Nick Hornby"s novel About a boy (1998) has two significant advantages as an English B HL literary text: it deals with adolescence (in complex ways, but we"ll come back to that), and it is a novel by a man about male experience (thus helpful for involving the boys in the class). It is also a text that should stimulate lively discussion about a range of subordinate themes, such as:The style of the novel also has value...