| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Wrong Boy for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Teenager Raymond Marks has not had a charmed life. His profligate, instrument-loving father made an early exit, leaving him with a struggling mother and doting Sartre-fan grandmother. Fifteen minutes of potential glory when he saved a boy from drowning are cruelly compromised when it's discovered that the boys were near the canal indulging in what they called "flytrapping", and Raymond becomes "the precocious pervert, the evil influence, the filthy little beast". Eventually packed off to "Gulag Grimsby" at the suggestion of his despised Uncle Jason, Raymond pours out his life's woes in a series of missives to his idol, one-time Smiths' star Morrissey.
Writing his letters with improbable speed, Raymond is ingratiating, unstoppable and superbly miserable, as befits a Morrissey devotee--and lucky enough to be surrounded by a bevy of gift-wrapped Northern character parts. Russell's genius is to take situations and characters that are firmly placed in the banally familiar--and then push them to their comic limits. In The Wrong Boy those limits are tested to the full. --Alan Stewart --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
This is a fantastic novel. I was dubious at first as one of the reviews I read compared it to Adrian Mole - roughly equivalent to comparing a creme egg to a Faberge. Simply put it is the story of the "strange" kid at school, the one who wore white socks and a parka and smelled faintly of TCP . Raymond is a lyrical and literal genius, a weirdo extraordinaire, and a victim of circumstance of the unluckiest kind and his grim sense of humour and introspection see him through some very unfortunate events. His nihilistic granny, B!stard Uncle and hilariously sympathetic best friends really deserve to be discovered and I can't help thinking this would make an even better film than Shirley V. So good I can even forgive the slightly clunky coincidence that wraps it all up.
One of the best books I've read in years. If you like character based novels with a dark sense of humour and a little bit of spirit, this is definitely for you.
I just wanted to post a review because I couldn't believe the overall ranking was only 4/5. Looking in more detail, this doesn't tell quite the whole story: almost everyone seemed to love it as much as me, there are just a couple of 1/5 people pulling down the average. I'm sorry they didn't enjoy it, but to the reader who said:
> I have to say that if he were real I would have liked to
> have killed him and most certainly at my school he wouldn't
> have survived.
I can only reply, yes, probably, and that is why I felt such a wonderful pathos for him. Thank God I didn't go to your school.
We take a journey through adolescense with the unfortunate Raymond Marks as he writes it all down in letters to his hero Morrisey. Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
