The other day I read a story about a man who tried to save his 20-year marriage by buying his recently estranged wife an iPhone 6. There was a quote from him admitting that he hadn’t always been the best husband or father but since his wife had been so pleased with her old iPhone, he hoped that the latest model (for which he’d queued for two days and couldn’t really afford) would be enough of an olive branch to win her back.
I was immediately struck by the shortsighted desperation of his thought process, the foolish impression that a shiny new gadget (however sought-after) could soothe the hurts and disappointments of two decades.
David Nicholls's new novel Us [Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk] is the exploration of precisely such delusional thinking in one spurned husband.
Douglas Petersen’s 17-year-old son Albie is about to leave home for university – a departure the middle-aged biochemist has been expecting for many years, even if Albie’s off to study something as useless, in Douglas’s mind, as art – but now his wife Connie has also announced her impending exit from the marital home. After 21 years of apparently content marriage together, the revelation of her unhappiness comes like a bolt out of the blue for Douglas, not least because he still adores her with the same blinkered, love-struck gaze he’s had since the moment they met.
“I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together,” he protests. “Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?” she replies. This is the first inkling we get that despite the longevity of their relationship, it might not quite be a match made in heaven.
Douglas, however, is determined to do all he can to change his wife’s mind, thus the Grand Tour they embark on round Europe – “posh inter-railing” originally envisioned to prepare Albie for the adult world following in the footsteps of the young (wealthy) men of the past who completed their education with a “cultural pilgrimage to the continent” – actually turns into a rather fraught last-ditch attempt by Douglas to recreate something of a second honeymoon.
Unfortunately, rather than rooting for them to save their marriage, I found myself preoccupied with wondering how on earth this inherently incompatible couple (flashbacks of their life together run parallel to their European adventures) had managed as long as 21 years together without going their separate ways long ago.
That’s not to say that Nicholls isn’t aware of his protagonists’ discordancy, and it’s this refusal to see things through rose-tinted glasses that saves the novel from descending into dangerously mawkish territory. More than once I’ve heard him described as the Richard Curtis of the literary world, but Nicholls’s romcoms have a decidedly un-Curtis-like sting in their tails. If anything, they’re more like Dutch art (or the way Douglas describes the paintings he sees in Amsterdam, at least): “familiar and domestic” without being “banal or drab” – “There was pride, joy, even, in the everyday scenes and portraits of real personalities, flawed and vain, muddled and silly.”
I puzzled over the popularity of One Day (Nicholls's previous novel, which became a worldwide bestseller before being adapted into a film), apparently one of the few people not to be moved by this story of two lovers who, after many years of near misses, eventually find happiness together only for it to be brought to an abrupt and tragic end. But reading Us I felt like I finally understood the charm of Nicholls's work. It's a thoughtful and realistic portrait of marriage and parenthood that never feels laboured or contrived. As has recently been confirmed, it's not quite Man Booker shortlist material, but Nicholls has a keen eye for the little differences of perspective that, over the years, amount to a marriage that, depending on who's telling the story, has been lived differently by husband and wife.
There's no doubt either that he's a writer who knows how to construct and tell a story, and for the reader who wants something more than an on/off romance, he provides discreet and clever nods to life imitating art – Douglas's speedy retreat from Goya's horrific Saturn Devouring his Son that sends him tumbling into the arms of an exasperated Albie who's trying to escape his overbearing father – "Jesus Christ, Dad, why can't you just leave me alone?" – is among my favourites. It's an original riff on the Grand Tour, a Bildungsroman for the "life begins at 40" generation.
Lucy Scholes is a freelance journalist who lives in London.
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