Amazon Review
In
One for My Baby Hong-Kong-based language teacher Alfie Budd is about to ingest several gallons of the stuff. Returning to London to nurse a broken heart, he finds a world he barely recognises. Terry Wogan plays REM on Radio Two, there are Tai Chi classes on Highbury Fields and the England of Alfie's youth seems a distant dream. Alfie's father is now sporting disco gear and pitifully clinging onto his relationship with a Czech au pair half his age. Alfie's mother, meanwhile, cares a great deal about her rose bushes and not at all about getting her husband back.
Dazed by these changes, Alfie drifts--on a cloud of Tsingtao beer and Sinatra-fuelled reverie--into a new teaching job and into a string of pointless affairs with his students. But a man can only drift for so long before he starts to sink--and Alfie must learn some bitter lessons before he can regain the happiness he once knew in Hong Kong.
Tony Parsons' second novel deserves to match the phenomenal success of his first, Man and Boy--although there are reasons why it might not. One for My Baby lacks the cutesy appeal of single fathers bringing up sons and some readers may find it--with its double portion of deaths and mid-life depressions--a more demanding read altogether. The book deals with tough realities, with people who have ceased to love themselves and each other, with snobbery and prejudice and the acute loneliness of city life. But the tale is redeemed, ultimately, because humour and warmth pervade even its darkest corners. The laughable antics of Alfie's father are balanced beautifully by George Chang, Alfie's serene and dignified Tai Chi instructor. And while our hero's journey is an arduous one, we are invited to laugh with and at him and never to pity him. Mr Parsons deserves praise for creating a book that is not merely different to his first but also bigger, tougher and cleverer. --Matthew Baylis
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Praise for One For My Baby:
‘Subtle and intelligent’ The Times
‘Full of hard-earned wisdom. An essential purchase’ GQ
‘The same combination of self-deprecating humour and well-intentioned bafflement that endeared Man and Boy to millions of readers’ Observer
‘Stylish, polished, complex and it really gets its teeth into the big issues of sex, love, family and friendship’ Mirror
‘Another brilliant novel that combines laughter and tears, love and sex – and real human emotions’ Evening Standard
‘The writing is confident and accomplished…He makes the reader care…This is art shot through with humanity’ Independent on Sunday
‘Heartbreakingly universal and full of killer lines on love and love lost’ Financial Times
Praise for Man and Boy:
‘Wistful, touching and funny, it looks back at the glory days of the family without losing hope for the future. In the end, it is a deeply touching book: a love letter to a son from his father, and to a father from his son’
Mail on Sunday
‘A touching novel… full of quiet tenderness, and written from the heart’
Independent
‘One of the finest books published this year… Hilarious and tear-jerking in turns’
Express
‘Parsons has written a sharp, witty and wise book straight from his heart. His characters are all nitty-gritty, bounce-off-the-page, real people; his dialogue is brilliant’
Daily Mail
‘A grown-up novel that is simultaneously a heart-rending gripping read and suffused with an irresistable reality’
Glasgow Herald
