Turning Thirty - Softcover

Gayle, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340792655 ISBN 13: 9780340792650

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division, 2001

Synopsis

Unlike most people Matt Beckford is actually looking forward to turning thirty. After struggling through most of his twenties he thinks his career, finances and love life are finally sorted. But when he splits up with his girlfriend, he realises that life has different plans for him. Unable to cope with his future falling apart Matt temporarily moves back to his parents. During his enforced exodus only his old school mates can keep him sane, friends he hasn't seen since he was nineteen, back together after a decade apart. But things will never be the same for any of them because when you're turning thirty nothing's as simple as it used to be.

About this title

About the Author:

Previously an Agony Uncle, Mike Gayle is a freelance journalist who has contributed to a variety of magazines including FHM, Sunday Times Style and Cosmopolitan. He is the author of two bestselling novels, MY LEGENDARY GIRLFRIEND and MR COMMITMENT.

From Publishers Weekly:

Brit Matt Beckford and girlfriend Elaine agree, one evening in their Brooklyn apartment, that while they love each other, they're no longer in love, and break up. Reassessing as his 30th birthday looms, Matt arranges to relocate to Australia and decides to show up at his parents' doorstep in England to kill the three months until he's needed at his new job. A good deal of time is spent on philosophizing, punctuated by hand-wringing transcontinental e-mail exchanges with Elaine (who works at a big-shot PR firm and worries over the time spent e-mailing Matt). Matt ends up reuniting with his old high school gang, including onetime friend-with-benefits Ginny. Soon, he's wondering if he should spend the rest of his life with her... and Elaine decides to visit. On one level, this reads like straight chick lit, with stock characters and familiar entering-adulthood coupling situations. But Gayle, author of Dinner for Two and two other U.K.-only titles, gives Matt's first person nice twists of out-of-touch unreliability, and makes Elaine, as suddenly forlorn e-mailer, comic. Readers who have lived beyond 30, or even 25, will know instantly that most of their self-justifications are BS—just as all the to-ing and fro-ing is inevitable—and smile to themselves. (Nov.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0340792655
• ISBN 13: 9780340792650
• Binding: Paperback