Us: A Novel
David Nicholls
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 0062365592
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
David Nicholls brings the wit and intelligence that graced his enormously popular New York Times bestseller, One Day, to a compellingly human, deftly funny new novel about what holds marriages and families together—and what happens, and what we learn about ourselves, when everything threatens to fall apart.
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date . . . and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie.
Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger. Us is a moving meditation on the demands of marriage and parenthood, the regrets of abandoning youth for middle age, and the intricate relationship between the heart and the head. And in David Nicholls’s gifted hands, Douglas’s odyssey brings Europe—from the streets of Amsterdam to the famed museums of Paris, from the cafés of Venice to the beaches of Barcelona—to vivid life just as he experiences a powerful awakening of his own. Will this summer be his last as a husband, or the moment when he turns his marriage, and maybe even his whole life, around?
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yet I still recall the expression on his face when handed a pair of wooden chopsticks. He pointed them at the waiter, like a switchblade. ‘Knife and fork. Knife. And. Fork.’ Of course we argued about this. The Channel Tunnel, he said, was ‘like leaving your front door open’. What did he imagine might happen? I asked. A great, marauding horde of toreadors and trattoria waiters and onion-sellers pouring out into Folkestone, Kent? In fairness, my father had lost his own father in Belgium in 1944,
were born and to which Connie now belongs, albeit with some protest. In book after book I read that the middle-class are doomed. Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer
inventions or mental arithmetic. We did what we could but Mike’s team, the aforementioned Mobiles at the Ready, were a tight little huddle of whispers and giggles, Mike and Connie head to head at its centre. ‘Yes!’ they hissed to each other. ‘Well done! Write it down!’ It seemed that Mike was not as dim as I’d imagined, at least with regard to song lyrics and celebrity tattoos, and Connie’s hand gripped his forearm tight. ‘Yes, Mike, yes! You’re brilliant!’ Elsewhere other teams were cheating in
particular parabola. ‘Moisturise!’ Connie used to say when we first met, but I was no more likely to do this than tattoo my neck and consequently I now have the complexion of Jabba the Hutt. I’ve looked foolish in a T-shirt for some years now but, health-wise, I try to keep in shape. I eat carefully to avoid the fate of my father, who died of a heart attack earlier than seemed right. His heart ‘basically exploded’ said the doctor – with inappropriate relish, I felt – and consequently I jog
saints, gods and monsters of the Louvre, splendid though they were. This was great art and the postcard bill was going to be immense. In an imposing dark blue room the three of us sat, elbow to elbow, in front of The Night Watch, which, my guidebook said, was probably the fourth most famous painting in the world. ‘What do you think are the top three?’ I asked, but no one wanted to play that game, so I looked at the painting instead. There was a lot going on. It had, as my father would say, a