One for My Baby (Paperback, New ed)

Tony Parsons has an engaging way of talking confidently to his readers, closely involving them in his hero's anxieties and dreams. His first novel, Man and Boy, was concerned with a man's worries about his son and his father. This novel is about another man's loss of his wife, with whom he had fallen instantly, wholeheartedly and everlastingly in love - on sight. Alfie Budd meets Rose, a bright young lawyer, on the Star Ferry in Hong Kong, in the dying days of British rule. Alfie has fled from the stresses of teaching at an inner London comprehensive to give English lessons to rich, glossy, Chinese ladies. When he and Rose marry, the future looks golden. They are, Alfie believes, the perfect couple. But nothing, it seems, is perfect for ever. Almost as suddenly as happiness arrives Alfie finds himself back in London, dazed, heartbroken - and alone. And still teaching English, this time to a motley collection of foreign students from whom he seeks a kind of consolation in friendship and casual sex. There is more comfort in his parents' solid relationship, his grandmother's uncritical affection and the support of the Chang family - restauranteurs in London's Chinatown. But when his parents' marriage crumbles, his grandmother dies and the Chang family unity frays at the edges, he becomes bitterly convinced that no-one has a second chance at perfection. Yet accepting the flawed, the damaged and the difficult can, in the end, bring greater and longer-lasting satisfaction. Alfie's pilgrimage and his gradual recognition of the infinite variety of love and its changing horizons is refreshing, and unusual in coming from a man's point of view. The book is not all earnest exploration of emotions- there are some very funny passages, especially when Alfie tries to disentangle his students' misinterpretation of English idiom, colloquialisms and slang. (Kirkus UK)

New novel about men, love and relationships by the author of the Book of the Year, Man and Boy. Alfie Budd found the perfect woman with whom to spend the rest of his life, and then lost her. He doesn't believe you get a second chance at love. Returning to the England he left behind during the brief, idyllic time of his marriage, Alfie finds the rest of his world collapsing around him. He takes comfort in a string of pointless, transient affairs with his students at Churchill's Language School, and he tries to learn Tai Chi from an old Chinese man, George Chang. Will Alfie ever find a family life as strong as the Changs'? Can he give up meaningless sex for a meaningful relationship? And how do you play it when the woman you like has a difficult child who is infatuated with a TV wrestler known as The Slab? Like his runaway bestseller, Man and Boy, Tony Parsons's new novel is full of laughter and tears, biting social comment and overwhelming emotion.

General

Imprint:	HarperCollinsPublishers
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	May 2002
Authors:	Tony Parsons
Dimensions:	197 x 126 x 25mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	378
Edition:	New ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-00-651481-7
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-00-651481-2
Barcode:	9780006514817

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