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Amazon.co.uk Review
Review
"Compulsive." -" Guardian
"Carr's brilliantly written account of life as a single parent should become a required manual on parenting." -" Sunday Times
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Customer Reviews
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.
From a psychological view a very good look at the male (from child to adult) psyche.
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.
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