Writing Man and Boy: Q & A with Tony Parsons
Foreword to the 20th Anniversary Edition
I started writing Man and Boy the day that I held my mother’s hand as the doctor told her that she had terminal lung cancer and there was nothing more they could do.
My mum took the news with her usual combination of humour, stoicism and defiance. She came out of the doctor’s surgery with a big grin, totally convinced she was about to prove the medical profession wrong. Typical mum. I went home and started writing a story about a family that looked a lot like my family.
It hit me hard that day, knowing that I would soon be in a world that would not contain either of my parents. My dad – Victor, but always Vic – had been gone for twelve years. My mum – Emma, but always Em – would be gone in twelve months, the doctors said (Em begged to differ). The story I started that day was about family and feelings, parents and their children, illness that is terminal and a love that can’t be killed by death. It was a celebration of family, but there was a sadness in it because I suddenly knew how hard – impossible, in the end – it is to hold on to the ones you care about. Man and Boy was a simple story, plainly told, and for some reason it went on to sell in millions.
We all watch our parents age as our children grow, and we all look for love and often misplace it. We see our family grow and change, and in the end we all must say goodbye to those we love the most. In the end, children grow up and find a family of their own. In the end your parents die. It is the most natural thing in the world, and yet somehow the most unimaginable. But not even a family full of love lasts forever.
At events to promote Man and Boy, I regularly looked up and saw members of the audience crying – and of course they were not crying about my story, they were remembering their own losses. It was a book that was written from the heart and so it had no trouble touching many other hearts. Because a lot of people knew exactly what this stuff felt like. And if they didn’t, then they knew it was waiting down the road. It wasn’t complicated.
I wrote Man and Boy when my mum was dying and that is why it is full of raw emotion. Although much of it is about fathers and sons and the gaps between them, it is my