Customer Reviews

One for My Baby: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think British writer Tony Parsons is just fantastic. His "Man & Boy" was one of my favorite books last year, and this may end up being one of this years. I think he's great because he creates real, honest, and flawed protagonists. They don't have all the answers and more often than not will probably do something that produces hideous results, but their reality makes me root for them all the more. In his newest book, it's Alfie Budd, a teacher at a language school who is slowly moving through the unbearable grief caused by the tragic death of his wife. Like "Man & Boy" Parsons revisits themes of love and loss, & children's relationships to their parents.Equally moving and very funny, the book unravels with not a great amount of surprise, but a boudless supply of heart.

'Man and Boy' was in many ways a lazy and formulaic book, but got by due to Parson's sometimes insightful and well expressed understanding of love lost and the emotional bonds of family.

He tries the same tricks again here, but with markedly poorer results. The book is much too long for its basically slight story. The central character, though initially sympatheic, quickly becomes a self-pitying bore. His lothario activities just don't ring true; how can all these attractive young women be so taken by this morose, unappealing slob? The loss of a loved one due to cancer is basically just repetition from his previous book. The character of Josh is all over the place, as if the author never got a proper handle on him and just uses him as a convenient prop. Finally, the rather reactionary longing for a quaint, almost ideallised Britain of clear values and upright standards is starting to get a bit grating. Come on Tony, things never have been that perfect!

As other reviwers have noticed, the book often appears rushed and not properly considered. There's no doubt Parsons has talent and could write a really good book; but he needs to take his eyes off film-friendly formula and over-repeated situations.

I haven't read Man and Boy, but it sounds like it may be better than this one. I enjoyed this one, though. It sort of reminded me of Nick Hornby's About a Boy in parts, although the two main characters aren't very similar.

I gave it three stars because there probably are better books around, but if you happen to find yourself with this one in hand, it's not a bad read. There are some good characters in the book (the Chinese family who run the restaurant, The main character's parents and grandmother, the foreign students at the Churchill Language School, Plum and her obnoxious classmates, etc.)

To wrap up, I liked it enough that I was willing to do enough research to track down Man and Boy, another book by the same author. I guess that's a reasonably decent recommendation.

I bought this book after reading Man and Boy which I could hardly put it down and finished in 2-3 days. On the contrary, One for my Baby has been a real disappointment. It's been two weeks and I'm finally into the last few pages! The story line is loose and vague. I cannot feel and understand how strong was the relationship between Alfie and Rose. Was it explained how Alfie was behaving the way he did or did I miss it all together. It was not so much as curiosity or interest that I continued reading the book. It's more like wanting to finish what I started. A real disappointment!

This book is horribly repetitive. The main character isn't very likable and is distractingly inconsistent in his thoughts and actions. And a cleaning lady who wears hooker clothes and stilettos to work is just ridiculous.

All in all it's just a mess.

Reading the other reviews I realize none of them are about the audiobook. The story in the audiobook is very good, but the performance brings it up to a great level. I picked the audiobook up not expecting much, but was very pleased in the first few minutes that I had made the decision to listen. Since then several of my fellow audiobook fanatic friends have also listened and we agree that this is one of the best performances we've heard.

I read his books "Man and boy" and Man and wife" and they were terrific. Those books had rare insight and deep rich characters. This book doesn't even resemble his writing at all. It's boring and one dimensional. I didn't even finish it.

"One for my Baby" is ostensibly about a man's coming to terms with a loss of a loved one, but it seems to be more that it's simply the product of an author who is clueless about life and one, moreover, whose characters don't seem to learn anything over the course of this ostensible novel. I say ostensible because (and I am just surmising here) it strikes me that Tony Parsons, our author herein, and his "fictional" protagonist seem to share quite a number of things in common. Hence we have a story of a man adrift whose chance encounter with a woman on the Star Ferry crossing Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour eventually does him much good. The woman in question is most ordinary (or so it seems, as her character is never really shared with us readers; and doesn't come across as anything like the picture of the woman on this book's most recent cover). She seems, though, to have been of a type simply tired of relationships with snobs and assorted other phonies, who simply was ready to settle down (and settle?) for a nice guy, albeit perhaps boring; a man who would really care for her. Alfie lionizes her---"I wanted to please her more than anything in the world"---and, if anything, feels even more strongly in this regard after he loses her. Thereafter he reverts to his dejected inclinations, seeing good in nobody, value in nothing. His father in the story trumps his would-be-writer son with the fluke success of a first book, then proceeds to parlay such unexpected success into moral bankruptcy. This Alfie laments, but also as he himself plays fast & lose with a number of young ladies, unethically taking advantage of them in a way himself. That the author himself was separated from his wife, apparently under particularly unpleasant circumstances, makes one wonder who he is really writing about. I could be wrong, but this single author, with a child in his care himself, parallels his character "Alfie" (a name obviously chosen to connote Michael Caine's shallow creation in that eponymously entitled film) who at the end of this book finds himself caring for an unexpected child. Moreover, the runaway success of this author's first novel (Man and a Boy) parallels Alfie's father's unexpected success with regard to the latter character's first published book. So when Parsons has Alfie second guessing whether Alfie's father has any true friends and whether an enormously successful first book can be topped, or even equaled, one begins to wonder further who he is really talking about. In London Alfie contemplates Chinese family life , seemingly as he longs for a sense of community and/or family (as Alfie's family collapses around him). As a stand-in for spirituality we get heavy helpings of a sort of Chinese relaxation philosophy: "The old people in the park, doing their Tai Chi, moving like they had all the time in the world" (which, incidentially, is the best written sentence in this book). Dozens of references are likewise made to Frank Sinatra ("One for my Baby," after all, being a Sinatra song itself; a story about a guy in a bar with a "story that he desperately needs to share"). "Listening to Sinatra," Alfie relates, "makes me feel that I am not so alone." So, in the end, he trades his solitariness for the responsibility of caring for another (with a woman who doesn't really seem to be in love with him actually---whether Alfie's first wife really loved him either this book leaves open to debate too; by sharing so little herein). Which seems apropo for Alfie too, though (if you accept the idea of the father character herein to be rather close to the author himself, as Alfie declares the following: "My father doesn't know the first thing about love." And neither does a single character in this book; a book in which , moreover, nobody is particularly likeable either. Mind you, this isn't a totally unenjoyable read---notwithstanding the grating references (the sign of a lazy writer?) to such personalities as Rod Stewart, Hugh Hefner, Terry Wogan, Claudia Schiffer; and to REM, Lethal Weapon, and the Bewitched TV program---but it is not a book particularly worth reading either. The ball's in your court now. You decide. (05Nov)Cheers!

An interesting book on getting back into life after being hurt. In this case, a young man finally marries after searching for Miss Right for many years, only to tragically lose her. After two years he finds other people in his life falling apart. And at the same time begins to straighten out his own life.

Written by one of England's best up and coming writers this is not exactly a new concept, but in his hands there is wit, wisdom, love and recovery. It is most interesting in that this theme is more often handled from the female point of view, but not in this case. It's an exploration of men's feelings that is much less commonly seen.

Yes, men have feelings too. But as one writer said, men tend to put their feelings in a room, close the door to the room and not visit it very often. This book is a refreshing change.

Language teacher Alfie Budd leaves Hong Kong after several years there to return home to London fueled by grief for a lost loved one. However, London may swing, but no where near the way Alfie remembers the town. Everything is different, but mostly his parents act strangely. Alfie thought they shared a loving relationship, but now his father piteously discos with a foreign au pair younger than his son while his mother has a love affair with her rose garden.

Stunned, Alfie fears he will never capture what he once had in Hong Kong so he wanders through meaningless sexual encounters with his students (once a taboo, but more acceptable in this amoral 1993 London). As Alfie wonders about living without love, he descend deeper into a cesspool of immorality that gives him no solace except through the wizened teachings of Mr. Chang.

Alfie is a solid center of this well written character study that leads to fans feeling empathy towards the lead protagonist still suffering from his loss and coping through hollow encounters. The secondary cast enables the readers and Alfie to see that life without love is empty. ONE FOR MY BABY raises philosophical issues of how to live (not just survive) and forge or keep relationships after a loved one dies yet the entertaining story line fails to truly respond to the concerns posed by Tony Parsons; thus readers will ask what's it all about Tony?

Harriet Klausner