Tony Parsons: Man and Boy

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1999

Copyright © Tony Parsons 1999

Cover design by Sim Greenaway © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Joe Partridge

Tony Parsons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780006512134

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780007362899

Version: 2019-06-18

‘As ever, [Tony Parsons] is in impressively depth-charging, straight-talking form. A broadsheet mind with a tabloid tongue, he remains one of the few male writers prepared to look beyond his own navel in search of answers’

GQ

‘As tautly plotted as a thriller and its rich cast of characters defy stereotype … Like Kern or Gershwin, he touches the universal via the specific and we weep’

Irish Times

‘Unashamedly touching … funny and well-written’

Telegraph magazine

‘I sobbed my way shamelessly through this book’

Woman’s Journal

‘Superb. Man and Boy is as witty and sharp as you would expect from Parsons but it is not at all bitter – rather profoundly moving. It will strike chords with many readers’

Yorkshire Post

‘Entertaining. Hugely so. Parsons has the skill to grip you by the collar and drag you into the heart of the story’

Manchester Evening News

‘Parsons is a brisk and punchy writer, moving the story on in a series of jaunty episodes and comic vignettes’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Anyone expecting Parsons’ trademark razor-sharp mockney one-liners will find something altogether more subtle. It might sound a bit Nick Hornby but I’d liken it to Kramer v Kramer . A surprising tear-jerker’

Mirror

‘What distinguishes Parsons’s effort from a shelfful of “male identity” outings is his ability to take the traditional framework of the genre … and work within it to produce a series of wholly unexpected twists and eddies … If this is the direction in which British chaps’ fiction is heading, then no one who cares about contemporary writing can seriously complain’

Literary Review

‘The writing is confident and accomplished … He makes the reader care … This is art shot through with humanity’

Independent on Sunday

‘He takes as his specialist subject contemporary emotional issues which almost every other male writer has ignored’

Guardian

‘Funny, serious, tender and honest … Tony Parsons is writing about the genuine dilemmas of modern life’

Sunday Express

‘Memorable and poignant – nobody squeezes more genuine emotion from a scene than Tony Parsons’

Spectator

‘One of the many great things about a Tony Parsons novel is that they always make you feel not just alive, but even more aware of how precious life is … Another modern classic’

Mirror

‘Parsons manages to astutely cut right to the heart of family life’

Woman and Home

‘His stories show all too well how we muddle along in search of love and fulfilment, and when we fluff it … sometimes that’s just because it’s easier’

Observer

For my mother

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Tony Parsons

Dedication

Foreword to the 20 thAnniversary Edition

Part One: Skylarking

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Two: The ding-dong man

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Part Three: Guess what?

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Inside:

Writing Man and Boy : Q & A with Tony Parsons

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Tony Parsons

About the Publisher

I started writing Man and Boy the day that I held my mother’s hand as the doctor told her that she had terminal lung cancer and there was nothing more they could do.

My mum took the news with her usual combination of humour, stoicism and defiance. She came out of the doctor’s surgery with a big grin, totally convinced she was about to prove the medical profession wrong. Typical mum. I went home and started writing a story about a family that looked a lot like my family.

It hit me hard that day, knowing that I would soon be in a world that would not contain either of my parents. My dad – Victor, but always Vic – had been gone for twelve years. My mum – Emma, but always Em – would be gone in twelve months, the doctors said (Em begged to differ). The story I started that day was about family and feelings, parents and their children, illness that is terminal and a love that can’t be killed by death. It was a celebration of family, but there was a sadness in it because I suddenly knew how hard – impossible, in the end – it is to hold on to the ones you care about. Man and Boy was a simple story, plainly told, and for some reason it went on to sell in millions.

We all watch our parents age as our children grow, and we all look for love and often misplace it. We see our family grow and change, and in the end we all must say goodbye to those we love the most. In the end, children grow up and find a family of their own. In the end your parents die. It is the most natural thing in the world, and yet somehow the most unimaginable. But not even a family full of love lasts forever.

At events to promote Man and Boy , I regularly looked up and saw members of the audience crying – and of course they were not crying about my story, they were remembering their own losses. It was a book that was written from the heart and so it had no trouble touching many other hearts. Because a lot of people knew exactly what this stuff felt like. And if they didn’t, then they knew it was waiting down the road. It wasn’t complicated.