Another round of nostalgia from David Nicholls!
David Nicholls definitely has found his passion as a writer, and it lies in exploring the concept of nostalgia and first love. I was really excited to read this one after thoroughly enjoying One Day, but One Day unfortunately is better executed and dives a lot deeper than this one for me. Charlie takes his readers back through an important summer for him, the last summer before college, and delves into his feelings about his family, groups of friends, and how he met his first true love, Fran.
The thing that this novel is truly missing is a through-line. The chapters are all titled and feel like a series of very short essays, like you might see in a memoir. We don’t ever get a really good sense of how Charlie has developed from a young man into the man he has become, and the parts set in the present could have almost been omitted entirely. I felt like many of the scenes with the theatre troupe were slow-moving and not incredibly interesting, and with so many characters I didn’t feel like the reader has a chance to really know any of them either.
The best aspect of the book is, of course, Charlie’s relationship and conversations with Fran, but I would have liked to have more of those too. The last third of the book is markedly more interesting than the first two parts, but I didn’t feel the payoff since I wasn’t truly invested.
There are some great wistful observations made throughout, so worth giving it a shot if you enjoy Shakespeare, acting, or remembering your first love!
The thing that this novel is truly missing is a through-line. The chapters are all titled and feel like a series of very short essays, like you might see in a memoir. We don’t ever get a really good sense of how Charlie has developed from a young man into the man he has become, and the parts set in the present could have almost been omitted entirely. I felt like many of the scenes with the theatre troupe were slow-moving and not incredibly interesting, and with so many characters I didn’t feel like the reader has a chance to really know any of them either.
The best aspect of the book is, of course, Charlie’s relationship and conversations with Fran, but I would have liked to have more of those too. The last third of the book is markedly more interesting than the first two parts, but I didn’t feel the payoff since I wasn’t truly invested.
There are some great wistful observations made throughout, so worth giving it a shot if you enjoy Shakespeare, acting, or remembering your first love!