Funny Girl
Nick Hornby
Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she
doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh, like her
heroine Lucille Ball. So she leaves Blackpool and her family behind, takes
herself off to London, and gets a job behind the cosmetics counter of a
Kensington department store, while trying to work out how she can get herself
noticed. A chance meeting with an agent results in a new name and an audition
for a new BBC comedy series. Sophie Straw's time has come.
Funny Girl is the story of a
television programme, and the people responsible for it: the writers, Tony and
Bill, friends since national service and comedy obsessives; producer Dennis,
Oxbridge educated, clever, mild and devoted to his team in general and Sophie
in particular; and Sophie's good-enough looking co-star Clive, who feels that
he's destined for better things, despite the apparently inexhaustible fringe
benefits that television stardom offers.
As the 1960s progress, and the British people fall in
love with Sophie's sitcom, the pleasures of teamwork begin to wane: nothing can
stay good forever, and the mess of real life will always intrude.
Nick Hornby's long-awaited novel, his first for five
years since Juliet, Naked,
is about work, popular culture, youth and old age, fame, class and
collaboration. It offers a captivating portrait of youthful exuberance and
creativity at a time when Britain itself was experiencing one of its most
enduring creative bursts.
About the author:
Nick Hornby is the author
of five best-selling novels (High
Fidelity, About a Boy, How To Be Good, A Long Way Down and Juliet,
Naked), a novel for young adults, Slam,
and four works of acclaimed non-fiction: Fever
Pitch, 31 Songs, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree and Stuff I’ve Been Reading. A Long Way Down, About a Boy, High Fidelity
and Fever Pitch have all been made
into major films. He also wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated An Education and the film adaption of Colm
Toibin’s Brooklyn.
Nick Hornby’s latest screenplay, Wild, based on the Cheryl Strayed’s
memoir and starring Reese Witherspoon, opens in New Zealand cinemas on 29
January 2015.
FUNNY GIRL BY NICK HORNBY
RRP $37.00 | VIKING, PENGUIN
GROUP (NZ)
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