About a boy
Because the thing was that when she sat down next to him at dinner she was interested, for the first five minutes, before she'd worked him out, and in that five minutes he got a glimpse of what life could be like if he were in any way interesting. On balance, he thought, he'd prefer not to have that glimpse. What good did it do him, after all? He wasn't going to get to sleep with her. He wasn't going to go to a restaurant with her or understand how her father's affair with her mother's best friend had affected her views on having children. He hated that five-minute window. In the end, he thought, he would be happier if she turned around to look at him, just about managed not to vomit, and turned her back at him for the rest of the evening.If you've read the book and if you're aware of how the story unfolds, you'd realize that he hardly believes what he was writing. Still, he's captured that feeling every guy gets when he meets someone spectacular, every painful little pang of insecurity that creeps up and paralyzes even the smoothest of boys.
-- Nick Hornby, from "About a Boy"
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Recent Posts
PuchaThe story so far
September 2004