Man and Wife by Tony Parsons

Intelligent pop lit for streetwise sentimentalists

Tony Parsons has been eloquently lamenting the passing of the traditional working class for a long time. Harry Silver, reappearing in this sequel to the hugely successful Man and Boy, surely speaks for him when he pays tribute to the stoicism of those "loving and tough" old marriages. Ironically, thoroughly modern Harry is in thrall to the zeitgeist. He works in TVland, where "our new late-night cultural review" is called Art? My Arse! and the latest reality show, Six Pissed Students in a Flat, is breaking all records.

A couple of years down the line from where we left him, relinquishing custody of his beloved son Pat to ex-wife Gina, we find him married to the lovely Cyd, stepfather to eight-year-old little madam Peggy and weekend dad to Pat, who is himself adjusting to a new stepdad. Welcome to the "blended family". Harry is clear: the nuclear family is the ideal. Blended may not be best, he concludes, but it's how things are going so we have to make the most of it. The way to do this is summed up in the mantra, All You Need Is Love. Through the book, Harry struggles towards this realisation through a tortuous maze of bad breaks and irritating shallows of self-deception.

Gina takes his son to America. Cyd's working all the time and doesn't want another baby just yet (wise woman). Peggy screams at him in a supermarket: "You are not my daddy. Stop acting like you are." When beautiful Japanese photographer Kazumi enters his life, he scarcely thinks twice about jettisoning his dewy-eyed respect for his parents' values, so compulsive is the lure of just one more conquest.

The good guy in the first book, Harry begins to seem like any tired old serial philanderer. In a further irony, Gina, the one most desperate for the nuclear family haven, proves incapable of sustaining a decent relationship. This is because, although beautiful (and slim; all the women are very beautiful and slim) she has the sensitivity of a brick. The only ones with any sense are Harry's mum and Cyd, good wives both.

Such is Parsons' basic optimism that, in spite of such serious concerns as the situation of the sidelined father and the aridity of modern culture, this is a feel-good book. However, you have to be able to tolerate high levels of sentimentality, along with Parsons' penchant for constantly restating characters' roles.

He hits the right note when he allows himself to be subtle, as when conveying the casual parting of Pat and best friend Bernie Cooper on Pat's emigration; or taking satirical swipes at the media: "I stood there nursing my beer, watching the tasters for irreverent game shows, irreverent talk shows and irreverent dramas. Tired old irreverence, I thought. It's killing television."

Tony Parsons is an astute social commentator, a dry wit, an independent thinker, and his concern about the damage we do with our butterfly lifestyles is sincere and compassionate. As a writer he's still fairly amateurish, but this is lively stuff: intelligent popular literature for a streetwise yet sentimental readership.