The Best a Man Can Get: A Novel of Fatherhood and its Discontents

The Best a Man Can Get by John O’Farrell is a hilarious and touching debut novel in the seriocomic Nick Hornby tradition that demonstrates why marriage, fatherhood, and maturity don’t always arrive on a synchronized schedule.

Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles who shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer and musical trivia games, and occasionally doing a spot of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children.

For Michael is living a double life. He escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to pull an all-nighter at work or travel away on business. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in his male paradise, doing all the stupid, pointless, gloriously enjoyable stuff that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can lead this double life indefinitely, until the inevitable slip exposes him and threatens to blow his marriage to kingdom come.

The Best a Man Can Get is a darkly comic confessional that peers deeply (and amusingly) into the soul of the contemporary male, divided between the pull of family and the dream of escape. Graced by a flawless eye for detail and impeccable timing, it offers a generous allotment of both belly laughs and shocks of recognition for men and women alike.

John O’Farrell has finally given readers the sparkling and candid novel that fatherhood needs and deserves.