About a boy door Nick Hornby

Beoordeling 4.1
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Boekcover About a boy
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  • Boekverslag door een scholier
  • 5e klas havo | 1386 woorden
  • 28 oktober 2014
  • 12 keer beoordeeld
Cijfer 4.1
12 keer beoordeeld

Boek
Auteur
Nick Hornby
Genre
Roman
Taal
Nederlands
Vak
Methode
Eerste uitgave
mei 1998
Pagina's
288
Oorspronkelijke taal
Engels
Verfilmd als

Boekcover About a boy
Shadow
Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel is about sex, manliness and fatherhood. Will is thirty-six, comfortable and child-free. And he's discovered a brilliant new way of meeting women - through single-parent groups. Marcus is twelve and a little bitnerdish: he's got the kind of mother who made him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana. Perhaps they c…
Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel is about sex, manliness and fatherhood. Will is thirty-six, comfortable and child-free. And he's discovered a brilliant new way of me…
About a boy door Nick Hornby
Shadow

Setting.

The story takes place in London. The place where the most important characters from the book live. Other places who appear in the story are Cambridge and Royston. Cambridge because that is the place Marcus lived before he moved to London and Royston when Marcus travels to see his dad in the hospital. The story takes place from the end of the summer vacation 1993, until April 1994. In the beginning of the book Marcus went to a new school because the moved to London in their vacation. So that gave me the information it was the start of a new school year. Around the end of the book Curt Cobian dies and he died in April 1994. So the book covers a half year.

Plot.

The story is about a man named Will who lives the live of a young adolescent and a child Marcus that acts like an adult. Will wants a girlfriend and he decides that he can find a good one by the SPAT. A group of single parents that meet once in a while. On a SPAT meeting Will meets Suzie. She brought her daughter and the son of a friend Marcus. When the SPAT meeting is over they head to Marcus house to bring him home. But when they arrive they find Marcus mother unconscious on the floor, with an empty bottle of pills next to her. After pumping the stomach of Marcus mother in the hospital she can go home. Marcus is afraid his mother will try to kill herself again. So he decides that Will should become his mother`s girlfriend and his mom will be happy again. This hopeless mission of Marcus doesn`t bring his mom an Will together. But it does create a special bound between Will and Marcus.

Characters.

The main characters of the book are Will and Marcus.

Will:

Will is a 36 year old man who doesn`t have a job. He is pretty rich. Because his uncle wrote a famous Christmas song where Will still earns money for. He behaves like a real adolescent: he knows everything about what’s in and out, he is a huge lady-killer (in the beginning of the book Will has a lot of girlfriends.) and he spends his days driving and hanging around London, shopping and watching TV. He is a pretty selfish person that lives only for and with himself. He is pretty scared to let people into his life for a long time. Which aren`t a very good parts of his character. But when people are a part of Will`s life he would do anything for them. What is a pretty good part of his character, I think so.

Marcus:

Marcus is a 12 year old boy that is still in high school. He is way to smart for his age. He behaves and thinks more like an adult. He is very introvert and he has absolutely no sense of style. He is absolutely a big outsider. Because of that he gets bullied at school. His character really makes me think he is autistic. Because autistic people can be very introvert to, they can totally isolate themselves from what is around them (just like Marcus, who doesn`t know anything from how the normal youth around him acts and thinks.) and the can totally focus on one thing (like how Marcus is almost obsessed by making his mother happy again.). But he is very sweet and caring to the people around him. That’s absolutely a beautiful thing.

Another important character from the story is:

Fiona:

Fiona is the 35 year old mother of Marcus. She is sort of a hippie and she has her own opinion about everything. She dresses the same ridiculous way as Marcus. But she is very disappointed about her life. That is why she is depressed and tried to kill herself. I like her weirdness sometimes. But I think that she spends a little to much time at herself and to less at Marcus. Maybe that is because she actually didn`t even wanted Marcus.

Structure.

The story is told chronologically there are no flash forwards. But sometimes there are flash backs to things that happened in the past. Like when Marcus thinks back to his old school in Cambridge.

The story starts just with the story. There is no introduction at all. But because you can read all the thoughts from the head characters, you get to know them very fast and you understand the story very quickly.

The ending of the story isn`t really open. But it isn`t really closed to. Around the ending ellie does something really stupid what brings them both to the police station. In the end they apologised and everything is okay: they can go home again. So it doesn`t really end in the middle of something exiting happening. But in they end they don`t really tell you how Will`s relationship ends, or Marcus and his parents find a way to go along better and if Ellie will manage to get over Curt Cobian`s death. So there is a lot left over to imagine about. Mostly on the end everything becomes clear and everything will be solved. But in this book it all stayed a little vage.

Point of view.

The story is written in he she form. It isn`t told from the characters themselves. But out of the writers point of view. The funny thing about this book is that the one chapter the writer tells the story by Marcus and how Marcus experiences things and the next chapter the writer switches to Will.

Title.

I think the title About a boy comes from the fact that Marcus is a boy and a big part of the book is about how Marcus feels. But the title goes about Will to. Because Will is a man but he behaves like a boy. I think the writer wanted a title that could fit for both persons and that is why he chose this title. What could be another explanation is that there is  a song from nirvana (the band where Will is a great fan of) that is called about a girl. So maybe the title can also come from that song.

The title I think that fits by the story is: Grow to your age. Because they make each other grow to their age. Will helps Marcus to find a place at school and become a teenager instead of an adult and Marcus helps Will get more responsibility and behave like an adult.

Theme.

I think the themes of the book are friendship, love, family, responsibility and growing up. The message of the book is that growing up and fitting in isn`t easy. But if you accept help from others it can support you a lot.

My opinion.

My opinion about the book is that it wasn`t a very awful book. But it wasn`t a very great book either. What I found great of the book were the idea of an adult man getting friends with a young boy. What I found very good from the book to was that you got to know the head characters so well because you could hear their thoughts. I really liked the weird characters in the book. The characters from the book are all a bit different from usual and that makes them interesting. What I  liked to was the switching between the two head characters. That kept the excitement in the story. That really is needed in the book because the excitement was hard to find sometimes. It really bothered me that there didn`t happen much in the book. Only in the beginning of the book and around the end something exiting happens. But the rest of the story was quite boring sometimes. The other thing about the story I found really stupid was, the ending. I like closed endings and that wasn`t the case. The horrible ending really gave me the feeling like the whole book was just seeing a few months of somebody`s life and then suddenly be thrown out of the story, because the book is over. It didn`t feel like a real ending.

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