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About a Boy

By Nick Hornby

Chapter One

'Have you split up now?'

'Are you being funny?'

People quite often thought Marcus was being funny when he wasn't. He couldn't understand it. Asking his mum whether she'd split up with Roger was a perfectly sensible question, he thought: they'd had a big row, then they'd gone off into the kitchen to talk quietly, and after a little while they'd come out looking serious, and Roger had come over to him, shaken his hand and wished him luck at his new school, and then he'd gone.

'Why would I want to be funny?'

'Well, what does it look like to you?'

'It looks to me like you've split up. But I just wanted to make sure.

'We've split up.'

'So he's gone?'

'Yes, Marcus, he's gone.'

He didn't think he'd ever get used to this business. He had quite liked Roger, and the three of them had been out a few times; now, apparently he'd never see him again. He didn't mind, but it was weird if you thought about it. He'd once shared a toilet with Roger, when they were both busting for a pee after a car journey. You'd think that if you'd peed with someone you ought to keep in touch with them somehow.

'What about his pizza?' They'd just ordered three pizzas when the argument started, and they hadn't arrived yet.

'We'll share. If we're hungry.'

'They're big, though. And didn't he order one with pepperoni on it?'

Marcus and his mother were vegetarians. Roger wasn't.

'We'll throw it away, then,' she said.

'Or we could pick the pepperoni off. I don't think they give you much of it anyway. It's mostly cheese and tomato.'

'Marcus, I'm not really thinking about the pizzas right now.'

'OK. Sorry. Why did you split up?'

'Oh ... this and that. I don't really know how to explain it.'

Marcus wasn't surprised that she couldn't explain what had happened. He'd heard more or less the whole argument, and he hadn't understood a word of it; there seemed to be a piece missing somewhere. When Marcus and his mum argued, you could hear the important bits: too much, too expensive, too late, too young, bad for your teeth, the other channel, homework, fruit. But when his mum and her boyfriends argued, you could listen for hours and            still miss the point, the thing, the fruit and homework part of it. It was like they’d been told to argue and just came out with anything they could think of.

[Here a part is left out. In it we learn that Marcus is about 12, and he and his mum have just moved to London from Cambridge. They start eating the pizzas while watching television.]

He found the remote control down the back of the sofa and zapped through the channels. He didn’t want to watch any of the soaps, because soaps were full of trouble, and he was worried that the trouble in the soaps would remind his mum of the trouble she had in her own life. So they watched a nature programme about this sort of fish thing that lived right down the bottom of caves and couldn’t see anything, a fish that nobody could see the point of; he didn’t think that would remind his mum of anything much.

(554 words)

Annotations:

weird – strange, difficult to understand; to be busting for a pee – (coll.) to need to pee urgently; pepperoni – type of Italian sausage

Tasks:

1. What can be said about Marcus’s life, his family situation, the problems he and his mum have to cope with. (comprehension)

2. This is the beginning of the novel, and here we get to know the boy of the title, Marcus. How is he characterised? Think of direct and indirect characterisation. (analysis)

3. You have a choice here:

3 a. From the hints in the text, imagine what an argument between Marcus and his mother would be about. Then write this argument. Make it lively and entertaining to read, use stage directions where necessary. (creative writing)

or

3 b. We read several texts about problems of young people, a poem (“Dress Sense”), a short story (“Put it back”), a drama (“Pressure Cooker”). Compare the texts and say which you liked most, give reasons. (Comment)