One For My Baby (Abridged‪)‬

New novel about men, love and relationships by the author of the Book of the Year, Man and Boy.

Alfie Budd found the perfect woman with whom to spend the rest of his life, and then lost her. He doesn’t believe you get a second chance at love.

Returning to the England he left behind during the brief, idyllic time of his marriage, Alfie finds the rest of his world collapsing around him.

He takes comfort in a string of pointless, transient affairs with his students at Churchill’s Language School, and he tries to learn Tai Chi from an old Chinese man, George Chang.

Will Alfie ever find a family life as strong as the Changs’? Can he give up meaningless sex for a meaningful relationship? And how do you play it when the woman you like has a difficult child who is infatuated with a TV wrestler known as The Slab?

Like his runaway bestseller, Man and Boy, Tony Parsons’s new novel is full of laughter and tears, biting social comment and overwhelming emotion.

Reviews

‘Subtle and intelligent’ The Times

‘The same combination of self-deprecating humour and well-intentioned bafflement that endeared Man and Boy to millions of readers’ Observer

‘Stylish, polished, complex and it really gets its teeth into the big issues of sex, love, family and friendship’ Mirror

‘Another brilliant novel that combines laughter and tears, love and sex – and real human emotions’ Evening Standard

‘The writing is confident and accomplished…He makes the reader care…This is art shot through with humanity’ Independent on Sunday

‘Heartbreakingly universal and full of killer lines on love and love lost’ Financial Times

About the author

Tony Parsons is the author of Man and Boy , winner of the Book of the Year prize. His subsequent novels – One For My Baby, Man and Wife, The Family Way, Stories We Could Tell and My Favourite Wife – were all bestsellers. He lives in London.