About a boy
About a Boy is a 1998 book by Nick Hornby , which was filmed in 2002 under the title About a Boy, or: The Day of the Dead Duck , directed by Chris and Paul Weitz with Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult . The book also served as a template for the US series About a Boy , which was broadcast in two seasons from February 2014 to 2015.
The title of the book (based on the Nirvana song About a Girl ) seems ostensibly dedicated to the boy Marcus, but is no less applicable to the big boy Will, who is going through an even more fundamental change.
action
Will Freeman is a 36 year old single who lives in London . His father wrote the successful Christmas song Santa’s Super Sleigh , which Will earns so many royalties annually that he has no financial worries. Will's character is completely superficial and only out for pleasure. When he snuck his way into a self-help group for single parents, which otherwise consisted of women, in the hope of being able to start a relationship with one of the women, he met 12-year-old Marcus.
Marcus suffers from the image of a weird outsider at his school and lives at home in constant fear for his suicidal mother. Although Marcus and Will could hardly be more different, they gradually become friends. Will helps Marcus become "cool" and confident by "teaching" him about youth culture , which is expressed through nirvana front man Kurt Cobain , and by buying new clothes for Marcus. Here Will realizes that he himself no longer belongs to this culture and has become too old for it. And although Will resists it, he becomes more and more entangled in the events surrounding Marcus and his mother. But then this relationship helps him to make an impression on his great love Rachel.
Marcus travels to Cambridge to visit his father. Ellie, a girl he met at school, accompanies him. It's the day after Kurt Cobain's death and Marcus doesn't want Ellie to know about it, as he sees their journey together in danger and wants to protect Ellie from grief. However, Ellie already knows of her idol's death and gets drunk on the train because of it. Then she simply gets off at a stopover on the train. The two eventually end up at a police station after Ellie smashed a shop window, suspecting that a life-size cardboard display by Kurt Cobain behind it had only been placed there to profit from his death. Will, Fiona (Marcus' mother) and Ellie's mother pick up Ellie, while Marcus is picked up by his father and his new girlfriend. Marcus speaks to his father and realizes that he doesn't need a father as long as he has people like Will around him, with whom he can exchange ideas and confidently talk about his worries and fears.
At the end of the book, Marcus, who was a shy, unpopular outsider at the beginning, is a respected teenager at school who has found that he has a certain security through a large circle of friends and acquaintances that he does not with two parents living together so would have. He is happy with his situation in life, as he is no longer teased at school and his mother is no longer so suicidal. Will has gone from being a young -at- heart to an adult who wants a long-term relationship with Rachel and who has rethought his approach to life.
Audio books
- 2013: About a Boy (read by Udo Wachtveitl & Nicola Fritzen ), Der Hörverlag - ISBN 978-3-8445-0947-2
literature
- Bode, Matthias: Nick Hornby: About a Boy. King's Explanations and Materials (Vol. 436). Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2009, 3rd edition, ISBN 978-3-8044-1822-6
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the book, Will is two years younger than in the film, see: Nick Hornby: About a Boy . Distribooks, ISBN 3-426-61690-4