The Wrong Boy - Softcover

Russell, Willy

4.12

1,814 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385602243 ISBN 13: 9780385602242

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

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The extraordinary first novel from the prize-winning and internationally acclaimed playwright and creator of "Shirley Valentine" and" Educating Rita," In Raymond Marks, he brings us another unforgettable character. Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. His dad left home after falling in love with a five-string banjo; his fun-hating grandma believes she should have married Jean-Paul Sartre: " I could never read his books, but y' could tell from his picture, there was nothing frivolous about Jean-Paul Sartre." Felonious Uncle Jason and appalling Aunty Paula are lusting after the satellite dish; frogs are flattened on Failsworth Boulevard; and Sickening Sonia's being sick in the majestic cathedral of words. Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. Until, on the banks of the Rochdale Canal, the fly-trapping craze begins and, for Raymond and his ' Mam', nothing will ever be normal again.

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Review:

The Wrong Boy is the debut novel of Liverpudlian playwright Willy Russell, famed for his plays-turned-films Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, and the West End musical stalwart Blood Brothers. Both Rita and Valentine were star-making roles and if (and when) The Wrong Boy makes it to the screen, the main character Raymond is likely to have the same effect on one lucky young actor.

Teenager Raymond Marks has not had a charmed life. His profligate, instrument-loving father made an early exit, leaving him with a struggling mother and doting Sartre-fan grandmother. Fifteen minutes of potential glory when he saved a boy from drowning are cruelly compromised when it's discovered that the boys were near the canal indulging in what they called "flytrapping", and Raymond becomes "the precocious pervert, the evil influence, the filthy little beast". Eventually packed off to "Gulag Grimsby" at the suggestion of his despised Uncle Jason, Raymond pours out his life's woes in a series of missives to his idol, one-time Smiths' star Morrissey.

Writing his letters with improbable speed, Raymond is ingratiating, unstoppable and superbly miserable, as befits a Morrissey devotee--and lucky enough to be surrounded by a bevy of gift-wrapped Northern character parts. Russell's genius is to take situations and characters that are firmly placed in the banally familiar--and then push them to their comic limits. In The Wrong Boy those limits are tested to the full. --Alan Stewart

Review:

" A comic masterpiece." -- "Mail on Sunday" " A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy -- and so will you." -- "Sunday Telegraph" "A comic masterpiece." -- "Mail on Sunday" "A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy -- and so will you." -- "Sunday Telegraph" "A comic masterpiece." -- "Mail on Sunday "A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy -- and so will you." -- "Sunday Telegraph

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