Tony Parsons
BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
- Title: Man And Boy
- Description:
Harry Silver has it all: a beautiful wife, a wonderful son, a great job in the media-but in one night he throws it all away. 
- Title: Man And Wife
- Description:
Harry Silver is learning to juggle his many commitments - to his wife and his ex-wife, to his son, his step-daughter and his mother, to his own work and his wife's career. And then someone walks into his life who is going to make it all even more complicated. A sequel to the best seller, Man and Boy 
- Title: The Family Way
- Description:
Paulo loves Jessica. He thinks that together they are complete--a family of two. But Jessica can\\\'t be happy until she has a baby, and the baby stubbornly refuses to come. Can a man and a woman ever really be a family of two? 
- Title: The Family Way
- Description:
It should be the most natural thing in the world. But in Tony Parsons' latest bestseller, three couples discover that Mother Nature can be one hell of a bitch. Paulo loves Jessica. He thinks that together they are complete -- a family of two. But Jessica can't be happy until she has a baby, and the baby stubbornly refuses to come. Can a man and a woman ever really be a family of two? Megan doesn't love her boyriend anymore. After a one-night stand with an Australian beach bum, she finds that even a trainee doctor can slip up on the family planning. Should you bring a child into the world if you don't love its father? Cat loves her life. After bringing up her two youngest sisters, all she craves is freedom. Her older boyfriend has done the family thing before and is in no rush to do it all again. But can a modern woman really find true happiness without ever being in the family way? Three sisters. Three couples. Two pregnancies. Six men and women struggling with love, sex, fertility and the meaning of family. And one more bitter-sweet bestseller from the author of MAN AND BOY. 
- Title: Man And Wife
- Description:
Sequel to Man and Boy 
- Title: Stories We Could Tell
- Description:
This is a book about growing up and being young, about sex and love and rock and roll, about the dreams of youth colliding head-on with the grown-up world. Sometimes you can grow up in just one night...It is 16th August 1977 - the day that Elvis dies - and Terry is back from Berlin, basking in the light of his friendship with legendary rock star Dag Wood. But when Dag arrives in London he sets his sights on a mysterious young photographer called Misty, the girl that Terry loves. Will the love of Terry's life survive this hot summer's night? Ray is the only writer on the inky music weekly "The Paper" who refuses to cut his hair and stop wearing flares. On the eve of being sacked, Ray finds comfort in the arms of an older woman called Mrs Brown. But John Lennon is in town for just one night and Ray believes that if he can interview the reclusive Beatle, he can save his job. Can John Lennon and the love of an older woman really save a young man's soul? Leon is on the run from a gang called the Dagenham Dogs who have taken exception to one of his bitchy reviews. Hiding out in a disco called The Goldmine, Leon meets Ruby - the dancing queen of his dreams. But will true love or the Dagenham Dogs find Leon before the night is over? Tony Parsons goes back to his roots for this deeply personal book - the story he has been waiting to tell. From the Publisher STORIES WE COULD TELL is a book about growing up and being young, about sex and love and rock and roll, about the dreams of youth colliding head-on with the grown-up world. Tony Parsons goes back to his roots for this deeply personal book - the story he has been waiting to tell. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. About the Author Tony Parsons is a columnist for the Mirror. He has written for among others, NME, the Face, Arena, Vox, the Daily Telegraph, Telegraph magazine, the Spectator, Guardian, Daily Mail, GQ, Esquire and Marie Claire. He regularly appears on BBC TV’s The Late Show and in his own television documentaries. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 
- Title: One For My Baby
- Description:
This is the story of a man who believes in all the British values of a stiff upper lip and keeping emotion in check. He also believes you can only truly love one person in your life, and he loses that love when his wife dies. Eventually he meets a woman who turns all his ideas upside down. From the Publisher A summary of some of the great reviews appeared to dateThe Observer "the same combination of self-deprecating humour and well-intentioned bafflement that endeared MAN AND BOY to millions of readers"; The Mirror "stylish, polished, complex and it really gets its teeth into the big issues of sex, love, family and friendship...get out the kleenex and get reading"; Sunday Times "will sell and sell"; Independent on Sunday "confident and accomplished...he makes the reader care...this is art shot through with humanity"; Mail on Sunday "will sell in millions" and The Times "subtle and intelligent...the success that greeted Parsons's first novel looks likely to be replicated by ONE FOR MY BABY" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpted from One for My Baby by Tony Parsons. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved 'You must eat the cold porridge,' he told me once. It's a Chinese expression. Cantonese, I guess, because although hecarried an old-fashioned blue British passport and was happy to call himself an Englishman, he was born in Hong Kong and sometimes you could tell that all the important things he believed were formed long ago and far away. Like the importance of eating the cold porridge. I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. What was he going on about now? 'Eat the cold porridge.' The way he explained it, eating the cold porridge means working at something for so long that when you get home there is nothing left to eat but cold porridge. And I thought - who did he share a flat with out there? Goldilocks and the Three Bears? That's how you get good at something, he told me. That's how you get good at anything. You eat the cold porridge. You work at it when the others are playing. You work at it when the others are watching television. You work at it when the others are sleeping. To become the master of something, you must eat the cold porridge, Grasshopper. Actually he never called me Grasshopper. But I always felt that he might. And I tried hard to understand. He was my teacher as well as my friend and I always tried to be a good student. I am trying today. But I can't help it - somewhere along the line I took eating the cold porridge to mean something else. Something completely different from its Chinese meaning. Somehow I got it into my thick head that eating the cold porridge means being in a time of suffering. Living through hard days, months and years because you have no choice. I got the cold porridge of the East muddled up with the bitter pill of the West. Now I can't tell them apart. That's not what he meant at all. He meant giving up comfort and pleasure for a greater good. He meant deferring gratification for some distant goal. Eating cold porridge now so that you will have something better tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that. It's got nothing to do with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But I guess the concept of self-sacrifice is easier to grasp if you were born in one of the poorer parts of Kowloon. Where I come from, they don't really go in for that kind of stuff. Eating the cold porridge - to me it means enduring something that has to be endured. More than that, it means missing someone. Really missing someone. The way I miss her. But she is gone and she is not coming back. I know that now. I will never kiss her again. I am never going to wake up beside her again. I am never going to watch her sleeping again. That perfect moment when she opened her eyes and smiled her slightly goofy smile - a smile that seemed to reveal as much gum as teeth, and a smile that always made me feel as though something inside me was melting - I definitely won't see that again. There are ten thousand things that we are never going to do together again. 'You'll meet someone else,' he tells me, with all the patience that my real father could never quite muster. 'Give it time. There will be another woman. You'll get married again. You can have it all. Children and everything.' He is trying to be kind. He is a good man. Maybe this is what he really thinks. But I don't believe a word of it. I think that you can use up your love. I think you can blow it all on one person. You can love so much, so deeply, that there is nothing left for anyone else. You could give it all the time in the world, and I would never find someone to fill the gap that she has left. Because how do you find a substitute for the love of your life? And why would you want to? Rose is never coming home again. Not to me. Not to anyone. And perhaps I could learn to live with it if I could resist this ridiculous urge to phone her. Things would be more bearable if I could remember, really remember, that she's gone and never forget it. But I can't help it. Once a day I go to call her. I have never actually dialed the number, but I have come pretty close. Do you think I need to look that number up? I don't even have to remember it with my head. My fingers remember. And I am afraid that one day I will call her old number and somebody else will answer. Some stranger. Then what will happen? Then what will I do? It can strike at any time, this urge to call her. If I'm happy or sad or worried, I suddenly get this need to talk to her about it. The way we always did when we were - I nearly said lovers, but it was that and much more. Together. When we were together. She's gone and I know she's gone. It's just that sometimes I forget. That's all. So now I know what I must do. I must eat the cold porridge, and fight this overwhelming urge to reach for the phone. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 
- Title: One For My Baby
- Description:
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. From the Publisher A summary of some of the great reviews appeared to dateThe Observer \"the same combination of self-deprecating humour and well-intentioned bafflement that endeared MAN AND BOY to millions of readers\"; The Mirror \"stylish, polished, complex and it really gets its teeth into the big issues of sex, love, family and friendship...get out the kleenex and get reading\"; Sunday Times \"will sell and sell\"; Independent on Sunday \"confident and accomplished...he makes the reader care...this is art shot through with humanity\"; Mail on Sunday \"will sell in millions\" and The Times \"subtle and intelligent...the success that greeted Parsons\'s first novel looks likely to be replicated by ONE FOR MY BABY\" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpted from One for My Baby by Tony Parsons. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved \'You must eat the cold porridge,\' he told me once. It\'s a Chinese expression. Cantonese, I guess, because although hecarried an old-fashioned blue British passport and was happy to call himself an Englishman, he was born in Hong Kong and sometimes you could tell that all the important things he believed were formed long ago and far away. Like the importance of eating the cold porridge. I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. What was he going on about now? \'Eat the cold porridge.\' The way he explained it, eating the cold porridge means working at something for so long that when you get home there is nothing left to eat but cold porridge. And I thought - who did he share a flat with out there? Goldilocks and the Three Bears? That\'s how you get good at something, he told me. That\'s how you get good at anything. You eat the cold porridge. You work at it when the others are playing. You work at it when the others are watching television. You work at it when the others are sleeping. To become the master of something, you must eat the cold porridge, Grasshopper. Actually he never called me Grasshopper. But I always felt that he might. And I tried hard to understand. He was my teacher as well as my friend and I always tried to be a good student. I am trying today. But I can\'t help it - somewhere along the line I took eating the cold porridge to mean something else. Something completely different from its Chinese meaning. Somehow I got it into my thick head that eating the cold porridge means being in a time of suffering. Living through hard days, months and years because you have no choice. I got the cold porridge of the East muddled up with the bitter pill of the West. Now I can\'t tell them apart. That\'s not what he meant at all. He meant giving up comfort and pleasure for a greater good. He meant deferring gratification for some distant goal. Eating cold porridge now so that you will have something better tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that. It\'s got nothing to do with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But I guess the concept of self-sacrifice is easier to grasp if you were born in one of the poorer parts of Kowloon. Where I come from, they don\'t really go in for that kind of stuff. Eating the cold porridge - to me it means enduring something that has to be endured. More than that, it means missing someone. Really missing someone. The way I miss her. But she is gone and she is not coming back. I know that now. I will never kiss her again. I am never going to wake up beside her again. I am never going to watch her sleeping again. That perfect moment when she opened her eyes and smiled her slightly goofy smile - a smile that seemed to reveal as much gum as teeth, and a smile that always made me feel as though something inside me was melting - I definitely won\'t see that again. There are ten thousand things that we are never going to do together again. \'You\'ll meet someone else,\' he tells me, with all the patience that my real father could never quite muster. \'Give it time. There will be another woman. You\'ll get married again. You can have it all. Children and everything.\' He is trying to be kind. He is a good man. Maybe this is what he really thinks. But I don\'t believe a word of it. I think that you can use up your love. I think you can blow it all on one person. You can love so much, so deeply, that there is nothing left for anyone else. You could give it all the time in the world, and I would never find someone to fill the gap that she has left. Because how do you find a substitute for the love of your life? And why would you want to? Rose is never coming home again. Not to me. Not to anyone. And perhaps I could learn to live with it if I could resist this ridiculous urge to phone her. Things would be more bearable if I could remember, really remember, that she\'s gone and never forget it. But I can\'t help it. Once a day I go to call her. I have never actually dialed the number, but I have come pretty close. Do you think I need to look that number up? I don\'t even have to remember it with my head. My fingers remember. And I am afraid that one day I will call her old number and somebody else will answer. Some stranger. Then what will happen? Then what will I do? It can strike at any time, this urge to call her. If I\'m happy or sad or worried, I suddenly get this need to talk to her about it. The way we always did when we were - I nearly said lovers, but it was that and much more. Together. When we were together. She\'s gone and I know she\'s gone. It\'s just that sometimes I forget. That\'s all. So now I know what I must do. I must eat the cold porridge, and fight this overwhelming urge to reach for the phone. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 
- Title: Man And Wife
- Description:
Harry Silver returns to face life in the 'blended family'. A wonderful new novel about modern times, which can be read as a sequel to the million selling Man and Boy, or completely on its own. Man and Wife is a novel about love and marriage - about why we fall in love and why we marry; about why we stay and why we go. Harry Silver is a man coming to terms with a divorce and a new marriage. He has to juggle with time and relationships, with his wife and his ex-wife, his son and his stepdaughter, his own work and his wife's fast-growing career. Meanwhile his mother, who stood so steadfastly by his father until he died, is not getting any younger or stronger herself. In fact, everything in Harry's life seems complicated. And when he meets a woman in a million, it gets even more so...Man and Wife stands on its own as a brilliant novel about families in the new century, written with all the humour, passion and superb storytelling that have made Tony Parsons a favourite author in over thirty countries. From the Publisher Tony Parson's wonderful character,Harry Silver, returns to face life in the ‘blended family’. A wonderful new novel about modern times, which can be read as a sequel to the million selling Man and Boy, or completely on its own. About the Author Tony Parsons is a columnist for the Mirror and has written for a host of other publications. He was a regular guest on BBC TV's Late Review for six years. His novel Man and Boy is a publishing phenomenon - over a million copies sold, winner of the UK Book of the Year award and translated into thirty languages. Tony Parsons lives in London. Excerpted from Man and Wife by Tony Parsons. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. My son has a new father.He doesn’t actually call the guy dad – come on, he wouldn’t do that to me – but I can’t kid myself. This guy – Richard, bloody Richard – has replaced me in all the ways that matter.Richard is there when my son eats his breakfast (Coco Pops, right? See, Pat, I still remember the Coco Pops). Richard is there when my boy plays quietly with his Star Wars toys (playing quietly because Richard is more of a Harry Potter man, not so big on light sabres and Death Stars and Jedi Knights).And Richard is there at night sharing a bed with the mother of my son.Let’s not forget that bit. ‘So how’s it going?’I asked my son the same question every Sunday as we took our places in the burger bar, our Happy Meals between us, among all the dads and little boys and girls just like us. You know. The weekend families.‘Good,’ he said.That was all. Good? Just good? And it’s funny, and a little bit sad, because when he was smaller, you couldn’t stop him talking, he was full of questions.How do I know when to wake up? Where do I go when I am asleep? How do I grow up? Why doesn’t the sky stop? You’re not going to die, right? And is a Death Star bigger than the moon?You couldn’t shut him up in the old days.‘School’s okay? You get on with everyone in your class? You’re feeling all right about things, darling?I never asked him about Richard.‘Good,’ he repeated, poker-faced, drawing an impenetrable veil over his life with one little word. He picked up his burger in both hands, like a baby squirrel with a taste for junk food. And I watched him, realising that he was wearing clothes that I had never seen before. What family day out were they from? Why hadn’t I noticed them before? So many questions that I couldn’t even bring myself to ask him.‘ You like your teacher?’He nodded, biting off more Happy Meal than he could possibly chew, and making further comment impossible. We went through this routine every weekend. We had been doing it for two years, ever since he went to live with his mother.I asked him about school, friends and home. He gave me his name, rank and serial number.He was still recognisably the sweet-natured child with dirty blond hair who once rode a bike called Bluebell. The same boy who was cute at two years of age that stopped to stare at him in the street, who insisted his name was Luke Skywalker when he was three, who tried to be very brave when his mother left me when he was four and everything began to fall apart.Still my Pat.But he didn’t open his heart to me any more – what frightened him, the things that made him happy, the stuff of his dreams, the parts of the world that puzzled him – why doesn’t the sky stop? – in the same way he did when he was small.So much changes when they start school. Everything, in fact. You lose them then and you never really get them back. But it was more than school.There was a distance between us that I couldn’t seem to bridge, no matter how hard I tried. There were walls dividing us, and they were the walls of his new home. Not so new now. Another few years and he would have spent most of his life living away from me.‘What’s your Happy Meal taste like, Pat?’He rolled his eyes. ‘You ever have a Happy Meal?‘I’ve got one right here.’‘Well that’s exactly what it tastes like.’My son at seven years old. Sometimes I got on his nerves. I could tell. 
- Title: The Family Way
- Description:
Paulo loves Jessica. He thinks that together they are complete--a family of two. But Jessica can't be happy until she has a baby, and the baby stubbornly refuses to come. Can a man and a woman ever really be a family of two?
Megan doesn't love her boyfriend anymore. After a one-night stand with an Australian beach bum, she finds that even a trainee doctor can slip up on the family planning. Should you bring a child into the world if you don't love its father?
Cat loves her life. After bringing up her two younger sisters, all she craves is freedom. Her older boyfriend has done the family thing before and is in no rush to do it all again. But can a modern woman really find true happiness without ever being in the family way?
Three sisters. Three couples. Two pregnancies. Six men and women struggling with sex, love and the meaning of family. And one more bitter-sweet bestseller from the author of Man and Boy
