Funny Girl
A Novel
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4.0 • 19 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A brilliant novel about a woman determined to make a name for herself as a sitcom star in 1960's London from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, High Fidelity and About a Boy
Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Funny Girl does what Nick Hornby does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We couldn’t wait to get our hands on the latest novel from Nick Hornby—and Funny Girl doesn’t disappoint. Filled with the author’s trademark wit and warmth, the novel evokes a ‘60s Britain that feels familiar even to those who didn't experience the era’s cult TV comedies and sexual permissiveness firsthand. The story follows provincial beauty Barbara Parker as she throws off her Miss Blackpool crown, rechristens herself Sophie Straw, and heads to London to try her hand at being a comedian. We loved Hornby’s touching tale of an ordinary young woman who isn’t afraid to chase her dreams.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barbara Parker of 1960s Blackpool is a big fish in a small pond beautiful, astute, and with aspirations of making it in television like her idol Lucille Ball. Upon moving to London, Barbara changes her name to Sophie and gets her big break. She walks in to an audition she's not suited for and leaves with the writers excited to pen a show specifically for her. The majority of Hornby's clever novel follows Sophie and her creative circle of friends through the success of the subsequent program on BBC. There's Clive, Barbara's foppish costar, Tony and Bill, the bantering and bickering writing partners who pen each episode, and Dennis, the producer who alternately fights for their program's creative direction and struggles to hide his growing fondness for Sophie, a woman he believes is completely out of his league. Hornby wonderfully captures the voice and rhythms of broadcast television of the time, and seems to delight in endless inversions of art imitating life imitating art, his characters inspiring and feeding upon the storylines they produce. The result is a delightful collection of characters that care as much as they harm, each struggling to determine who they want to be.
