Fortysomething - Hardcover

Williams, Nigel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670886475 ISBN 13: 9780670886470

Publisher: Viking, 1999

Synopsis

Paul Slippery is 49 and 5 months, and this is his diary in the lead-up to the great day. He lives with his longsuffering wife and 3 difficult teenage boys in Wimbledon, a figure of fun and pity. To compound his problems, he hears that the soap-operaradio part he has played for 25 years is to be killed off. Oh yes, and he can't remember when he last had sex. A cross between Helen Fielding and Sue Townsend, FORTYSOMETHING holds a funny, painful mirror up for the male fortysomething.

About this title

Review:

A long-running soap opera star is about to be axed. And there ends the similarity with The Killing of Sister George. Nigel Williams' latest novel is set firmly in family land, where Paul Slippery, the forty-nine-and-a-half-year-old radio voice of Dr Esmond Pennebaker, has a working wife, Estelle, and three GCSE to degree level sons, named Ruarighy, Jakob and Edwin. Paul is undergoing some mid-life crisis, doesn't understand his wife's newfound independence, doesn't understand the shenanigans going on at the BBC, doesn't understand the intricate goings-on of his teenage sons, representatives of another species, and can't seem to remember when he last had sex. Although Williams throws in a lot more sex, and an Asian woman, much of Fortysomething belongs to a dated white middle-class sitcom world invented by Carla Lane, where the sexes and the generations are divided by mutual ignorance and incomprehension, and brought together only by a shared dependence on Waitrose food. Williams piles on plot after plot, and there's a good deal of comic misunderstanding, but the novel's humour derives mainly from its journal form, with Slippery seizing every available (and unavailable) moment to scribble his diary like some latterday Samuel Richardson heroine. Fast, furious, and even funny--for fortysomethings.--Alan Stewart

About the Author:

Nigel Williams was born in Cheshire in 1948, grew up in north London where his father was headmaster of a grammar school, and went to Oriel College, Oxford. He has worked for the BBC as a TV arts programme maker for over 25 years. He has written a number of novels, including most famously THE WIMBLEDON POISONER (Faber, 1990) which was turned into a highly successful TV series. He lives in Putney with his wife and three sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670886475
• ISBN 13: 9780670886470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416