Men From The Boys, By Tony Parsons

Mid-life crises in a man's world

Tony Parsons has spent the last 10 years colonising feminine ground in his fiction. Now, in the final instalment of the series of novels that began with Man and Boy and continued with Man and Wife, he moves from "chick-lit" into "hen-lit" territory with a tale of empty nesters and mid-life flight.

Everyman narrator Harry Silver is seemingly sanguine about approaching 40. He is happily settled in north London with his gorgeous second wife, Cyd, and "blended" family of kids and step-kids; all appears quiet on the home front. But then 14-year-old Pat, his son from his first marriage, announces that he wants to move back with his mother, and the old insecurities kick in.

A "card-carrying single parent" at heart, Harry is devastated by the news. Unable to work, he spends his days spilling tears into his Cath Kidston apron: "What was the good of me? What was I for? My sense of self was wrapped up in that boy. My measure of my worth. And with my boy not around, what was I worth?"

Harry's worth, as we know from previous novels, is a delicate thing. Appalled by the "soft-bodied" males of his generation, he has a touchstone for masculinity that harks back to a time when men went off to war and came back to mow the lawn. With Harry's own father bumped off in an earlier book, paternal reinforcements arrive in the shape of Ken Grimwood, a decorated Second World War veteran. Taking Harry out of his pinny and off to the dog track, Ken has ancient mysteries to impart – largely involving how to box.

While lacking the emotional punch of Man and Boy, Parsons' new volume shows a more versatile writer at work. The plotline is familiar – custody battles, terminal illness, infidelity – but there are nice lines buried among the columnist's clichés. And if you can forgive the fact that every female character boasts the toned body of a 20-year-old Soho waitress, Parsons has astute observations to make about the slog of single parenthood and the complexities of second marriage.

Over the course of the trilogy, we've seen Harry grow as a father and husband, but as a son he's yet to make his peace. Yet another Parsons fantasy involving a stoic father-figure might prove a bridge too far for some female fans. For all his sensitive posturing, Harry is still the man-child we always suspected him to be.