' flaws are venial ones, rarely worse than any of our own (or if so, not by much). Or because they possess so many qualities we recognize in ourselves, yet without embodying stereotypes or reaching the level of parody. Main character Will, a shiftless, self-centered 36-year-old who can afford not to work due to his father's Christmas song royalties, somehow manages to have a reasonable-sized ego and a scintilla of caring for others. Marcus, the twelve-year-old side-project Will unwittingly adopts, is a bundle of pre-teen cluelessness and obliviousness to his surroundings, yet without any of the insecurity that usually goes with it. Moreover, he has no present-day cultural awareness whatsoever, and instead is a Joni Mitchell-loving, off-key-singing chip off the block of his hippie mom, Fiona. Fiona, for her part, is at the same time new-agey and a depressive; is quixotically naïve, yet has a practical side and is vigilant with Marcus. The three interact when Will poses as a single dad to meet single moms. The support group was the latest in a string of schemes of Will's to meet women at a time when others in his age group are legitimately having kids of their own. Will's exploits somehow are more adventurous and clever than sleazy, and seem to stem more from trying to escape boredom than they do an effort to deceive anyone. In fact, the single-mom escapade came about after meeting and getting dumped by a single mom he'd met under more conventional circumstances. About a Boy is charming and witty, and Will and Marcus' relationship is cute in an odd way. Will uses Marcus as a charity project, to feel good about himself while bringing the awkward kid into the twentieth century. Marcus seems to have upper hand, though, and is perceptive enough to recognize Will's usefulness to him, and persistent enough not to let him get away. Fiona is lost in her own world of recovery from a suicide attempt, yet has enough wherewithal to question why a man in his mid-thirties is hanging around with a pre-teen boy. Eventually, all parties learn to coexist and to procure what they need from one another, yet still get on with their own lives. A cute story that is unpredictable, even once you have caught on to its sharp dialog and unconventional story line. All the characters have something to learn from one another, and the reader is better for the knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: great book...stinky ending
Review: If it werent for the movie, I definitely wouldn't have purchased About A Boy. It was extremely well written and funny. Throughout it I laughed and cried. HOWEVER, when i got to the last few pages, I was very disapointed. I thought the ending was awful.
Will is a self-centered independent 30 something year old. He does everything possible to get a girl and have his needs met. This includes creating a fictional child named Ned and joining a single parents group called "Single Parents Alone Together". There he mets a girl. One day, they go out to the park. Now we meet Marcus. Marcus is a very eccentric, odd, smart yet surprisingly likeable and funny 12 year old boy. Marcus's mom (mum) is one of Susie's friends who is feeling down that day. So, Marcus goes out with Susie & Will. Not to give anymore away, Marcus and Will are extremely different yet they both enlighten each other throughout the book. Their personalities seem to fit together. All in all, this book has a little bit of everything. I recommend it, even though I found the ending very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable!!
Review: This is the story of a boy and a man (sometimes I'm not sure which is which) who are trying to find their place in the world. I've not laughed out loud this much while reading a book in quite some time. Mr. Hornby has done remarkable job of getting the right voice for each of his characters. I work with kids Marcus' age and he is right on. This is the first of Hornby's works I've read but it won't be the last!
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