David Nicholls

Us

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Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
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?
This book is currently unavailable
414 printed pages
Publication year
2014
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Impressions

  • Mette Bolvig Pedersenshared an impression7 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🎯Worthwhile
    🌴Beach Bag Book
    😄LOLZ
    💧Soppy

    Godt skrevet. Både morsom, trist og tankevækkende.

  • Fatima Djamirzeshared an impression9 years ago
    🎯Worthwhile
    💞Loved Up
    🚀Unputdownable

    Очень понравилась

Quotes

  • Maria Kovalenkohas quoted7 years ago
    Poor St Ursula. Poor ten thousand virgins. Still, it’s a comfort, I suppose, to know that someone is having a worse holiday than you.’
  • Maria Kovalenkohas quoted7 years ago
    This was what surprised me most about Venice: just how sombre it could be; all those tourists taking snaps and thinking about death. Venice was my first experience of Italy, so where were the floury-handed mammas and tousle-headed rascals that I’d been led to expect? Instead this was a city of closed doors, its besieged citizens narrow-eyed and resentful – understandably so – of the endless waves of visitors even in winter, like house-guests who will not take the hint and go. Even the festivals were gloomy; the Venetian idea of a good time was for everyone to dress up as skeletons. Perhaps it was a legacy of the plague, the silence or the shadows, the dark canals or the absence of green spaces, but walking the deserted alleys and rainswept esplanades, I found the melancholy quite overwhelming, yet also weirdly pleasurable. I don’t think I’ve ever been as simultaneously sad and happy in my life.
  • Maria Kovalenkohas quoted7 years ago
    She looked over her shoulder and smiled, and I introduced her to Bruce, our pet fruit fly, to show that it was not only the art-school crowd who knew how to have a good time.

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