Nicholls draws us the picture of Douglas, before the meeting, with dry humour, epitomised by the following quote: Connie is on the bounce from a torrid relationship with a fellow artist. Douglas, why would anyone in their right mind have thought of that?Īt the beginning of their story Douglas, a logical, conservative and literal scientist, engrossed in his work to the extent of having no social life and whose idea of imagination stretches to wanting to ensure a secure future, meets Connie, an imaginative ex arts student and would be artist, living life to the full as it comes, good or bad. Connie turned to me her head on the pillow and said: I’d always been under the impression that we were together because we wanted to be together, because we were happy most of the time I thought, we loved each other I thought, clearly I was mistaken, but I was looking forward to us growing old together, me and you growing old and dying together. Some hints at the differences between Connie and Douglas are given in the present day after the announcement, when Douglas explains why he thinks they are together:

The story then follows two converging paths, the first being from the past as Douglas traces his life with Connie up to the announcement, and the second as Douglas organises a ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe for all three to try and persuade Connie to stay. As the novel opens, Connie in what to Douglas seems out of the blue, tells him she wants to leave him after twenty years of marriage.

Us is the story of a family, Douglas and his wife Connie and their son Albie. Well if you’ve been to Cheltenham Spa you will appreciate this typical example of the dry humour of Douglas, David Nicholls’ narrator and main character in his 2009 novel, Us, one of my English lit targets for 2016. ‘Amsterdam’s reputation as a city of sin always seems something of an anomaly to me as if one were to discover the presence of an immense crack den in the centre of Cheltenham Spa.’

2009 novel by david nicholls