Status
Call number
Genres
Publication
Description
A hilarious and touching debut novel in the seriocomic Nick Hornby tradition. Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles who shares a bachelor pad with three other guys. He spends his days lying in bed (a minifridge positioned perfectly within reach) and playing trivia games with his underachieving roommates. And when he feels like it, Michael crosses the city and returns home to his unsuspecting wife and two small children. Michael is living a double life, stretching out his wilting salad days with imaginary business trips and fake deadlines while his wife enjoys the exhausting misery of the little ones. It's the best thing for his marriage, Michael figures. She can care for the new loves of her life as it seems only she knows how, and he can sleep until the afternoon. Can this double life continue indefinitely? In The Best a Man Can Get, best-selling comic novelist John O'Farrell takes readers on a dark romp through the soul of the contemporary male, torn between eternal adolescence and the very real demands of fatherhood. It's wry, witty, and surprisingly charming. "Sharp-witted slapstick." --Publishers Weekly… (more)
User reviews
Despite all the laddish antics, I found Michael quite a sympathetic character - his description of the drudgery of early parenthood is entirely accurate. It was hard to blame him for wanting to escape from it. And of course it was massively funny throughout.
The only dip in entertainment value for me was the mandatory moment in which our errant hero Sees The Light. It was always going to happen and when it did it was buttock-clenchingly trite. What a relief, then, that there was still plenty of humour, as well as a twist or three up the author's sleeve after that point
Narrator and central character Michael Adams is a 32 year old freelance jingle writer living in north London with a wife and two young children to
Michael initially believes that Catherine copes with the children much better when he is not about and that he is a better husband by staying away throughout the week returning home well rested and thus more jovial at the weekend. He doesn't notice that Catherine is in reality putting on a front and is struggling with the harsh demands of motherhood with a stay away partner. Michael eventually comes to realise that his double life is having a financial and an emotional cost on his family so decides to move out of the flat and back home permanently. However, in the meantime Catherine discovers his secret and leaves home herself with the kids. Michael finally wakes up to what being a father really entails. He himself had grown up without one as his own had run off with a series of women when Michael was young. This at least gives some mitigating background to Michael's own behaviour whilst at the same time giving the tale a little added substance.
On the credit side there is a restless energy and a pleasing ironic style throughout along with some rather clever ideas. It is a well observed, if grossly exaggerated, piece of work about the differences between the stay at home home-maker and the going out to work partner with their excuses to not rushing home at the end of the working day.
However, on debit side I felt that far too long was often spent on delivering one single joke meaning that many of the gags missed the mark and whilst I might have read this with a smile on my face I didn't laugh out loud.
This is undoubtedly a lads' mag sort of novel, light and none too demanding, ideal for a long flight/train journey, or something to peruse whilst sipping sangria beside a pool somewhere and as such will help fill a certain void. It isn't by any means a bad novel, it is not one that will probably live long in the memory either.