I was a latecomer to Nick Hornby’s writing. He was well into bestsellerdom when I condescended to pluck About a Boy from the library shelves, not expecting to find much connection with a writer whose first book was a memoir about his dedication to Arsenal football team. How wrong I was! Although I still haven’t read his memoir, I’ve discovered in his fiction sophisticated characterisation and psychological depth beneath deceptively simple prose. Nick Hornby excels at portraying the obsessions and eccentricities of ordinary people, and their psychological and social implications, with great humour and warmth. His last novel, Juliet, Naked, concerning the triangular relationship between a reclusive rock star, Tucker Crowe, Duncan, his most dedicated fan and Annie, Duncan’s long-suffering partner, was a beautiful study of creativity, intimacy and their absence.
A mismatched couple is at the centre of his latest novel: set in mid-1960s London, Barbara is a buxom blonde from Blackpool with conservative sentiments; Jim a left-leaning Home Counties fellow with a job (under the then Labour government) at Number Ten. But as Barbara and Jim are the central characters of a highly successful TV sitcom, the reader gets to know them at one step removed: via the actors, Sophie (previously Barbara, the five-minute Miss Blackpool and the eponymous funny girl) and Clive (licking his narcissistic wounds at being relegated to the supporting role); writers, Tony and Bill, who meet in a police holding cell during their national service, kindred spirits who gradually drift apart; and the Oxbridge-educated director, Dennis, constantly challenged to defend his devotion to comedy within the still somewhat snobbish BBC.
A mismatched couple is at the centre of his latest novel: set in mid-1960s London, Barbara is a buxom blonde from Blackpool with conservative sentiments; Jim a left-leaning Home Counties fellow with a job (under the then Labour government) at Number Ten. But as Barbara and Jim are the central characters of a highly successful TV sitcom, the reader gets to know them at one step removed: via the actors, Sophie (previously Barbara, the five-minute Miss Blackpool and the eponymous funny girl) and Clive (licking his narcissistic wounds at being relegated to the supporting role); writers, Tony and Bill, who meet in a police holding cell during their national service, kindred spirits who gradually drift apart; and the Oxbridge-educated director, Dennis, constantly challenged to defend his devotion to comedy within the still somewhat snobbish BBC.
In its celebration of popular culture, Funny Girl is classic Hornby territory, but I missed the psychological depth I’d found in Juliet, Naked. While each of the main characters is skilfully loaded with the necessary baggage, even when shown the lack that drives her ambition, Sophie/Barbara failed to get under my skin. I much preferred the poignant portrayal of the various accommodations made by single men, husbands and wives prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and would have loved to know more about the patient and dignified June. But if I were in any doubt whether this were the novel Nick Hornby wanted to write, my answer is in the thoughts of one of the scriptwriters (p230):
it was a job he enjoyed, loved even, and a job he could do, and a job he was well paid for. All of this seemed like a miracle to him. […] So, yes, he wanted to fill up the pages, with jokes and observations and situations […] the audience wanted. If he did that, then he’d be allowed to do it over and over again. […] He didn’t think about what else he had to say, or whether he was frustrated by the confines of their chosen medium. [… It was] like a mechanic wanted to fix a car, like a doctor wanted to make people better. He couldn’t imagine mechanics getting frustrated because engines were too simple. Presumably every engine presented a different problem, just as every episode offered a new challenge. And if you were up to it, then why not keep going?
This is a novel about fame, class, creativity, ambition and teamwork in the swinging 60s, perhaps the golden age of television. Thanks to Viking Penguin for my review copy.
I’d reached the home stretch when Charli Mills posed her latest flash-fiction challenge to write a 99-word story inspired by a muse. Nick Hornby seems to be the kind of writer who finds his muse in other art forms, particularly contemporary music and, I’ll grudgingly admit, sport. In Funny Girl, the actor Sophie/Barbara is the creative spark that pushes Tony and Bill to discard their original script and come up with something startlingly new. While the novel challenges the notion that only men can be funny, the woman is still given the traditional role of muse to the men.
The Pre-Raphaelite painters often used the same women over and over as the model for their artwork. Wandering around art galleries, I’ve wondered about the women assigned the role of Pre-Raphaelite muse. How would it affect the sense of self to be the springboard for another’s creativity? Would one feel valued or abused?
Apologies for the abrupt change of tone, I think I might have turned Pre-Raphaelite myself:
I’d reached the home stretch when Charli Mills posed her latest flash-fiction challenge to write a 99-word story inspired by a muse. Nick Hornby seems to be the kind of writer who finds his muse in other art forms, particularly contemporary music and, I’ll grudgingly admit, sport. In Funny Girl, the actor Sophie/Barbara is the creative spark that pushes Tony and Bill to discard their original script and come up with something startlingly new. While the novel challenges the notion that only men can be funny, the woman is still given the traditional role of muse to the men.
The Pre-Raphaelite painters often used the same women over and over as the model for their artwork. Wandering around art galleries, I’ve wondered about the women assigned the role of Pre-Raphaelite muse. How would it affect the sense of self to be the springboard for another’s creativity? Would one feel valued or abused?
Apologies for the abrupt change of tone, I think I might have turned Pre-Raphaelite myself:
At first, I laughed at what he claimed to see, in me, a girl like any other. Why flee my playmates in the park to stand just so for hours? I did not care if dukes and lords might hang my likeness in their galleries.
I hungered for his ardent gaze, his all-encompassing concentration. What lover would regard me so intently? What mirror reflect such light? I did not tire to stand just so while he found my essence in his canvas.
So when he chose another muse I thought I’d drown, Ophelia-like, singing in a stream of flowers.
I hungered for his ardent gaze, his all-encompassing concentration. What lover would regard me so intently? What mirror reflect such light? I did not tire to stand just so while he found my essence in his canvas.
So when he chose another muse I thought I’d drown, Ophelia-like, singing in a stream of flowers.
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