Funny Girl
by Nick Hornby
- Used
- as new
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- As New/As New
- ISBN 10
- 1594205418
- ISBN 13
- 9781594205415
- Seller
-
Brooktondale, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
First printing of first US edition. Volume, measuring approximately 5.5" x 8.5", is bound in red paper spine and gray paper-covered boards, with black lettering to spine and author's initials on front cover. Book and dust jacket are like new.
"From the bestselling author of "High Fidelity," "About a Boy," and "A Long Way Down comes a highly anticipated new novel. Set in 1960's London, "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, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process."
"From the bestselling author of "High Fidelity," "About a Boy," and "A Long Way Down comes a highly anticipated new novel. Set in 1960's London, "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, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process."
Reviews
On Jan 4 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“What was he doing with her? How on earth could he love her? But he did. Or, at least, she made him feel sick, sad and distracted. Perhaps there was another way of describing that unique and useless combination of feelings, but ‘love’ would have to do for now”
Funny Girl is the sixth full-length novel by British author, Nick Hornby. Set, for the most part, in the mid-to-late 1960s, Hornby’s latest novel gives the reader an intimate look at the making of a TV comedy series. His TV show, cast and crew are fictional, but Hornby firmly establishes the era with historical fact, using mentions of real-life politicians, personalities and events, as well as photographs, an advertisements and a cartoon strip. By adding extracts of scripts, a book cover, reviews, and program notes, he gives the whole thing an authenticity that will delight readers familiar with those years.
Barbara Parker’s heroine is Lucille Ball, and her ambition is to be in comedy TV. She may be beautiful enough to win Miss Blackpool, but she gives it up in an instant to head to London, to become Sophie Straw, and, eventually, to audition for a BBC Comedy Playhouse show. Before too long, she is starring, as (ironically) Barbara from Blackpool, in a hugely popular sitcom series about a married couple, written by her comic heroes, Bill Gardiner and Tony Holmes, and titled “Barbara (and Jim)”.
Characters and dialogue are Hornby’s strengths, and he does not disappoint with Funny Girl. It is impossible not to like and care about this diverse bunch, despite (or perhaps because of) their many and varied flaws: vanity, confusion about sexuality, selfishness, superficiality, timidity. There is plenty of humour, much of it dry, the sort that elicits wry chuckles rather than laugh-out-loud guffaws (“Davie remained undeterred. In his mind’s eye, he said, he always saw Clive as a cowboy. Clive had always thought that Davie needed his mind’s eye tested”).
Topical themes of the sixties feature: feminism, homosexuality and the sexually permissive society (“He was talking about the times they all suddenly lived in, and how hard it was not to be a small boy in a sweet shop with no cash register”). This is a novel in which life imitates art, but also, often, the reverse, as the writers of the show rely on what they know. This funny and moving novel is another brilliant dose of Hornby at his best.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Palimpsest Scholarly Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 714c
- Title
- Funny Girl
- Author
- Nick Hornby
- Book Condition
- New
- Jacket Condition
- As New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 1594205418
- ISBN 13
- 9781594205415
- Publisher
- Riverhead Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2015
Terms of Sale
Palimpsest Scholarly Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged. Packages are shipped USPS. New York state purchases will also be charged state tax.
About the Seller
Palimpsest Scholarly Books
Biblio member since 2017
Brooktondale, New York
About Palimpsest Scholarly Books
Palimpsest Scholarly Books & Services is a new online bookstore founded and managed by Dr. Raul Delgado-Rodriguez, a Harvard-trained comparatist. It specializes in the buying and selling of scholarly and rare books, as well as providing services for collectors of such books, including the appraisal of private collections. We have titles across a broad range of fields and cultures. We specialize in providing uncommon foreign-language works.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....