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The Best a Man Can Get: A Novel of Fatherhood and Its Discontents

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Overview

The Best a Man Can Get by John O'Farrell is a hilarious and touching debut novel in the seriocomic Nick Hornby tradition that demonstrates why marriage, fatherhood, and maturity don't always arrive on a synchronized schedule. Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles who shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer and musical trivia games, and occasionally doing a spot of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children. For Michael is living a double life. He escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to pull an all-nighter at work or travel away on business. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in his male paradise, doing all the stupid, pointless, gloriously enjoyable stuff that most men with small children can only dream about.

Editorial Reviews

Are the wife and kids getting you down, taking up too much of your leisure time, disturbing your beauty rest Pretend you're single, rent an apartment and sleep there instead. O'Farrell's (Things Can Only Get Better) has great fun with his monstrous premise in this sharp-witted slapstick set in London. Jingle writer Mike Adams, 32, is a perplexed father of two, shocked to learn that his wife, Catherine, is pregnant again. Knowing he may never realize his dream of being a rock musician, Mike justifies his double life renting an apartment in Balham with college student Jim, porn addict Simon and shy Paul by stressing that his long separations from Catherine solidify their marriage by keeping Mike sane. Catherine believes Mike is really renting a music studio and pulling all-nighters to compose his commercial jingles. Holes develop in Mike's story as he retreats further into his beer-soaked pseudo-bachelorhood, stops payments on the family home in Kentish Town and is tempted by nymphet Kate. Clever psychological riffs Mike feels he is becoming a father figure to Jim, Simon and Paul abound between chaotic parenting and apartment scenes as Mike fears he is emulating his own father, who walked out when Mike was just five. Denial turns to despair when Catherine bursts Mike's bubble, saying she is unhappy that he works so much, leaving her alone to raise the children. As the dark shadows of divorce, financial ruin and creative failure stalk Mike, O'Farrell succeeds in creating a hit single for the Nick Hornby crowd. (June) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of John O'Farrell

John OýFarrell has been a writer for the satirical television show Spitting Image and on the film Chicken Run and is a regular columnist for The Independent (London). His nonfiction book on the futility of being a Labour Party supporter, Things Can Only Get Better, was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller in Great Britain. He lives in Clapham, England, with his wife and two childrenýwhen he isnýt ýworking.ý

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

441.64 KB

Number of Pages

272

eBook ISBN

9780767909280

Awards

  • Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Excerpt from: The Best a Man Can Get by John O'Farrell

The Best a Man Can Get

I FOUND IT HARD working really long hours when I was my own boss. The boss kept giving me the afternoon off. Sometimes he gave me the morning off as well. Sometimes he'd say, "Look, you've worked pretty hard today, why don't you take a well-earned rest tomorrow." If I overslept he never rang me to ask where I was; if I was late to my desk he always happened to turn up at exactly the same time; whatever excuse I came up with, he always believed it. Being my own boss was great. Being my own employee was a disaster, but I never thought about that side of the equation.

On this particular day I was woken by the sound of children. I knew from experience that this meant it was either just before nine o'clock in the morning, when children started arriving at the school over the road, or around quarter past eleven--mid-morning playtime. I rolled over to look at the clock and the little numbers on my radio alarm informed me that it was 1:24. Lunchtime. I had slept for fourteen solid hours, an all-time record.

I called it my radio alarm, though in reality it served only as a large and cumbersome clock. I had given up using the radio-alarm function long before, after I'd kept waking up with early morning erections to the news that famine was spreading in the Sudan or that Princess Anne had just had her wisdom teeth out. It's amazing how quickly an erection can disappear. Anyway, alarm clocks are for people who have something more important to do than sleeping, and this was a concept that I struggled to grasp. Some days I would wake up, decide that it wasn't worth getting dressed and then just stay in bed until, well, bedtime. But it wasn't apathetic, what's-the-point-of-getting-up lying in bed, it was positive, quality-of-life lying in bed. I had resolved that leisure time should involve genuine leisure. If it had been up to me there would have been nothing at the Balham Leisure Centre except rows of beds with all the Sunday papers scattered at the bottom of the duvet.

My bedroom had evolved so that the need to get out of bed was kept to an absolute minimum. Instead of a bedside table there was a fridge, inside which milk, bread and butter were kept. On top of the fridge was a kettle, which fought for space with a tray of mugs, a box of tea bags, a selection of breakfast cereals, a toaster and an overloaded plug adapter. I clicked on the kettle and popped some bread in the toaster. I reached across for that day's newspaper and was slightly surprised as a set of keys slid off the top and clinked onto the floor. Then I remembered that I hadn't slept for fourteen solid hours after all; there had been a vague but annoying conversation very early that morning. As far as I could remember, it had gone something like this: