Us – David Nicholls

And with this I have now officially read all the books by David Nicholls. Hardly an accomplishment, considering he has written four and that reading them is so effortless. A bit too effortless to be honest…

Us is a great read when you are bored during a long journey between a Northern Italy warm enough to still swim in the Mediterranean in November and a windy and rainy South-East England, but little more than that. Just as One Day and The Understudy, Us is about the dynamics of a mismatched couple – something whose novelty wears off after a (short?) while. And, much like One Day, the book is saved from being excessively trite and banal by a plot twist in the end (in One Day this came with Emma’s bike-ride, in Us with an added piece of information on the life of the couple’s son). I also have the feeling that Nicholls just had a lot of travel notes that he felt like cramming in a book (although at times this are quite interesting – like comparing the glorious Champs-Élysées to the much-less glorious Oxford Street).

While Starter for Ten was at times hilarious, and The Understudy was ultimately quite funny, both Us and One Day appear more ambitious and seem to attempt to tackle deeper issues and problems. To me, however, they fail and end up being fairly entertaining, but not as much as their two predecessors.