ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Nick Hornby’s popular ‘lad lit’ novel About a Boy, which portrays the unlikely friendship between an insecure twelve-year-old boy and a hedonistic 36-year-old bachelor in late modern London. While the adult character displays many childlike characteristics, the child protagonist similarly appears to be unusually mature. The chapter’s main argument is that Hornby conceptualises childhood and adulthood as fluid and performative identities that can be acquired and practiced regardless of biological age. Once again, however, this constellation is not set up to dispute essentialism, but to initiate a process of reciprocal normalisation; the two protagonists lose their initial ‘queerness’ and adapt to age-specific heteronormative models of masculinity. This chapter reconstructs how About a Boy employs constructivism before ultimately legitimising conformity, consumerism and misogyny.
