The book I’m going to present you is a romantic novel.
The novel is entitled as “About a Boy”.
It is written by a prominent English writer Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby lives in the Islington area of north London where many of his novels are set. His son, Danny, born in 1993, was diagnosed as autistic when he was only two years old. Hornby and his wife helped to set up TreeHouse, a special school for autistic children. Looking after Danny is a huge part of his life. Although his books are London-based, Hornby says that he feels more comfortable with contemporary American literature than British. He likes writing that is simple and accessible, but sharp and intelligent. He is currently pop music critic for the New Yorker magazine.
The suggested extract presents 3d person narration with the elements of description interlaced with dialogues and the inner monologues of the leading characters.
The basic theme of the text is growing up and responsibility. Growing up, relationships and responsibility: one of the points of this book is the learning process that a child goes through as he or she is growing up. Marcus is finding life hard to deal with and is struggling, as many adolescent teenagers do, with family and school problems and knowing how to make friends with his peers. Through experience, Marcus comes to realize he is not alone in the world and he asserts himself in his own right. Ironically, Hornby demonstrates how even fully grown adults sometimes fail to have grown up, developing the theme through the character of Will, who only learns to accept responsibility after a long learning process at the age of thirty-six.
There are two more rival themes which are bullying and single parenting.
Bullying: Marcus suffers at school because he is different from the other kids and attracts the attention of bullies.
The author acknowledges bullying as a fact of life that will always be there. Indeed, in British society more and more media attention is...