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Man and wife

By Tony Parsons

(70)

| Paperback | 9780006514824

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Critics

Short, pithy and efficient. And that's just the sentences

Man and Wife by Tony Parsons HarperCollins, £16.99, pp308 This, the sequel to Tony Parsons' bestselling Man and Boy, picks up where we left off. Harry Silver (early thirties, lives in north London, works in TV) is a year into Marriage Number Two, pic ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

No similes please, we're blended

Man and Wife by Tony Parsons 297pp, HarperCollins, £16.99 Few things are predictable in publishing, but such is his commercial and literary track record that Tony Parsons provides some exceptional certainties. One: with its predecessors' sales figure ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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3 Reviews

rest your eyes....if you can

I have been there......I somehow still am....and probably I will always be...

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Arabeska said on Jan 29, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Sequel of Man and boy

Good start, then depressing as you really wonder about men0s infedelity. Loved the little boy though.
Characters: Harry Silver, Syd

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Mati said on Apr 26, 2010 | Add your feedback

Amazon.co.uk Review
Man and Wife, the sequel to Tony Parsons' bestselling debut Man and Boy, follows the marital and parental misadventures of Harry Silver, a mawkish North London television producer. Harry has remarried. Second wife, Cyd, and her feisty daughter, Peggy, provide him and his Pha ... (continue)

Amazon.co.uk Review
Man and Wife, the sequel to Tony Parsons' bestselling debut Man and Boy, follows the marital and parental misadventures of Harry Silver, a mawkish North London television producer. Harry has remarried. Second wife, Cyd, and her feisty daughter, Peggy, provide him and his Phantom Menace obsessed son, Pat, with a family. Harry's luck couldn't be better. His television show, Fish on Friday, is a hit and Cyd's posh catering company, Food Glorious Food, is thriving. However, Harry is not the only one starting again. His ex-wife Gina has also remarried. Her partner Richard (who must be the only thirtysomething male on the planet who hates Star Wars) is Pat's "new father." When the couple announce they are moving to America--taking Pat with them--Harry reacts, in time-honoured fashion, by attacking Richard. Separated from his son by the Atlantic and struggling as Peggy's stepfather, Harry begins to yearn for a good old-fashioned "normal, family life"--the kind his lovely old mum and dear departed dad enjoyed. Rather surprisingly, he decides that Kazumi, an attractive Japanese photographer friend of Gina's, could be the answer to his prayers.
Male frailty and the perils of modern parenting are Parsons' forte, but Man and Wife, although occasionally touching, is overburdened by plot twists, unlikely conceits and whiffs of reactionary sentimentality. Parsons' fans are unlikely to be disappointed but, to indulge in a vaguely pertinent comparison, this follow up is definitely more Attack of the Clones than The Empire Strikes Back. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.com
Synopsis:Amazon.co.uk
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.
I read this about six years ago but obtained this copy for my husband to read as I thought he would enjoy it as well. He did!

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Lindyloumac said on Oct 2, 2009 | Add your feedback