What Three Letters Change A Boy Into A Man

Almost A Boy

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The Book
Title: Almost A Boy
Writer: Nick Hornby
Year of publication: 2000

The Characters
Marcus is a twelve years old boy, and one of the 2 main characters. When Marcus was eight years old, his parents Fiona and Clive got divorced. For a couple of years they both lived in Cambridge, but the summer when Marcus was twelve years old, he and his mother moved to London. Marcus is non like an ordinary 12 years old boy, he is the oldest 12 years old in the earth. This is probably because his female parent is a depressive hippie, which he has to look after.
His mother Fiona makes him heed to Joni Mitchell and Mozart, she has too fabricated him become a vegetarian and she but buys him ugly and unmodern apparel. In fact he has never even owned a pair of trainers.
Marcus is a short, slim, pale-faced boy with thin, straight light-brownish hair. He is insecure, ignorant and confused. He doesn't talk a lot in school, probably because he has no friends, and as fast as he opens his rima oris someone is bullying him. Sometimes he opens his mouth anyway, unintentionally singing on some song that he'southward thinking of.
All this makes Marcus considered weird, not but by the kids in schoolhouse, but past the teachers and by himself.

Will Freeman, 36, is the other chief graphic symbol. He is a layabout and has never worked his entire life. In 1958 his father wrote a song called "Santa's Super Sleigh", which gives Will and so much coin that he doesn't have to work. Instead of working Will spends his whole days watching Tv, shopping, getting his hair fixed, drinking or driving around in his cool car, listening to Nirvana.
Will is a rather tall and skillful-looking man with short, curly nighttime-brown pilus. He thinks that he's really absurd. He has got a cool apartment with cool furniture, a cool CD-collection, a cool car, a cool haircut and cool habiliment.
At least, this is what he thinks. Actually Will is extremely shallow; he hasn't much interest in anything or anyone, and one of his main theories of life is to avoid all problems by avoiding all people.
No attachments. No responsibilities. No headaches.
Will likes to compare himself with an island, who doesn't need everyone to survive. And fact is that he doesn't accept anybody around him to love either, he has got lots of women, but he doesn't love whatever of them. He has no family and no real friends.

Fiona, Wills mother, is a 38 years old hippie. She is, but like Marcus, a very eccentric person. She believes in things similar vegetarianism and olfactory property-therapy.
Fiona is a short rather slim woman with short, straight, brown hair. She doesn't care about her looks, and wears quondam, very special clothes that would fit in better in the 60'south or 70'southward than in the 90'south.
She is very depressed and cries a lot. 1 solar day she tries to commit suicide, just fails.

Ellie McCrae is a xv years onetime girl in Marcus's school. She is famous in the schoolhouse, as she'southward always in trouble for something. All the kids are scared of her.
Ellie has tousled black pilus, wears black lipstick and listens to Nirvana. She also claims that she is in love with Kurt Cobain.
Clive, Marcus's father lives in Cambridge with his new girlfriend Lindsey. He is a hippie just like Fiona, and uses to smoke weed. He doesn't really care well-nigh Marcus, but that's not a problem for Marcus, as he doesn't care about him either.

The setting
The story is taking identify in London during the early 90'due south.
The surroundings aren't described very detailed, and then you accept to call up for yourself. But as you know that the story's taking place in London, and famous buildings, places and roads are mentioned every now and so, you don't think of the insufficient descriptions.

The Contents
The Plot
Information technology'southward the fall -93, and Marcus and his mother Fiona has recently moved from Cambridge to London. The kids in his new school treat Marcus like he was some kind of freak, and everyone, except from his mum and her friend Suzie, consider him weird. Marcus has a terrible time at domicile, where he has to await after his mum, outside school, where older kids can find him and mercilessly swell him and steal his things, and in schoolhouse, where both the children and the teachers(!) makes fun of him.
The aforementioned time in another part of London, Will Freeman has just cleaved up with a unmarried mum, and is now wondering how to arrive contact with new sexy single mothers. He gets a brilliant thought, which includes pretending he has a son called Ned, so he can join SPAT (Single Parents Lone Together) and hopefully come across sexy single mums.
On the SPAT-meeting, he meets a lovely adult female called Suzie, and she invites him to get on a picnic in the park with her the following Saturday. Volition accepts the invitation, and spends the next week buying baby seats for his auto and learning things nigh babies.
The aforementioned week Fiona tells Marcus that he's going on a picnic with her friend Suzie. He doesn't desire to, but his mother forces him to go.
On the following Saturday Marcus and Volition meets. Will thinks that Marcus is weird and annoying and prevents him from hit on Suzie, and Marcus thinks that Will is a good-for-nada that simply wants to score with Suzie. Marcus and Volition don't friction match at all from the first, but when Marcus accidentally kills a duck with a piece of staff of life, Will helps Marcus out of the scrape, and a strange human relationship arises between them.
Later the same 24-hour interval when they bring Marcus home, they find his mother Fiona sprawled unconscious on the sofa, attempted suicide. The attempted suicide comes as a chock for Marcus. It makes him angry, and makes his life become even worse. Now he'll have to watch her every mean solar day, and never get out her lonely, if she should try again. Because if she succeeds the next time, he will exist all lone.
Marcus starts to pry around, and finds out that Will doesn't have any son called Ned, which he later tells Suzie and Fiona and they start to dislike Volition a lot.
Marcus comes upwards with the idea that if Fiona had a fellow, they would exist a total of three people, and if i of them disappeared, he would have at least one person left. If Fiona and the boyfriend had a baby, in that location would be 4 of them, and that would be even better and he would never exist lonely. Marcus tries to lucifer up Fiona and Will, which doesn't work at all.
Marcus starts to visit Will later school, even though neither Volition nor Fiona wants him there, simply gradually their human relationship starts to grow, against Wills volition. Marcus "adopts" Will every bit his stepfather, and after a while Will realizes that he actually likes and cares about this strange, lonely kid.
During the next half-year Will teaches Marcus how to be a boy, and what dress and sneakers he should wear, and Marcus learns Volition how to be an adult. Will becomes Marcus's best friend, and even though he is unaware of it, he does the right thing for Marcus on and on. Both Marcus and Will goes through drastic personality-changes. Marcus gets his beginning existent friend, Ellie McCrae, who he meets in the corridor outside the main'south role.
Ellie is a rebellious teenager who listens to grunge and quarrels with everybody. With her every bit a friend nobody bullies Marcus anymore, because if they do, Ellie volition knock them down. Marcus becomes much more cocky-confident, and dares to say what he thinks to his teachers and his mother when it'south really necessary.
Will does also change, and on New Years Eve he breaks one of his own basic rules; not to autumn in love. On a political party he meets the lovely unmarried mother Rachel, which he gets really interested in. She thinks that Marcus is his son, and he doesn't to anything to change her belief, every bit it makes him more than interesting for her. Will uses Marcus to win her eye, and after many turns he finally succeeds.
The volume describes the development of Marcus and Will; how Will finally becomes an adult, and how Marcus dares to say what he thinks, and non simply do what people tells him to exercise.
In the end of the volume, Marcus and Ellie are going on a trip to Marcus's begetter Clive in Cambridge to scold at him, as he doesn't intendance about Marcus enough. The whole trip ends up in a disaster; Ellie gets drunkard in an attempt to drain her sorrows since her beloved Kurt Cobain has committed suicide. She jumps of the train on the incorrect station and smashes the window to a tape-shop since they have a film of Kurt in the store window, and she thinks that it's because they want to make money by his decease. Which, of form was a misunderstanding.
A key episode
"Marcus couldn't believe it. Expressionless. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to striking it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before…
In that location must accept been something wrong with it. It was probably but virtually to die from a heart assail or something; it was but a coincidence…
´What'south that floating next to it?` Will asked. ´Is that the bread you lot threw at information technology?`
Marcus nodded unhappily.
´That's not a sandwich, that's a bloody French loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would have killed me.` "

This is one of the central episodes in the book, when Marcus accidentally kills a duck with a slice of bread on the "Dead Duck 24-hour interval". This is what makes the connectedness between the 2 main characters, and if it wouldn't take happened, they wouldn't have got to know each other, and they would take connected being the tragic individuals that they were. This meeting also gives Marcus some other person around him. A child needs more than than i person around him to lean on in the life'southward different phases, and Volition becomes an important male pattern for Marcus.

The Genre
About a boy is a comic drama. The book has lots of characteristic features of the time; the revolting teenagers, listening to grunge, the young boys with their computer games and gameboys, and the depressed mother. All these features are very characteristic, every bit the computers were new, the grunge was popular at the specific time and the word "depression" attracted attending. In this book, Hornsby has really captured them all.
The Language
The volume is written in tertiary-person. Nick Hornby is telling the story, and you tin really meet his amazing ability to understand how the characters in the book thinks, as the book contains a lot of information about the characters thoughts and dreams.
The book is written in the spoken language, which is adept, as you really tin can understand what sort of person that would employ the specific word. It makes the story come alive in a amend way.
The Author
Nick Hornby was born on April 17, 1957 in Maidenhead, England. When Hornby was 11 years sometime, his parents divorced and his father began to take him to sentinel the N London Premier League lodge Arsenal, during their visits. He developed into a loyal fan of the team. Hornby as well became a dedicated reader, reading almost everything.
As an English Literature major at Cambridge Academy, he began composing stage plays, screenplays, and radio plays in his spare fourth dimension. A professor and then introduced Hornby to novelist Anne Tyler's Dinner at a Homesick Eating place, which inspired him to write prose.
After graduating, Hornby worked a serial of jobs - he taught grade schoolhouse, gave language classes and served as host for Samsung executives visiting the U.K. - before condign a paid announcer.
He composed a pop civilisation cavalcade for the Independent and wrote about books and sports for publications similar Esquire and the Sun Times.
In 1992, he published his first book, Gimmicky American Fiction, a drove of essays on American writers such as Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff.
That same twelvemonth, he released Fever Pitch, a memoir nearly being a devoted Arsenal fan since childhood. The piece of work was a surprise hit, earning countless acclaim.
Also Hornsby'southward following novels, High Fidelity, 1995, and Near a Boy, 1998 were successes, and all 3 of them have been filmed.
As the parents of an autistic son, Hornby and his ex-wife founded TreeHo...