About a Boy: A Story of Unlikely Friendships and Personal Growth
Chapters 1-2
Will spends his days doing very little: a bit of shopping, reading, and watching TV. He likes to have lots of girlfriends and decides to go to a single parents group (SPAT), where he can get to know lots of women who find it hard to meet men. There, he talks to Suzie, telling her that he lives with his son, Ned.
Meanwhile, Marcus is worrying about his new school in London because the other kids laugh at him and bully him. One day, he comes home to find his mother in a terrible state. She tells him she needs a rest and that he has to go with Suzie and the SPAT group to a picnic the following Saturday.
Chapters 3-4
Will goes to the SPAT picnic with Suzie and meets Marcus. While Will is avoiding answering questions about his imaginary son, Marcus thinks he has killed a duck by throwing bread at it. When they get back to Marcus’s house, they find out that Fiona has tried to kill herself. They take her to the hospital and she recovers, but Marcus is afraid she will do it again. He decides that two people in a family isn’t enough and plans to get Will and Fiona together.
Unfortunately for Marcus, Fiona isn’t Will’s type of woman and he returns to his old life until one day, Marcus appears on his doorstep. On seeing Will’s flat, Marcus realizes there is no son and threatens to tell his mum if Will doesn’t go out with her.
Chapters 5-6
Marcus starts visiting Will often after school. One day, when Will opens the door, there are two boys throwing sweets at Marcus. Will gets very angry with the boys and advises Marcus to change his look. He buys him some new trainers, but they are stolen the next day at school.
Fiona finds out about the visits and the imaginary son and forbids Marcus to see Will again. At school, Marcus goes to see the head teacher about his trainers and he meets Ellie, one of the school’s rebels and a big Kurt Cobain fan. Ellie thinks Marcus is funny and they become friends.
Chapters 7-8
Marcus invites Will to his house for Christmas. Will hates Christmas but he goes reluctantly. At first, he has a good time but then Suzie arrives and she gets angry because Will had lied to her about having a son.
On New Year’s Eve, Will meets a woman called Rachel and falls in love. To sound more interesting to her, he pretends that Marcus is his son. Rachel also has a twelve-year-old son called Ali and she invites Will and Marcus to her house to meet him. Marcus agrees to pretend to be Will’s son, but when he meets Ali things go badly wrong. Ali is angry that Will likes his mum and shouts at Marcus. Marcus runs away from the house, but Will takes him back and they become friends.
Chapters 9-10
Will is in love for the first time in his life and he realizes he has to tell Rachel the truth. Fiona gets very depressed again and Marcus asks Will to help. At first, Will refuses but then he feels bad and asks Rachel for advice. Rachel offers to talk to Fiona, but cleverly forces Will to do it. Fiona tells Marcus that he must go to Cambridge to see his father, who has broken his arm. Ellie goes with him. The day they travel, newspaper headlines inform us that Kurt Cobain has killed himself. Ellie gets drunk, jumps off the train and throws her boot through the window of a music shop that has a big cardboard figure of Kurt Cobain inside.
Chapter 11
Marcus and Ellie are taken to the police station and they tell their story. Marcus’s dad and his girlfriend arrive and then Fiona, Will and Ellie’s mum get there. Ellie is forced to meet the owner of the shop and she apologizes. Marcus has a long chat with his dad and tells him that he’s fine. Marcus now knows he has people and he can cope. In short, he has grown up. Will, meanwhile, realizes that Rachel has changed his life completely and for the first time he gets seriously involved with somebody, responsibilities and all.
Characters
Will
Will is thirty-six but behaves like a teenager. He’s single, rich, and cool. He has no responsibilities: no job, no family, no worries. Will enjoys a bachelor lifestyle in London. Despite his frequent dates and dalliances with women, he is happily single and maintains that he would not be able to share his life with someone else; after all, he is ‘the star of the Will Show!’
Will lives a luxurious life without needing to work due to a lucrative Christmas hit by his father. Essentially, Will is incredibly self-centered and unable to connect with other people. However, it is his unusual friendship with Marcus that teaches him to be more accepting and selfless.
Marcus
Marcus is twelve years old and lives with his mum. He struggles to find a balance between pleasing his mum (who is an eccentric vegetarian) and popular culture (Will and people at school).
Marcus is the direct opposite to Will; whilst Will is concerned with appearance and scared by commitment and love, Marcus is desperate for love and does not care about appearance. Thus, Marcus is picked on at school and has few friends outside of school. However, after meeting Will at the SPAT picnic, Marcus decides the best thing for his mother’s depression would be to find her a boyfriend. He clumsily tries to match Will and Fiona together, but instead he finds a welcome distraction in the form of Will. Marcus’s friendship with Will allows him to grow in confidence and become a much more rounded figure.
Rachel
Rachel is an artist who Will meets at a New Year’s Eve party. She is a single parent who has struggled to balance Ali’s wellbeing and her relationships. She defends Will to Ali, and is subsequently deeply hurt when she discovers that Will has lied to her.
Fiona
Fiona is a single mother who struggles with depression. She is an eccentric vegetarian who does not understand that her son is being bullied for this. She fails to understand his want for ‘normality’ and commercial goods.
Despite her foibles, she is a deeply caring, charitable person; she is a music teacher in a Special Needs School and a regular at SPAT meetings.
Themes
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 focused on this phenomenon. The book also addresses the possible ways of avoiding being bullied, some more successful than others. The head teacher’s suggestion of keeping away from them is somewhat ridiculous, as the bullies find Marcus and not the other way round. Will’s suggestion of a change of image is maybe more practical, but also fails. It seems that only when Marcus develops his own self-confidence, as he does at the end, will he be able to deal with this victimization.
Single Parenting
The problems of bringing up a child as a single parent are highlighted in this book. Fiona is so wrapped up in her own problems that she fails to see what is happening in Marcus’s life. When Fiona tries to commit suicide, Marcus comes to believe that two people cannot make a happy and secure unit. The author suggests that making single parents into couples is not necessarily the answer. His alternative solution is to make a community of people who are close to each other and care about each other. He also suggests that organizations like SPAT can sometimes provide an environment in which isolated and lonely single parents can meet other people.