This book is a story of a coming of age for both the older and newer generations alike; although the results may end up being a little different along the way, it shows a lovely progression of character development up to the point of finding oneself.Marcus; a shy, weird, pre teen boy, is faced with a life of bullying and torment while his mother is completely oblivious to everything – she makes him interested in kitsch and slightly obscure things which a “normal” boy of his age would not be interested in. His mother is a wreck, and through the book, Marcus has a lot of things to deal with on top of family problems. His progression through these ordeals is extraordinary, and the amount that one character can change so much, without it being sudden, right before your eyes is an outstanding feat.Will, on the other hand, is a shallow layabout that doesn’t really do much with his day other than read, watch neighbours and try to chat up random women at single parent conventions. Will matures throughout the book and this comes across in his spoken words as well as his thoughts and actions – he becomes a lot more selfless and just starts to take the barriers down when it comes to feeling any kind of emotion other than vanity.Marcus and Will as a duo throughout the book were a pleasure to read, their bats of conversation were so straight to the point and they just seemed to bounce off of each other as well as help each other progress as people. In fact they each had a hand in the others development as characters as they each had something to give to the other.This book is pretty much a character and feelings based book, and this point is proven solely by the lack of any particular plot or storyline. There were times when I didn’t actually think that the book was going anywhere, and it just seemed to be stuck in a rut – things were being overly described unnecessarily, and I was just getting bored. Thinking about it afterwards, there is no particular storyline as it is just a book about finding yourself. I thought that made it slightly lacking to a degree as every single other box was ticked in my “good book checklist” bar the story. Don’t get me wrong, the depths behind this book were stunning, and I found myself highlighting a lot of the quotes on my kindle as I went as little bits of advice for myself even, but I just would have liked to have had some structure.Thoroughly enjoyed this read, Hornby’s definitely plucked my character involvement strings with this book, and I’d gladly pick up another of his in the future.
