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  • Published: 6 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552998444
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $22.99

The Best A Man Can Get



The hilarious first novel from the bestselling author of Things Can Only Get Better.

Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit 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 work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed...

The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny.

  • Published: 6 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552998444
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

John O'Farrell

John O'Farrell's first book Things Can Only Get Better about his years spent helping the Labour Party lose elections at every level was a number one best-seller. Two decades later he published the sequel Things Can Only Get Worse. In between his two comic memoirs, he published five novels, including The Best A Man Can Get, May Contain Nuts and The Man Who Forgot His Wife; two funny history books (An Utterly Impartial History of Britain and its sequel) plus three collections of his satirical columns from The Guardian. His books have been translated into over thirty languages and adapted for TV and radio. Formerly a comedy scriptwriter for shows such as Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You, he more recently co-wrote the movie Chicken Run 2 and two Broadway musicals; Something Rotten! and Mrs Doubtfire.

Also by John O'Farrell

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Praise for The Best A Man Can Get

Punchline fuelled, relentless humour...I don't think a woman is going to get much closer to the workings of a man's mind than this. Giggling several times a page with plenty of out-loud laughs is guaranteed. Is John O'Farrell funny? Very

Daily Mirror

So funny because it rings true... Packed with painfully well-observed jokes

The Times

A hilarious confessional narrative. This wickedly observed page-turner lets bachelor-nostalgia joyride to its absurd conclusion... Piquant and irreverently sardonic

Literary Review

This is SO good... so insightful about men, women, love and parenthood that you read every page with a wince of recognition. Fab, fab, fab

India Knight

Excellent... Things Can Only Get Better will make you laugh out loud

Angus Deayton