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

Synopsis
This is the story of a man who believes in all the British values of a stiff upper lip and keeping emotion in check. He also believes you can only truly love one person in your life, and he loses that love when his wife dies. Taking work as a teacher of English as a foreign language, he begins a series of affairs with his students, knowing that because each of them has to go home after a few months there will be no commitments and no future in any of the relationships. Until he meets a woman who turns all his ideas - about being English, about being foreign, about being able to love - upside down. This novel has all the emotional power and humour of Tony Parson's 1999 hit novel, Man and Boy.

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