| Title | : | Funny Girl |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1594205418 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781594205415 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 452 |
| Publication | : | First published November 6, 2014 |
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 Reviews
-
Never before has the time-worn critic's trope "Show, don't tell" been more utterly ignored than by Nick Hornby and his ambitious, yet thoroughly lackluster (and curiously unfunny) novel about British televised comedy in the 1960's-'70s, Funny Girl.
I admire Hornby's vision here; his drive to present something fresh and new. His recounting the meteoric rise of fame and fortune of "I Love Lucy" worshipping, aspiring starlet from Blackpool, Barbara Parker, as she escapes her mundane life at home to move to London and follow her dream to act and make people laugh, seemed like a can't-miss idea. The problem, though: he never, not once, provides his central character anything funny to say or do. He describes in exhausting behind-the-scenes detail Sophie Straw (Barbara's stage name) and her landing a leading role (and creative credit) on the comedy series "Barbara (and Jim)", and taking British television audiences by storm, but never provides any concrete examples of her comedic talent. We have to take Hornby's word for it that Sophie Straw is funny. 'Give us camp, pratfalls, one-liners, farce, anything funny at all' is the prevailing feeling the novel consistently evokes. Where's the fun in that?
The novel isn't entirely devoid of humor (thank goodness); it becomes evident Hornby's effort employs an ensemble cast, including co-star Clive, and producer Dennis, along with the writing team Tony and Bill. In their round-table sessions, they do conjur up some funny lines (mostly of the hand-wringing "God, this show sucks" variety), but mostly only make it glaringly apparent that the titular Funny Girl, given nothing humorous to say, is nowhere near as funny as the title (and premise) promises.
Once I resigned myself to this not being comedic, I tried to derive some enjoyment from the dynamic between characters (notably between writers Tony and Bill, the first sexually frustrated, the other semi-openly gay {a jailable offense in the 60's, evidently} as they struggle to write lines for a comedy featuring a straight couple), but ultimately, nothing adequately masks the absence of comedy here, transforming what should've been a dynamic fun read into a bland, poorly cooked Scotch Egg-y slog. -
Speaking at a college campus a few years ago, I joked about feeling like Lucy in the chocolate factory, and an undergraduate asked me when Lucy Hale worked in a chocolate factory. It was one of those moments when you suddenly picture yourself stooped and holding an ear trumpet.
As a child, I watched the black-and-white reruns of “I Love Lucy” till I knew every frame. Vitameatavegamin, the grape-stomping brawl, the expanding bread loaf — are any family memories more vivid than those immortal scenes?
Nick Hornby’s new novel, “Funny Girl,” is pitched to those of us who still ask, “Do you pop out at parties? Are you unpoopular?” It’s about a young British woman named Barbara who adores “I Love Lucy.” “Everything she felt or did came from that,” Hornby writes. “If there was a way to watch Lucy every single day of the week, then she would.”
Hornby sets this mildly amusing story in the 1960s, when the BBC was expanding and experimenting, and people were wondering how to attract a younger television audience without pandering to the lowest tastes. (“10 Reasons Why This Sounds Familiar Today — No. 8 Will Blow Your Mind!”) Even in the Age of Aquarius, British and American networks were still broadcasting long conversations among intellectuals “about God and the H-bomb and theater and classical music.” Indeed, the funniest scene in “Funny Girl” is an episode of “Pipe Smoke,” a talk show so deliberately dull that it seems like “an attempt by the BBC to persuade the workers of Britain that they needed more sleep.” In Hornby’s pitch-perfect re-creation, a comedy producer slays a stuffy academic who’s raging on about “horse-racing and variety shows and pop groups who look and sound like cavemen.” Move along, old man — be grateful you won’t live long enough to see “Sex Box.”
Young Barbara from north England is determined to be part of this television revolution. But that can’t happen in her small town, so she tosses off her beauty queen crown, leaves her father and heads to London. She knows nothing except that “making people laugh meant crossing your eyes and sticking your tongue out and saying things that might sound stupid or naive.”
There’s a preordained quality to these early scenes, but Hornby moves Barbara along funnily enough through a few odd jobs and auditions before she reads for a part in a dreadful pilot called “Wedded Bliss.” The writers love her. “Here,” they think, “was everything they wanted to bring to the screen, in one neat and beautifully gift-wrapped package, handed to them by a ferocious and undiscovered talent who looked like a star.” In a classic moment of entertainment mythology, Barbara suddenly finds herself the star of Britain’s most popular sitcom.
“Barbara (and Jim),” as the quickly reconceived show is called, is “fast and real,” despite the corporate suits who, as always, want the sharp edges sanded off. Even in 1967, the writers are already complaining that all the good sitcom plots have been “done to death.” But Barbara’s comedic brilliance electrifies the script, the cast, the nation. How fun it would have been to really see her in action and read one or two rollicking episodes in this novel. After all, a book that invokes Barbra Streisand’s Academy Award-winning movie and Lucille Ball’s television reign probably should wind us up with at least one fit of eye-watering, gasping-for-breath, wet-ourselves laughter. Alas, Hornby is constantly asking us to take his word for it. I’m reminded of my father-in-law, who once came to the end of a long joke and couldn’t remember the punch line. “Think of something really funny,” he told us. “It was exactly like that.”
And so, while Barbara’s allegedly hilarious TV show plays on through a glass, darkly, we’re asked to attend to the parallel but not-too-funny marital antics of the actors, writers and producers. The best sections, by far, concern a friendship between the show’s two gay writers, Tony and Bill. Every week, they make England laugh at a version of family life they’re legally barred from enjoying. But Tony, ever the practical one, finds a way to play the straight man, as it were, and shape a marriage that works for him. Bill, meanwhile, clings to his cynicism and artistic purity and descends into chronic unhappiness. It’s a poignant portrayal of unconsummated desire and the corrosive effects of homophobia.
But much of the novel, bathed in the TV-blue light of baby-boomer nostalgia, suffers from an enervating strain of pleasantness. The dozen archival photographs of period entertainment sprinkled through these pages add a touch of comic history, but the novel’s cultural-criticism knob is turned down very low. Its faint feminist theme about the plight of sharp-tongued women is a rerun we’ve seen many times. There’s some light satire about the interplay between actors’ lives and their TV characters, but certainly nothing that pushes the laugh track beyond “Entourage,” “Episodes” or “The Comeback.”
“Funny Girl” eventually jumps ahead to Barbara’s golden years, when she’s lived a full life in the glow of that too-early, too-bright fame. It’s sweet, tinged with sadness and hard-working gratitude, but the story remains slack and surprise-free. We read on simply because we like Nick Hornby, the way we keep watching the tepid eighth season of some once-funny comedy out of a vague sense of devotion.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta... -
Being funny is a serious business, and in his latest novel Nick Hornby gets to demonstrate that making people laugh is just as valid and fulfilling a life choice as curing diseases or educating the masses or studying history, philosophy, economics. I’m mentioning these fields because the novel is about the BBC as a national institution that spends money from taxes on creating educative programs, and some people grumble about expenses on trivial, even offensively vulgar pursuits. The key passage in the book for me is a televised debate on the subject of humour between a sitcom producer (Dennis) and a highbrow critic from Cambridge or Oxford (Vernon) :
What a terrible thing an education was, he thought, if it produced the kind of mind that despised entertainment and the people who valued it.
and in another relevant quote:
Some of the cross-looking men he saw beetling around the dingier corridors of the BBC believed that comedy was the enemy. They actually wanted people not to laugh, ever.
I have been reading the novels of Nick Hornby almost as soon as they were published, starting with his soccer obsession for Arsenal in Fever Pitch. I believe I have been noticing the maturing of him as writer, especially in A Long Way Down and in this latest book, not so much in the toning down of the humour as in the more adult themes and in the deeper engagement in the issues tackled. He is still hilarious and he still creates captivating characters, but I am more aware of the corrosive effects of society on his heroes/heroines, of their pains and disillusionments, of their struggles and of their need for companionship and understanding.
Funny Girl is written as a fictionalized biography, but it is so well crafted and supported with insider information, documentary photos, real life actors, writers and producers, that I was often in doubt about how much is invented and how much really did happen. The story starts with 19 y.o. Barbara, the reluctant almost winner of the Miss Blackpool contest in 1959, and follows her to London where she works as a sales girl in a mall before landing the leading role in a new comedy being produced by the BBC. While she remains the focus of the novel for the entire seasonal run of the show, the writer changes the point of view to allow us into the creative process at all levels: Tony and Bill the writers, Dennis the Producer, Clive her co-star, etc.
All of them are bursting with enthusiasm and new ideas, pushing each other to get to the top of the ratings and beyond. But we also witness their private lives, their secret yearnings, envies, rivalries, insecurities. Like every comedy show ever produced, the one Barbara stars in is a victim of its own success, and the vein of originality is drained, the edginess of the jokes is blunted, the audiences start to move to greener pastures.
So it goes.
I laughed and I cried with Barbara and her friends. Funny Girl may not be as easily accessible and filled with memorable jokes as High Fidelity (still my favorite Hornby) but in its own way it is probably the better book. For goodbye, I have selected the speech Barbara gives after the filming of the last episode:
I’ve never been happy in the way that I’ve been happy in this room, and in the studios. I’ve never laughed so much, or learned so much, and everything I know about my job is because of the people here. Even you Clive. And I’m worried that I’ll spend the rest of my working life looking for an experience like this one, where everything clicks and everyone pushes you to do the best you can, better than anything you think you’re capable of. -
I'm such a big fan of Nick Hornby and this book is such a disappointment. I'd almost prefer not to provide a review. I have looked forward to this book for months now and received it from Penguin's First to Read. Perhaps the problem is with the narrator providing such distance from the characters that ultimately none of them are either believable or likable. Hornby has done so well in earlier works with believable characters that become likable in spite of their faults. In this book, it was all so breezy that it just wasn't interesting. That's about the best I can offer. The book misses on so many levels that I just don't know what else to offer. Comedy is hard. It is effortful. But not in this book. London in the 60s was exciting. Again, not in this book. The beginning and end rate 2 stars. The vast middle is just painful, I'm so sorry to say.
-
How he does it, I don’t know, but Nick Hornby creates interesting characters and turns them into human beings we actually care about. In Funny Girl, he does it while successfully evoking a whole era – early sixties London on the cusp of change, from a dour post-war Britain to a world where anything is possible for those with youth and talent on their side. It’s no coincidence that The Beatles were on my iPod throughout this past week.
In Nick Hornby novels, it’s always the humanity that shines through. His stories are deceptively light; entertaining us into situations until we stop reading for a second and think, hang on, that’s really quite sad, or moving, or surprising. There’s a lot to admire here – as there is in each of his novels. My favourite remains How to be Good – no, sorry, my favourite remains High Fidelity, but How to be Good is so accomplished, so human, so damned good, I was amazed that the literary world failed to gasp in awe and amazement when it was published. Perhaps the highbrows prefer their humour to be not quite so funny – Howard Jacobson take a bow – but it’s Nick Hornby’s lightness of touch that sets a trap for his readers for him then to break their hearts.
Funny Girl: a funny writer and a fine human being. -
Meant to be an easy, breezy, affectionate nod to the 60's - but I found it bland. Like creme brulee without the sugar topping - just no snap to it. I couldn't wait to be finished. Sorry, Nick Hornby fans - think this one is a bit of a miss.
-
You know how there's that cliche question of "If you could have dinner with anyone at all, dead or alive, who would you choose?" and then your answer is supposed to establish a whole bunch of things about who you are or your compatibility with someone or something? Well, my fantasy dinner guest has been Nick Hornby for as long as I can remember. Of course, if we're allowed to choose fictional people for this question then I might have to choose The Doctor, but it might be best not to go there... As for Mr. Hornby, I think he would be a fantastic person to just hang out with. I know t his because there is no doubt in my mind that I kind of know him. Sorry Sir, but your writing is exceptionally revealing. Or it is to me at least.
How do I even start this review? "How to Be Good" has been my soul book for such a long time. It still is, of course, because I will be psychologically attached to it for the rest of my life. I do, however, have to admit that Funny Girl might be just the tiniest bit better. I'm not sure how or why, but I think Nick Hornby has outdone himself with this latest gift to the masses. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of British comedy, or just British television in general, or maybe it's simply that I really can't help but understand everything this man says. Whatever it is, I once again find myself at the end of a Hornby novel feeling exceptionally happy for his existence. This book is filled with the exceptionally 3 dimensional characters that we have all come to expect from Hornby and I couldn't be more thrilled to have started the new year with these people. -
“What was he doing with her? How on earth could he love her? But he did. Or, at least, she made him feel sick, sad and distracted. Perhaps there was another way of describing that unique and useless combination of feelings, but ‘love’ would have to do for now”
Funny Girl is the sixth full-length novel by British author, Nick Hornby. Set, for the most part, in the mid-to-late 1960s, Hornby’s latest novel gives the reader an intimate look at the making of a TV comedy series. His TV show, cast and crew are fictional, but Hornby firmly establishes the era with historical fact, using mentions of real-life politicians, personalities and events, as well as photographs, an advertisements and a cartoon strip. By adding extracts of scripts, a book cover, reviews, and program notes, he gives the whole thing an authenticity that will delight readers familiar with those years.
Barbara Parker’s heroine is Lucille Ball, and her ambition is to be in comedy TV. She may be beautiful enough to win Miss Blackpool, but she gives it up in an instant to head to London, to become Sophie Straw, and, eventually, to audition for a BBC Comedy Playhouse show. Before too long, she is starring, as (ironically) Barbara from Blackpool, in a hugely popular sitcom series about a married couple, written by her comic heroes, Bill Gardiner and Tony Holmes, and titled “Barbara (and Jim)”.
Characters and dialogue are Hornby’s strengths, and he does not disappoint with Funny Girl. It is impossible not to like and care about this diverse bunch, despite (or perhaps because of) their many and varied flaws: vanity, confusion about sexuality, selfishness, superficiality, timidity. There is plenty of humour, much of it dry, the sort that elicits wry chuckles rather than laugh-out-loud guffaws (“Davie remained undeterred. In his mind’s eye, he said, he always saw Clive as a cowboy. Clive had always thought that Davie needed his mind’s eye tested”).
Topical themes of the sixties feature: feminism, homosexuality and the sexually permissive society (“He was talking about the times they all suddenly lived in, and how hard it was not to be a small boy in a sweet shop with no cash register”). This is a novel in which life imitates art, but also, often, the reverse, as the writers of the show rely on what they know. This funny and moving novel is another brilliant dose of Hornby at his best. -
This book was one that I wished I had stopped reading a quarter of the way through but I kept hoping it would get better. It didn't. The author's characters were so underdeveloped that I truly didn't care what happened to them. This was basically a story about...nothing. I found it very boring.
-
2015 F.A.B. Bookclub pick # I.❤️. F.A.B.
-
I love Nick Hornby he is a brilliant quick witted man . I got this book when I attended a meet and greet here where I live. I had not previously read any of his work but I loved the movie An Education that he wrote the screen play for, so I thought it would be fun to attend. As soon as he started talking and telling stories and engaging with us , I knew I was going to love this book and I did. I think the whole point of the Funny Girl was that life isn't always funny and I wished more had been written from the perspective of the elderly version of the characters cause they were great . All in all I love Nick and I love this book.
-
Είχα καιρό να διαβάσω κάτι που να μου φαίνεται παντελώς ανούσιο. Όχι κακό, αλλά σαν να μην αφορά κανέναν.
Η πλοκή γυρίζει γύρω από την ιστορία μιας αγγλίδας ηθοποιού που θέλει να γίνει κωμικός στην τηλεόραση τη δεκαετία του '60 και τις ζωές των συνεργατών της στο BBC. Επειδή δεν είχα ξαναδιαβάσει Hornby και δεν ήξερα καν ποτέ έγραψε /γράφει, νομιζα ότι είχε γραφτεί όντως εκείνη την περίοδο και ότι απλώς δεν είναι επίκαιρο πια. Δεν είναι κακό, συμβαίνει. Εντυπωσιαστηκα (και απογοητευτηκα ιδιαιτέρως όταν στο τέλος ανακάλυψα ότι εκδόθηκε... το 2014!
Ενα βιβλιο γραμμένο σήμερα για την τηλεόραση του 1960. Κι αν δεν είναι αλήθεια ότι δεν αφορά κανέναν, σίγουρα δεν αφορά εμένα. Είχε κάποιο χιούμορ βέβαια, αλλά κι αυτό λίγο άνοστο μου φάνηκε. -
Funny Title
Maybe the rest of the world is just slow to keep up with Nick Hornby, but if we're not all mistaken, there is already a story out there about a perky young girl crashing the gates of showbiz; and it is also called Funny Girl. Maybe that (stage musical, movie, original cast album, videotape, dvd, karaoke selections etc) didn't quite make it to the UK ? Just wondering.
Hodgepodge
Let's be honest-- this is an effervescent novel, a patchouli-scented paisley-printed mini-skirted ... er, 'romp' I guess you'd call it. But it secretly wants to be a little issue-oriented, an advocate of social justice, a little circumspect in the midst of all that silver-lamé and marijuana smoke.
It's Just A Jump To The Left
Mostly, it has a lovely time getting around all the tough issues that early-sixties Britons were trying to confront with some honesty. A Taste Of Honey or Look Back In Anger-- this is not.
Tempests All Neatly Confined To Teapots
What the author seems to miss is a convincing voice of the era, compelling period artifacts, or unexpected aspects that really take us there. Everything here is pretty much available to anyone who has an internet and the books of David Kynaston. Nothing that comes along even minutely rocks the boat, and that's a little disconcerting here at the apex of Sixties London.
Just Put Your Hands On Your Hips
What the author does naturally with dialogue however, is what makes this a fun read. NB, not a significant or important read, just a lark of a light comic opera, set in the second-most swingingest* era of the twentieth century. Nick Hornby has a way with character interaction that goes above and beyond 'patter'. He's clearly listening to the lines and vetting them for time and pace and funny.
Let's Do The Time Warp Again
And it must be admitted, he's also weighing the dialogue and scene length for the inevitable motion-picture treatment that will come along circa 2016. Can't blame any author for that, though when we buy the novel we're there to read the novel, not the outline for the screenplay. Beach-book of the year for summer 2015.
____________________________
* not hard to rate 6o's London as swinging, but surely 2o's Harlem has the prior claim on swingingest. -
Hands down the best book I've read so far this year. Superbly crafted, palpably alive with an engaging plot and characters I fell in love with, this is both hilariously sad and heartbreakingly funny. I did not want it to end.
Nothing to do with the rather more famous musical of the same name, other than thematically... sort of.
My next book:
The Complete Poems of Anne Brontë -
3.5 stars and a bubbling lava lamp
"Funny Girl" seems to me to be Nick Hornby's attempt at branching from his usual literary stomping grounds.
It's a "concept album" of a novel, meaning that it does NOT fulfill our expectations of a novel, but rather links the content of the story to the style of the story telling, rather like a music album might (Think: Pink Floyd).
The story is about the creation and run of a popular BBC sitcom in the late 1960s. Thus the style is partially that of a TV script with longer scenes (= pages and pages of dialogue with few dialogue tags) and partially a pop novelesque biography of the show, its stars, writers and producers (including photos).
And this is why I think many readers haven't enjoyed "Funny Girl" very much.
We never really get to KNOW these sitcom characters - we are held at arm's length, kept as viewers - and we novel readers don't like that.
We want to be in the heads and hearts of the characters, wearing their shoes and underwear, not sitting in a darkened audience hall, or flipping through a glossy mag, watching semi-distant people we half know struggle in both real life and on screen.
But that's what Hornby gives us. Pure construct: this is the show (literally) and you are the adoring audience (literally).
So, does the very thoughtful, clever concept pay off?
Debatable.
But one thing we can say with total conviction: Hornby plays it all the way through to the 99% mark. He doesn't let the concept lapse even for a moment.
But at the very end, he does slip. He does show us HORNBY. And at least for me, that was the best, most enjoyable, most genuine - and funniest - part of the novel.
And I'd say pulling that rabbit out of the hat was totally on purpose. It fits the story and shows us that all of what's gone on before was stylistics. That he can pull of the warmth and closeness - of course he can - if he wants to. But he didn't want to, in this case.
Deal.
Personally, I'd have prefered
I'm giving Hornby a round of applause for bravery and attempting something different from the norm, which I think should always be rewarded - even if I felt it somewhat disappoints. -
High Fidelity is one of my favorite movies ever so when I saw that Funny Girl was written by the same person I decided to give it a try. This ended up being a meh story for me. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. It just seems that the characters that I had the most interest in weren’t the main character Sophie (formerly Barbara) or else I might have liked it a little more.
I don’t have a lot of experience with the sixties but it seems like an unusual time where people didn’t discuss sex and most things are swept under the rug and talked around. I mean the main character isn’t even sure if she is a virgin or not.“You’re not a virgin, are you?”
“Of course not,” said Barbara.
The truth was she wasn’t sure. There had been some sort of business with Aidan, right before the beauty pageant. She had decided that she wanted to be unencumbered before coming to London. He’d been hopeless, though, and she was consequently unsure of her official status.
It’s a time when women seem to have only a few options. Find a man and settle down to have a load of kids or work while looking to find a man to settle down with and have a load of kids or…become the mistress of an already married man with a load of kids. I would not do well in this time in history.
Sophie grew up loving Lucile Ball and wants to be funny on TV just like her, but she is curvy and pretty so no one takes her seriously. This is what doesn’t translate well in the book, sure the book tells you she made a situation or the show she is on funnier with her actions and gestures but I can’t see that so I wasn’t totally impressed by her. I liked Sophie for the most part and I did enjoy her journey from a small town to being a big star but I still had much more interest in a few other characters.
I did like that Hornby didn’t make her agent as sleazy are they are normally portrayed. Brian discovers Sophie and thinks she looks like a different star which will make her money. He never actually thought she could act but takes her on as a client and sends her to a few additions thinking she would give up and just play on the bombshell looks she has . He was an interesting guy who found a niche in the industry to make money in.“You were going to take me bikini-shopping?”
“Not me, dear. Patsy. I’m not interested in looking at curvy young women in bikinis. I’m deeply in love with my wife and I’m only interested in money.”
She now understood what Brian emphasized his feelings for his wife over and over again for the same reason that people with a fear of heights told themselves not to look down when they were at the top of a tall building: he was afraid. Every time she went into his office, another beautiful young woman was coming out. If was sweet, really. He actually was deeply in love with his wife and he wanted to keep it that way.
Most of the other characters while likeable kind of run together. Dennis, Tony and Bill almost seemed like the same person at times and I had a difficult time keeping track of who was who during conversations. They were a little flat and I really wished they were fleshed out a little better. I was pulling for Dennis the sweet man treated poorly by his wife that fell in love with Sophie. Clive her actor opposite drove me a little nuts with his womanizing sleep with anyone ways and Bill was a gay man living in a very illegal time to be a gay man. I might have liked to have seen the world through his eyes a little more and it was touched on but not explored, I guess much like it would have been in the 60s.
The Person/People I really wanted a better look are were Tony and his wife Jane. Tony is a writer and he is really unclear on his sexuality or even if he has any. He was once arrested for trying to pick up a man in a seedy area of town but fell in love and married a woman. It is an awkward and untraditional marriage but this is the story I really wanted to read about. What would someone in the 60s do in this situation? Who would they talk to? How would they figure it out? I loved that patient nature of his wife who didn’t have any experiences with men before marriage and just assumed when things didn’t ‘happen’ between them that he was gay.“The marriage between Barbara and Jim hasn’t been consummated, because Jim is having difficulties.”
“Ah.”
“Bill’s idea.”
“I can imagine.”
“It’s not supposed to be you and me,” he said. “It just started to go that way, and I didn’t feel I could stop it without giving too much away.”
“Are they going to sort it all out in the end?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will enjoy watching it,” said June.
One of my favorite parts of the book was them talking about the situation they are in and trying to figure out how they can have a life together. Theirs is the story I really would have liked to read. I also enjoyed Dennis and his genuine affection for Sophie.
This book is probably a pretty good representation of the time period but it wasn’t as funny as I would have expected a Hornby to be based off his prior works. I really think this would work better as a movie than an actual book. So I look forward to the movie (I don’t actually know there is a movie just hoping)
-
Barbara has always had one dream, to be the next Lucille Ball. Moving from Blackpool to London as soon as she possibly can and changing her name to Sophie Straw, she hits the ground running. As luck would have it, an early audition has her in front of one of her favourite radio writing teams who happen to find her charming and her ideas an inspiration. So begins the journey of what will turn into one of Britain's most popular sitcoms and the careers of those behind the scenes.
What a disappointment this one turned out to be. Well written and breezily enjoyable but lacking any surprises and a complete waste of its many awesome resources. Hornby chooses to set this in the 1960’s, a fantastic idea, and while he does reference the politics of the time, teaches readers about the rise of BBC sitcoms and throw in a few pop culture goodies he makes his lead characters mere observers of the swinging revolution, completely naive and totally square. Setting likeable but boring characters into a decade filled with so much life and culture and not having them jump in and participate made me feel totally cheated. Not one of Hornby’s best.
2.5/5 -
Ich kann nicht glauben, dass ich einem Nick Hornby Buch wirklich 5 Sterne gebe. Ich bin absolut kein Fan von ihm
Vollständige Rezension folgt eventuell -
3.5
What I love about Nick Hornby is that he really gets how messy people are— in and out of love.
Step back 50+ years and you’ll find a cast of characters that will charm, confuse, humor and annoy you. Each and every one looking for love in 1960s London.
I adore the setting, the interspersing of real 1960s British names in the business (and government) and a behind the scenes look at making a BBC sit-com which breaks new TV ground.
I’d call this a fairly quick read with limited conflicts and simple plot threads— but don’t let it fool you— it is still deliciously, and ever so faintly twisted... just like life.
There are several notable scenes that made me feel in my 20s again—dropping a roommate, arguing with parents, falling for the easy guy and moments of self-confidence highs alternating with anxiety-ridden lows.
The relationship between Tony and Bill is, in my humble opinion, the one that resonated with me the most. Their friendship is so complicated and yet some things were very clear. I loved where their story arc’s went. The book was so much richer for it.
Ahh, love (and not just the sexy-time kind but the love between friends, the love of craft and the love of life), Mr Hornby reminds us that we all want it. Love, in all of its forms, can be fairly elusive and not everyone finds it, but regardless, we continue on.
The ending only partly worked for me— seemed more of a plot device to give everyone an excuse to look back. But the last few pages were satisfying without being overly sentimental.
Reading about Sophie and her friends gave me a better understanding of my parents’ generation. Mr Hornby, we’re both getting up there in years and I love that you still have something to say about love beyond the 20 and 30-something crowd you’ve come to represent. -
This was a funny and whimsical story about Barbara, a very beautiful blonde who wants to make people laugh. It's a story about her journey from Blackpool to London - a journey for independence.
"Funny Girl" is also about a sitcom in 1960s London because Barbara gets to be the star of this sitcom. We get behind the scenes and hear about her work and her relationship with the other actors, writers and producers who are all very interesting characters!
What I loved the most about this book is that it's funny and silly both at the same time. Especially the dialogues stood out to me because they are written in a "he said" "she said" manner. That attributed to the whole style of the book which is kind of vintage pop-ish (if that's a word)?
I didn't live back in the 60s and I did get a feeling that I didn't completely understand what this was a parody of. The women back then, the stereotypes or the sitcoms? I still very much enjoyed it and I was often reading with a smile on my face because this book is hilarious :)
The ending left we a little confused; I didn't quite understand why Nick Hornby decided to go in that direction with the story. But all in all, this was a very pleasurable and relaxing read that I would definitely recommend. -
Out of five Hornby’s books I've read, I found this least interesting. I still like the way he writes, I like the dialogue, I like the characters, the tiny little things that happen and what people say to each other. Reading it was enjoyable and I also liked the idea of writing simultaneously about two realities – the real reality and the reality and life of TV characters. However, the story itself was not as fascinating as the other ones have been. It was simply kind of ordinary, things that you’d expect happened, nothing much went wrong, nothing surprised. It felt a bit like a biography. Occasionally I had to remind myself that this is an Hornby not a random love story - this is supposed to be good! Juliet, naked was my favourite.
-
I am a Nick Hornby Believer, get it? If you do, then you will understand why I don't like Funny Girl. It fell flat, as if Hornby has to let the reader in on the joke. Queue the laugh track, the sad music...maybe this was intentional as the story depicts the making of an I Love Lucy BBC type sitcom. Hornby's strength is his wit and ability to reveal vulnerabilities and foibles while still allowing us to laugh at ourselves. This didn't happen for me. But, I'm still a believer...yeah...I know...sad music.
Provided by Penguin First to Read -
''Just a gentle reminder that you're supposed to be writing a situation comedy about a married couple, not the Labour Party Manifesto."
i'd watch that
not sure why i bought it, especially since i wasn't really a fan of State of the Union, but i loved it.
not 100% sure why there were pictures in it and even tho i love it when books have pics in them *yes i'm 5* they were kinda unnecessary.
i don't have much to say. i found the gang interesting, i was invested in their lives so i loved it. if you don't like the character you aren't going to like this. -
I am a Nick Hornby fan and have been since I read High Fidelity over a decade ago. But I also admit that his recent work often leaves me cold. I had mixed feelings on How to Be Good and couldn't get past the second chapter of A Long Way Down. I'm happy to report that with Funny Girl Hornby returns to form. This book is more like his former work, including Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, and About a Boy. It's not his peak, but it's delightful and a fun read.
While it's set in "London in the Swinging 60's," that's not really what the book is going for. It's not so much a period piece (even though that is its setting) as it is a story of people where the setting is just where they happen to be. Barbara flees Blackpool for London hoping to be the next Lucille Ball and is granted her wish thanks to stumbling on an audition with Tom, Bill, Clive, and Dennis who are casting for a Comedy Playhouse special. The five of them hit it off in that way that you know you've just found the final member of a group you didn't know you were looking for.
The chief pleasures of the book are in the company of these 5 (Bill and Tom are the writers, Clive is the leading man, Dennis is the producer) and the quick patter of their talks. Its main flaw is the emotional distance it keeps from its characters, which is usually one of Hornby's strengths. Still, it's a fun and fast read, I got through it in less than 24 hours and never wanted to put it down. -
Great book! The nostalgia of the 60's setting, the extremely good writing capturing both the time and the place so well it plays like a movie in your head, the great dialogue-driven humor and the bitter-sweetness showing through are all 5-star ingredients and makes for a great reading experience.
The middle of the book, though, stalls severely. Not catastrophic in a short book, but it's there. The story and developments are also very dialogue based and we might have gotten to know the characters a bit better (especially the not main ones). These are minor things though and just drops this one from the "amazing" rating for me. It's still a great one and very much recommended! -
Hornby’s seventh novel is an inside look at 1960s British popular culture, as one young woman tries to make it big in television comedy. Despite the title, this is one of his less humorous novels; it has a more bittersweet, reflective tone overall. For me, Tony’s was the most meaningful and noteworthy story, more so than Sophie’s well-trodden rags-to-riches trajectory. With its focus away from contemporary times, this might not be vintage Hornby, but it is a memorable evocation, nevertheless, of the Swinging Sixties in Britain.
(Non-subscribers can read an excerpt of my full review at
BookBrowse.) -
3.5⭐
Dobra książka na odprężenie się. Wczułam się w klimat Hollywood i dobrze spędziłam czas.
Polecajka dla tych, którzy uwielbiają "Siedem mężów Evelyn Hugo". -
Barbara Parker is a beautiful Blackpool girl who escapes to London in the 60s hoping to become a comedienne. She adores 'I Love Lucy' and badly wants to get into theatre or TV, however her strong accent is seen as a major problem for the conservative English audiences used to more mellow tones. Changing her name to Sophie Straw she unexpectedly lands a major role in a new TV show where the writers are looking for someone 'different' and her career is launched.
Nick Hornby is such a good writer of characters that this feels more of a real-life biography of Barbara/Sophie than a novel. Her leading man, Clive is less well fleshed out and remains a bit player as do the writers of the series Bill and Tony and Director Dennis, which is a shame as they were interesting characters who I would have liked to find more engaging. There are lots of references to the music and nightlife of the times as well as the other much loved comedy TV and radio shows. The changing attitudes to sex are also a feature of the book as Sophie deals with societal attitudes to young, unmarried women and two of the characters struggle with the with the illegality of homosexuality. All in all, an entertaining novel. -
Oh dear. Almost everything I love about Nick Hornby is missing from this book. It's not offbeat or funny, I don't care what happens, and it doesn't say much about anything, and what it does say has already been said better by other writers. It feels like he thought, "Hmmm...time to write another book, let's see...I know! I have all these old photos.* I'll just toss them in the air and write a story that fits with how they land."
*This book really is illustrated with old photos. -
Barbara lives in Blackpool. She itches to get away from provincial life, concerned that she will be trapped into the dead job, early marriage and family that appears to be her destiny.
She runs away to London to realise her dream of being the British Lucille Ball (the book is set in the 60s). Amazingly she fulfils her dream, but then it gets complicated. Real life intrudes, whether it be family illness back up North or relationships with the cast and team of her hit comedy show.
Funny and wry without being a taxing read, I enjoyed spotting the popular culture markers of my youth, some more heavily disguised than others. Hornby has written better books, but still an interesting read
