All Over the World

A hush has settled on this house by four in the morning. 8-ball sleeps at my feet, paws folded, making an occasional delicate grunt of happiness if I reach down to pet him. Magic spills a glossy diagonal across my side of the bed. I know if I touch him he will awake, purring, to nuzzle me, walk on my hair, drool lovingly on my pillow, and intermittently poke my face with a velvet-padded paw. (Magic is 100% a Mama’s boy and also just a teensy bit thick, as they say.) Across the hall, a single orange paw and rumpled tail show where Amber has bedded down for the night in the cat condo.

My husband breaths quietly beside me, and the only other sound is the quiet suserration of an ocean sounds CD by my husband’s pillow. Outside, a glimpse of Christmas Town beckons from across the cul-de-sac, where our neighbors, both Wal-Mart employees, have installed every purchasable holiday fantasia in an ongoing spirit of keeping American consumerism and the feng shui of Snoopy’s doghouse alive. And yet, at this hour and across this distance, the 8-foot blow-up snowmen and tinsel-bedecked caravan of shimmering packages look both fantastical and somehow even lovely amid their twinkle of festive lights.

In spite of the unlikeliness of the hour, my brain has decided I’m done sleeping for the night. Might as well get up and read in the pre-dawn stillness. Today, I am finishing About a Boy, in order to fulfill a request for holiday theme reviews and secure my rights, per Hannah's DVD blog, to the Good Ol' Virginia Killer Egg Nog recipe. Thanks to Hannah’s eloquence, I am sure THE recipe will change my life, or at least significantly alter a worthwhile percentage of holiday evenings, so here goes.

Professional rebound-guy and incurable fantasist Will Freeman has made a career of avoiding committed relationships. (“We always thought you had hidden depths,” his friends say. “No,” says Will. “I really am this shallow.”) To facilitate his quest to meet attractive but lonely ladies, Will invents a two-year-old son and joins a group called SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together). “Children democratize beautiful single women,” Will theorizes, thereby making them more likely to date do-nothings like himself. But instead of the blissful series of brief but uplifting encounters he imagines springing from his new parental persona—curiously, Will sees his half-truths and fantasies as a harmless way to meet and provide interim solace to jaded women on their way to their next real relationship—Will finds himself making an unlikely friend of 12-year-old uber-geek Marcus. As the consequences of Will’s fictionalized fatherhood begins to catch up with him (note, concepts like cause-and-effect and speculation beyond tomorrow’s lunch do not appear among Will’s strengths), Will finds he has as much to learn from Marcus about family, honesty, and caring as Marcus has to learn from him about being cool.

Iffy and potentially clichéd as the above scenario may sound, About a Boy has a certain charm. Yes, Will embodies an extreme version of the oft-cited male capacity for avoiding any discussion around or expression of ucky relationship stuff. Still, as in his earlier novel High Fidelity, author Nick Hornby has a knack for capturing the quirks and foibles of modern mid-‘90s relationships, both those that are a product of, in ‘90s lingo, the Mars/Venus rift, and those arising from a second generation of “hippie” idealists at odds with a self-avowed Me generation, and making them feel deeply personal. (The scenes, for example, where Will begins to feel at home at Marcus’ family’s geeky Christmas gathering are priceless.*) In spite of—perhaps because of— flaws, his characters are understandable, even unlikable: even when they mess up royally, we can’t help but root for them.

On the other side of the afore-mentioned Mars/Venus rift, Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary spans a single year, from Christmas to Christmas, in the life of 30-something “singleton” Bridget Jones on her permanent quest to both form a functional f***wittage-free relationship and lose 20 pounds. As good a revisionist version of Jane Austen as I’ve seen, Bridget Jones is uninhibited, laugh-out-loud funny, and a rockin’ good retelling of Pride and Prejudice with modern twists throughout. The generation of women who love the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth will find much to relate to in this feel-good holiday read, including (you guessed it) a hero named Darcy, a silly, flighty mum in the spirit of Mrs. Bennett and Lydia rolled into one, plenty of social satire, and a healthy post-modern touch of self-reflexive humor, since Bridget herself is a fan of the BBC’s Firth-fest. “It struck me as being pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party,” Jones muses on meeting her Mr. Darcy. “It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head on a tree.”

One word of advice on Bridget Jones, though. Don’t read this book if you are on a serious diet. Not only will Bridget’s occasional (justified, of course) 4,000 calorie binge days make you feel okay about breaking your diet, you will find yourself possessed of an undeniable soul-searching emptiness that can only be filled by chocolate croissants.

So, Hannah, what do you say? Enough to make you hand over the recipe? It’s nearly the New Year, and there’s partying to be had! Just don't forget you are always invited.

**Watching the film version of About a Boy, my husband—NOT, I should point out, a geek—was particularly struck by the holiday party scenes with Marcus' geek family. "I can relate," he remarked drily... but also fondly. We geeks are a pleasant lot, after all.