The Boys are Back in Town (Paperback)

The reason you'll want to bulk buy the book to hand out to all those single-parents is not just because it is a laugh-out-loud funny, sob-out-loud sad autobiography by one of The Independent's most readable journalists. Like Tony Parson's Man and Boy, this is a moving, funny, confessional book about fatherhood - a great read, a great present, but you'd wait till Christmas or birthday before you handed over your £8.00. There is another reason you want to buy this one right away and give it to everyone even if they've just had their Birthday and you spent more than you meant to on their present and took them out to dinner and you know they already got lots of books for Christmas and they've got their own account at Amazon anyway. The Boys are Back in Town gives you genuine insight into the different ways women and men interact with their children, especially with their boys.

Women (usually) nurture better, but protect too much - mostly because they love so much. Fathers (usually) can give more distance, allow them more rope, take more risks. Carr is not a polemicist and he's not suggesting we should send women back to Mars or out to work or onto courses to get in touch with their masculine sides. He doesn't think his take-away littered, sock-strewn, telly-dominated, germ and gym-kit laden environment is a better place to bring up kids. It's just that he observes and learns and we observe and learn that some of what's missing probably isn't badly missed. We see some really rubbish and typically male behaviour from Carr and his boys, but also see them grow together and develop in good ways that wouldnt have happened if there had been a mum there. You still wish his lovely, funny wife was alive - and in part this book is a love letter to her - but you know they would be less likely to have played hide and seek in the park, in the dark with her around. This is stuff that all parents probably think about some of the time, but most should probably think about more of the time. Ten times more readable than any Kitzinger or Spock, and twenty times more entertaining, this is a personal story with universal lessons. Made me laugh, made me cry, made me think.

As a fairly recent father who has found his emotions creating chaos at the most unexpected times during the last two and a half years this book provided some pillars and provoked enough thought to help me make some sense of the situation. It provided the opportunity to step back from the day to day details and remind you of the joys of life as a parent, and a husband.

Simon Carr's description, in the early part of the book, of the loss of a wife/mother is so well written that the sense of loss left me with the feeling that I had just run off a cliff and was hanging, cartoon style, in mid air before plummeting to the canyon floor. The anguish is tangible.

But this is far from being a dark book. From a terrible situation it brings out the joys and realities of living and through a mixture of humour and well thought out observations left this reader feeling more privileged than ever to have his little family around him.

...Initially his character is annoyingly pompous (a lot of references to cute things the boys did or said)- but as the book progresses you feel more sympathetic as he acknowledges some of his failings and becomes more humourous. The problem with the book is that it is not a story but rather a series of newspaper columns asserting contentious points stridently as if trying to provoke a reaction eg. it's ok for young boys to watch X rated movies as long as they don't have nightmares, other people overreact to him driving along with my son on the bonnet of his car, the only reason he didn't treat a bite from the cat with antiseptic was because he didn't want to appear weak in front of a woman. After a while though you realise he is not promoting a personal philosophy on how to bring up boys - in particular when he describes his ugly depressive mood swings and his inability to maintain a relationship with his older son. He's just trying to get by and justify to us (and himself I presumably) why he's doing what he's doing.

What story there is is the autobiographical description of his wife's death and how they coped with it. The part of the book dealing with the death is truly heartbreaking - and whilst the picture of the woman he paints is idealised - who can blame him? - what a marvellous way for the boys to remember her. (This contrasts with the hints he gives about how awful his first wife was.)

Overall - very readable, quite provocative but at the end of it you don't feel any the wiser.