The Boys Are Back

Description

Soon to be a major film starring Clive Owen. When Simon Carr's wife, Susie, tragically loses her battle with cancer, Simon is left to raise his five-year-old son, Alexander, on his own. Soon after, his eleven-year-old son from a previous marriage, Hugo, comes to live with them too. All too quickly, plumped-up cushions, crisp beds and a drifting scent of rosemary from the kitchen are replaced with a floor piled high with video-games, Lego and comics. While visiting mothers deem his parenting 'semi-feral', Simon dryly retorts that his methods are simply 'free-range'.In this new all-male partnership, Simon faces the challenges of parenthood unaided, as father and sons alike learn to become a family again. Carr's emotionally honest, compellingly anarchic and sharply comic story of a single parent's struggle is at once heartbreaking and wonderfully life-affirming.

The Independent's parliamentary sketch writer and columnist since 2000, Simon Carr was described by Tony Blair as 'the most vicious sketch writer working in Britain today'. 'Poison,' said Charles Clarke. In the 1980s he helped launch the Independent, and was a speech writer for the prime minister of New Zealand from 1992 to 1994. His working principle is 'Indignation keeps us young.'

Achingly funny and almost unbearably moving * Daily Mail * Carr's brilliantly written account of life as a single parent should become a required manual on parenting * Sunday Times * Both men and women need his confident, politically incorrect but thoroughly realistic assertions. * Independent * It's about living life to the full. It's full of everyday observations that are about real life, not just reel life. -- Clive Owen * Daily Mail * Compulsive * Guardian *