About a Girl

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It took me a while to get into this book.  It’s written by someone close to my age. It’s called Funny Girl; it’s about a theater star named Barbara; a gay man is one of the characters. But once I realized that the other shoe was not going to drop and the Streisand reference was unintentional—though I think anyone from the U. S. would have changed the character’s name—I was able to get into the story the author meant to tell.

It’s a sweet story about a girl who wants to be the Lucille Ball of Britain. It covers the early 1960s, British culture and the BBC during the beginnings of the sexual revolution. Like all of Hornby’s novels, it’s a love story that covers more than romantic love. It’s about ambition and artistry, friendship and family, social change, and the common eternal verities of relationships.

Hornby is always generous to his main characters, the main thing I love about British pop fiction: slightly quirky, endearing people who muddle through and carry on through life’s crises, winning hearts in the end. Despite the initial hiccup, he won me over, as always.

I received a temporary egalley of the book through First To Read.




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