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).
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.
