The Best A Man Can Get - Softcover

O'Farrell, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552998443 ISBN 13: 9780552998444

Publisher: Black Swan, 2001

Synopsis

Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children.

For Michael is living a double life - he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed...

The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny.

About this title

Review:

Some men are born fathers, while others have fatherhood thrust upon them. The protagonist of John O'Farrell's The Best a Man Can Get belongs indisputably in the latter category. When his first daughter is born, Michael Adams imagines her as the warden of a prison that will permanently deprive him of his youth and freedom. Terrified by his new responsibilities, he regularly escapes to a bachelor pad across the Thames, pretending to be at work. Another child arrives--and with still another on the way, it is only a matter of time until Michael's wife discovers his double life. At that point, he must make a choice between his family and his hedonistic haven.

By turns hilarious and touching, O'Farrell's book delves deeply into the anxieties of modern parenting. Yet the novel is not without empathy for the 21st-century father. After all, it's easy to imagine the lure of a child-proof hideaway, insulated from sleepless nights and dirty diapers. At the same time, Adams often wonders whether "just being tucked up warm and cosy" is really "the best a man can get". With its charming prose and its truant protagonist, this first novel is sure to win over even the most reluctant parent. --Greg Bensinger

Review:

"Punchline fuelled, relentless humour...I don't think a woman is going to get much closer to the workings of a man's mind than this. Giggling several times a page with plenty of out-loud laughs is guaranteed. Is John O'Farrell funny? Very" (Daily Mirror)

"So funny because it rings true... Packed with painfully well-observed jokes" (The Times)

"A hilarious confessional narrative. This wickedly observed page-turner lets bachelor-nostalgia joyride to its absurd conclusion... Piquant and irreverently sardonic" (Literary Review)

"This is SO good... so insightful about men, women, love and parenthood that you read every page with a wince of recognition. Fab, fab, fab" (India Knight)

"Excellent... Things Can Only Get Better will make you laugh out loud" (Angus Deayton)

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0552998443
• ISBN 13: 9780552998444
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336