Rob Fleming owns Championship Vinyl, a record shop in Holloway, North London. His girlfriend Laura has just left him. He compiles top five lists compulsively — top five break-ups, top five records to play on a Monday morning — and eventually decides to investigate his past relationships to understand what is wrong with him. Hornby's debut novel and the defining book about men who use pop culture to avoid growing up.
Will Freeman is 36, wealthy from his father's royalties, and has constructed a life entirely free of obligation or development. He invents a fictional son, Ned, in order to meet single mothers at SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together). Through this deception he meets Marcus, a twelve-year-old who is relentlessly uncool and whose mother is suicidally depressed. Their unlikely friendship changes both of them.
