'Us' by David Nicholls

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

David Nicholls brings to bear all the wit and intelligence that graced ONE DAY in this brilliant, bittersweet novel about love and family, husbands and wives, parents and children.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014.

'I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together.'

'Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?'

Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together. So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again. The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed. What could possibly go wrong?

‘Us’ is the much-anticipated new novel from David Nicholls, coming five years after his successful ‘One Day’, which sold 5 million copies and was made into a movie starring Anne Hathaway.

After ‘OneDay’ came out, Nicholls was heralded as something of a lad-lit novelist, with Richard Curtis rom-com undertones … and perhaps for that novels’ enormous commercial success, he was marked as something of a lightweight. As Mark Lawson summarised for The Guardian recently: “assumed to be a sentimental populist by those who have read about his success rather than reading his books.” So it came as somewhat of a surprise when before ‘Us’ even hit bookshelves, it was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The longlisting has probably left some to wonder if there’s more to Nicholls than they first thought (undoubtedly), or if the Man Booker should go down in their esteem – but I quite liked Nicholls’ summary of the accolade: “I'm trying to give an answer that isn't too insipid, but I was extremely flattered by it, and in the same way I was a bit surprised, I'm sure lots of other commentators were surprised."

I, personally, loved ‘One Day’ – and his novel before that ‘Starter For Ten’ is also a favourite of mine. And while he hasn’t released a book in five years, I’ve also enjoyed following his television-writing career – his most recent TV movie ‘The 7.39’ was particularly wonderful. So I was just excited to read something new from Nicholls, accolades or no, because I find his books to be both comforting and mildly confronting as he explores rather ho-hum aspects of middle-class existence with cutting humour and uncomfortable introspection. I loved ‘Us’, and will mark it as a favourite of 2014.

‘Us’ is about the Petersen family Grand Tour of Europe – London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Venice, Florence, Siena, Madrid and Barcelona – with Connie, Douglas and their 18-year-old son Albie who is about to go off to college and study photography. But the Grand Tour is a more weighted affair for Douglas, who a few weeks previously was told by his wife that she intends to leave him:

‘Is it really so … horrific to you, Connie, the thought of you and I being alone together? Because I thought we had a good marriage …’ 

‘We did, we do. I’ve been very happy with you, Douglas, very, but the future–’ 

‘Then why would you want to throw that away?’ 

'I just feel that as a unit, as a husband and wife, we did it. We did our best, we can move on, our work is done.’ 

‘It was never work for me.’ 

‘Well, sometimes it was for me. Sometimes it felt like work. Now that Albie’s leaving, I want to feel this is the beginning of something new, not the beginning of the end.’ 

The beginning of the end. Was she still talking about me? She made me sound like some kind of apocalypse. 

As a man of science, biochemist Douglas believes that with forethought and planning he can use the Grand Tour as a last-ditch effort to save his marriage. But of course it all goes horribly, horribly wrong amidst the Botticellis and Uccellos of Paris and the Rembrandts and Vermeers of Amsterdam.

Douglas is our narrator, and for reasons of openness and thoroughness (and just plain common sense) he would probably be the first to admit that he’ll be an unreliable one at that. The book is told in ‘real-time’ as the Grand Tour gets underway, while Douglas also recounts his and Conie’s decades-plus marriage in flashback chapters that run concurrently to his detailing their family’s holiday from hell.

I would hesitate to call ‘Us’ a romance – because by the time we meet them on their Grand Tour, I think it is unmistakable that Douglas and Connie are at a rather perilous point in their marriage. This is further evidenced by their opposites-attracting courtship that Douglas recounts. Connie is the artistic, bohemian in their marriage, while Douglas is the Type-A personality who, try as he might, never quite grasped the spontaneity and laissez-faire attitude Connie has been trying to instil in him since they met.  But, at the same time, I would call ‘Us’ a romance of sorts, as the book is very much about the relationship between Douglas and his son, Albie.

Albie takes after his mother in all things, and since wriggling out of his father’s grasp at age eight Albie has treated Douglas with a special kind of contempt, while also harbouring a deep-seated (not entirely inaccurate) belief that he is a great disappointment to him: 

In short, my son makes me feel like his step-father. 

I have had some experience of unrequited love in the past and that was no picnic, I can tell you. But the unrequited love of one’s only living offspring has its own particular slow acid burn.

Something that struck me while reading ‘Us’ was that there is a hint of ‘One Day’ in the book, and I do wonder if the kernel of an idea was planted back in Dexter Mayhew’s relationship with his father, Steven. Dexter’s father quite openly disapproved of his son’s lifestyle choices, and Dexter was much closer to his mother (the two of them often sharing private jokes at his father’s expense). There was also something quite lovely about that relationship by the end of the novel, when Dexter’s father (knowing from experience what his son was going through) helped get Dexter through a great depression and out of bed in the morning.

I know that lots of people read ‘One Day’ and couldn’t quite champion the romance aspect, because Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew were often prickly characters and not very easy to like. Those same people will probably struggle with ‘Us’ too; as Douglas, Connie and Albie are all hard to swallow at times. But that’s half the appeal of Nicholls, for me anyway – it’s not just that he writes flawed characters, but that he writes them with such uncomfortable aplomb. If you can’t see your own flaws in them, then they’ll at least remind you of what you so dislike about other people in your life … Though, having said that and for all his flaws, there’s something charming about Douglas. I was going to write ‘pathetically charming’ but it’s not even that – he is so downtrodden and beaten in this book, but that he champions his own marriage and family is kind of remarkable, even when faced with such devastating odds;

A great deal of stress is placed on the importance of humour in the modern relationship. Everything will be all right, we are led to believe, as long as you can make each other laugh, rendering a successful marriage as, in effect, fifty years of improv. 

While reading this I did also think that Douglas Petersen has something of the Don Tillman to him (the Asperger's hero of Graeme Simsion’s own publishing phenomenon ‘Rosie Project’ and this year’s ‘Rosie Effect’). Douglas and Don are the men of science in love with carefree wives Connie and Rosie, and I can imagine that if Rosie threw down a divorce gauntlet, Don would pick it up in much the methodical, calculated way that Douglas does … but at the same time, I think ‘Us’ has more in common with Rainbow Rowell’s 2014 novel ‘Landline’. Both are about marriage-in-crisis, and begin at a crossroads in the very real possibility of separation. Rowell and Nicholls also employ similar flashback techniques, though with varying success – for Douglas, recounting his and Connie’s life together is all part of gathering the facts and empirical evidence of happier times and also trying to pinpoint where it all started to go wrong. In ‘Landline’, protagonist Georgie discovers an old rotary phone that allows her to dial her husband (before he became her husband) in the past – reliving a happier time in their courtship. I wasn’t a huge fan of ‘Landline’, and found the recounting of a marriage in strife to be quite dull … Nicholls, for his telling this tale from the perspective of stick-in-the-mud husband whose battle changes to being more about connecting with his son, was far more interesting to me.

‘Us’ does read like a coming-of-age novel, even though Douglas is 54-years-old when he starts having these cataclysmic revelations about his wife and life. And the book is a bit like reading a car crash in slow motion, as readers reach the inevitable conclusion far quicker and easier than Douglas ever does. But for all that this is a sad subject to be exploring (and a somewhat pedestrian one – how many marriage end in divorce now, and late-in-life divorce is also on the rise) it didn’t feel like a sad book. I laughed so much while reading, and I admired Douglas as a quiet everyday-hero who is doing something so ordinarily admirable in his life. I loved that this is really more a father-son relationship book, and that it felt like the resounding BOOM! of echoes from Nicholl’s ‘One Day’, and even ‘Starter For Ten’ which explored the absence of a father in protagonist Brian Jackson’s life.

I love David Nicholls, I’ve missed him and am quietly thrilled that despite a five-year absence, I count his triumphant return to bookshelves as a favourite of 2014.

5/5

'One Day' by David Nicholls

From the BLURB:

Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY.

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew have been attending the same university for four years . . . but they only properly meet on the day of graduation.

Emma Morley is an idealistic English and History major who truly believes she can change the world (or at least her little corner of it) with hard work and passion. She has had a crush on the impossibly handsome Dexter for four years now, and is both horribly ashamed of her infatuation with someone so self-obsessed, but also terribly nervous that she will never see him after their one night together. . .

Dexter is an anthropology student (sort of) who has breezed through university with more drunken memories than grade-point-averages. He had never really taken much notice of Emma Morley, with her thick-framed glasses and badly cut hair. But something about tonight (their last night before the impending doom of adulthood) has seen Dexter enamoured of Emma’s close-lipped smile and owlish eyes. But Dexter knows how their little flirtation will end – with him walking out the door and never thinking of her again. . .

Little do Emma and Dex (Dex and Em) know that the day they meet – July 15th, 1988 (St. Swithin’s Day) – will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship that spans 20 glorious years.

‘One Day’ is the best-selling 2009 novel from British writer David Nicholls.

I have had this novel sitting on my shelf since 2009. I bought it because I loved Nicholls’s ‘Starter for Ten’ and had it on good authority that ‘One Day’ was another incredible read. But it wasn’t until I saw the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation that I was intrigued enough to finally crack the book open . . . and I'm so terribly glad that I did.

‘One Day’ begins in 1988, when Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew attempt to salvage the tatters of an attempted one-night-stand by agreeing to be civil and even, absurd as it sounds, friends. Neither of them have much faith in the other to carry through with the offer . . . but then we jump ahead to the same day one year later when Dexter is travelling (to ‘broaden the mind’) and Emma is stuck in another dead-end job and outpouring her disappointments to her dear friend, Dex, in letter form.

And so the novel continues. Each chapter is another year in the life of Dexter and Emma, a snapshot of the day they first met, July 15th, every year for twenty years. We read how their lives are intersecting, drifting or overlapping as they navigate an oddball friendship that amazingly stands the test of time. It’s a friendship of highs and lows. Bitter rivalries and broken hearts. Infidelities and one-night-stands.

We meet Em and Dex in their idealistic early twenties, suffer through their mid-thirties, through to the foreboding middle-ages . . . There are years when they are each other’s soul-confidante; acting as touch-stones when they suffer through the death of a parent, and post-college down-trodden idealism. Then there are the years when they slowly drift apart – Dexter’s career ‘in the media’ sees him enjoying the success and excess of fame, while Emma feels like a second-fiddle friend with a ho-hum teaching career. But they always find a way back to each other, eventually.

Their relationship is that of opposites-almost-attracting. Emma cannot deny that she had a crush on Dexter for four long years at college. But when they become friends Emma accepts that Dexter is firmly set in his lad-about-town, caddish ways and will never see her as anything other than a friend. Likewise, Dexter is inexplicably drawn to Emma – her wry wit and earnest disposition that is so different from the usual chits he attracts. Emma and Dexter love one another – they are never better than when they are in each other’s presence. They become funnier, more confident, more honest and simply better. But their romantic relationship is one of near-misses and almost’s. Love letters that never get sent. Phone calls that go unanswered. One of them enters into a relationship just as the other accepts singledom . . . all of this spanning 20 long years, until the stars finally align and Em and Dex (Dex and Em) accept what everyone else has always known about their relationship.

“When we first met, at University, before we became, you know, pals, well, I had a bit of a crush on you. Not a bit of a crush, a massive crush actually. For ages. Wrote dopey poems and everything.”

“Poems? Really?”

“I'm not proud of myself.”

“I see. I see.” He folded his arms, put them on the edge of the table and looked down. “Well I'm sorry, Em, but that doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because you said it had to be something that I didn’t know.” He was grinning, and she was reminded once more of his almost limitless capacity to disappoint.

“God, you’re annoying!” She slapped the reddest part of his sunburn with the back of her hand.

“Ow!”

“How did you know?”

“Tilly told me.”

“Nice one, Tilly.”

“So what happened?”

She looked into the bottom of her glass. “I suppose it was something you get over in time. Like shingles.”

“No, really, what happened.”

“I got to know you. You cured me of you.”

“Well I want to read these poems. What rhymes with ‘Dexter’?”

“‘Bastard’. It’s a half-rhyme.”

Dexter Mayhew was brilliant. He’s a layered character, constantly changing throughout the novel. He is initially a little bit awful – at one point deciding he wants to take up photography because he likes the idea of picking up chicks with the line “I'm a professional photographer”. In the beginning he’s as deep as a puddle and egotistical to boot. It’s only in his scenes opposite Emma that readers are able to see his appeal. Emma makes him better – she pushes him to be honest and self-deprecating, she doesn’t give him an inch and calls him out on his glib insincerity. Dexter is at his funniest when he’s trying to keep up with Emma’s whip-quick wit. But he’s also frustrating – for as much as he is improved by Emma’s proximity, and as much as readers can read his betterment around her, he insists on one-night-stands with vapid misses and stone-cold beauties. It really does take Dexter 20 years to wake up to himself and realize what has always been right in front of him.

Emma and Dexter’s relationship was brilliant to read because it’s so bloody true. It’s a relationship based on what’s not said – all those words and truths that get lodged in your throat and stuck because you’re embarrassed or it’s not the right time or you might risk the friendship. It’s a romance based on ‘what if?’ and near-misses. Dexter and Emma are just two people – you may even have a Dex and Em in your friendship group. Two people who are so obviously meant to be together if they would just get their act together first!

What really impressed me in this book was how David Nicholls avoided the ‘big scenes’ but kept the novel interesting and the plot chugging. Each chapter is a snapshot of July 15th of that year. We only read what happens on that day – whether it be a disastrous job interview, a friend’s wedding, or a trip to Cornwall. Nicholls constantly references big events that are upcoming or have just been – like the death of a parent, or an impending marriage. But Nicholls never writes the actual scene – we never see the moment in the hospital room when the mother dies. Instead we read about the fall-out and repercussions of that event. It’s an interesting and unconventional way to write a book – sticking to the ‘one day a year’ format means that (realistically) all the big moments and dramas won’t all conspire to fall on that one day in July. But Nicholls hasn’t let that dampen the story or lessen the drama. This insistence on writing snapshots and aftermath means that the novel really does feel like a journey, and a relatable one at that.

‘One Day’ is a fantastically bittersweet story of a relationship that weathers the test of time. Emma and Dexter are two people who fell into their friendship, but managed to cling to it like a life-raft through 20 years of milestones and pitfalls, failures and triumphs . . . always with the knowledge that they were each other’s constant, the one person they could depend on in the whole world. I laughed (okay, snorted too) and wept bitterly throughout the novel. David Nicholls is an epic author of ordinarily extraordinary romance and ‘One Day’ is a must-read novel for young and old, men and women.

5/5

The film adaptation is set for August 19th release. It stars Anne Hathaway as Emma Morley, and Jim Sturgess as Dexter Mayhew. I'm actually really keen to see the movie (despite book fans online scepticism). Yes, Hathaway is American, not British (but I liked her fine as Jane Austen and everyone said that was blasphemy!). Jim Sturgess has been a favourite since ‘Across the Universe’. I know ‘One Day’ will be a hard story to adapt – what with Nicholls reluctance to write ‘big drama scenes’ in the book and the film medium kind of needing those high-drama moments. And, yes, some lines in the trailer are cringe-worthy corny: “whatever happens tomorrow, we have today.” But watching the trailer makes me happy and it was what prompted me to finally crack the book open in the first place – so there!