Funny Girl

Nick Hornby

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

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 ingenue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters.

Make them laugh, and they're yours forever…

Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh. So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.

Funny Girl is the story of a smash-hit TV show and the people behind the scenes. But when life starts imitating art, they all face a choice. How long can they keep going before it's time to change the channel?

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.

'Like all Hornby's best work, it is both hugely enjoyable and deceptively artful.'

'Hornby's sunniest novel.'

Review by Ben Macnair (010623) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 8/10
Like all of his work, Nick Hornsby’s Funny Girl is a novel that places character before plot, that put ordinary people into fairly ordinary situations and sees what happens.

In Fever Pitch we had a football fan navigating adult life. In High Fidelity it was a man more in love with music than any other force. In Funny Girl it is a woman who takes her cue from such stars at Lucille Ball.

Barbara Parker has just been crowned Miss Blackpool. The life that she sees ahead of her is with her loving, but slightly useless boyfriend, and her father. This, though is the 1960’s and Barbara wants the bright lights of London, the starring role in a successful show, the high flying romantic interests.

The life that Hornby draws is one of surface gloss, but also one of hard work. After meeting an agent and going to a series of auditions for roles, Barbara finds herself in the orbit of television writers and actors. A name change to Sophie Straw, and her life changes, but with the fame comes other issues.

The mother that abandoned Barbara and her Father resurfaces, wanting to know Barbara, not as her daughter, but as the star she has become. As Barbara finds herself becoming more and more famous, due to her sitcom, Barbara (and Jim) she finds the tabloid interest in her life, her love life, her engagement to television husband Clive all give a picture that doesn’t reflect the reality.

As the novel progresses, Barbara (and Jim) becomes less and less popular, Barbara’s life in the spotlight drawing to a close, finding real love and a life outside of television is the fate that awaits Barbara, but she knows that the times in the spotlight were her best times.
Ben Macnair (1st June 2023)