The Boys Are Back In Town - Softcover

Carr, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099410788 ISBN 13: 9780099410782

Publisher: Arrow, 2001

Synopsis

'Before my wife - my late wife - Susie got ill, she used to say that a tidy house created a force field. Susie's housekeeping was a way of surrounding her family. Her presence was everywhere - in the drifting scent of Givenchy from the bedroom, or rosemary from the kitchen, or that lemon-scented cleaning agent coming from the bathroom. 'We miss that. Now that she's gone we live in a very different world. We are a father and two sons living in a household without women . . . We are very widely experienced in the world where boys sit on the carpet gaping at the television like cultish prisoners. We've known Sunday nights when you can't see the carpet for video boxes, takeaway packaging, clothes, plastic games, cats, goggles, guns, popcorn, plates, cutlery, papers, paintbrushes, cushions, soft toys, comics, newspapers, dart-launchers, picture books, colouring sheets, crayons, lego, and game CDs called Living Dead, Crypt, and Resident Evil 2 where innocent bystanders are eaten alive by hungry zombies.' The account of this all-male family experience is, by turns, funny, tender, anarchic, moving and very instructive about how three males of different ages and character learn from each other about how to live their lives.

About this title

Review:

After Simon Carr's wife Susie finally succumbed to cancers dogged enough to defeat even her fiery spirit, he was left to bring up two sons in a domestic set-up he describes as "free-range" and visiting mothers preferred to call "semi-feral". This account of the rocky path of the lone carer is both moving and hilarious. The "Lost Boys" homestead constitutes a socially anomalous enterprise: a domestic world almost completely devoid of female influence. Carr's daringly innovative strategy could be summed up as "least resistance parenting"; where the golden rule is simply that there are as few rules as possible. But whilst his discoveries expose the often-risible rules that underlie some of our fundamental parenting habits, he also recounts his failures with unflinching honesty. Carr manages to trace the familiar territory of the gender divide without succumbing to the now familiar polarity of writers such as Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby. But despite the originality, emotional honesty and wit that set him apart from the platitude peddlers (although to be fair he does still sling the odd whopper into the pot), his achievement is to be as highly entertaining and readable as the best of them. --Rebecca Johnson

Review:

"Achingly funny and almost unbearably moving" (Daily Mail)

"Carr's brilliantly written account of life as a single parent should become a required manual on parenting" (Sunday Times)

"Both men and women need his confident, politically incorrect but thoroughly realistic assertions." (Independent)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099410788
• ISBN 13: 9780099410782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240