The role of fashion and music

The terms of fashion and music are very important ones for the story-line of the novel "About a Boy". Will and Marcus are two very different characters. Will cares a lot about fashion. He knows what to wear to be cool. He reads magazines and has enough money to buy fashionable clothes.

Marcus doesn't care about what he's wearing. He just wears what his mother buys him. As his mother is really old fashioned and doesn't have a feeling for how to combine clothes, Marcus has a big problem with the other kids in school, because he doesn’t wear what they wear, so that they notice that he's different. That's why they start making fun of him.

Marcus doesn't know how to change his style on his own. He doesn't have enough money to do that either. Will feels sorry for him and helps him out by buying him better-looking clothes, so that at the end of the book Marcus changes his style and becomes a normal boy

Will is a real music freak. He owns hundreds of CDs and his flat is covered with film and music posters. He thinks it keeps him young to listen to bands like Nirvana.

At the beginning of the book, Marcus likes to listen to Joni Mitchell. He doesn't like bands like Snoop Doggy Dog because their bad attitude to women, and because his mother doesn't want him to listen to this kind of music. He also thinks that the other people in school like Joni Mitchell, too.

When Marcus meets Ellie, he realises that his style of music is not up to date. Ellie fools him when she says Kurt Cobain is a player for Manchester United.

Will helps Marcus out and makes him listen to Nirvana, and about Nirvana and their music Marcus and Ellie become friends. At the end of the book Marcus is able to make up his own mind about what music he wants to listen to and is able to tell his mom that he doesn't only want to do what she wants him to.