David Nicholls
Author David Nicholls talks to Jess O Sullivan about his new novel, the bittersweet joy of remembering your younger self and why teenage boys are often misunderstood
The author and screenwriter talks to Jess O Sullivan about first love
David Nicholls is sitting on the terrace of the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, enjoying the sunshine in a haze of fragrant purple lavender. It’s a fitting spot to talk about his latest novel Sweet Sorrow, which focuses on ‘one life-changing summer’ for his anti-hero, Charlie Lewis. It’s life-changing because in that long, hot summer Charlie Lewis feels the pang of first love. However like all romantic relationships in a David Nicholls tale, the course of love does not run smoothly. This brings me to the opening gambit of our conversation: I tell him that my mother is quite angry with him. I can tell from the slow smile that spreads across his face that this is not the first time that he’s faced reader resentment over his shock ending for One Day, his third and most successful book. If you didn’t read it then you might have seen the film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturges as star-cross’d lovers. “Yeah there’s a lot of rage out there still,” he says with a laugh. “But I quite like that kind of reaction to things. I’d always thought that was part of the story, so there didn’t seem to be any alternative. I get a weird mixture of rage and flattery for the book, but that’s fine.”
If there is a Midas touch when it comes to writing a novel, David Nicholls has it and because his books come few and far between (just five books in 16 years) each one is highly anticipated by fans and critics alike. The author does plenty of writing for the screen in between, whether it’s a film adaptation of one of his works or adaptations of other writers, from Patrick Melrose starring Benedict Cumberbatch to Far From the Madding Crowd starring Carey Mulligan. However, it is his books which allow him to really explore the themes that matter to him, and one he seems to
return to again and again is the divide between the working-class and middle-class. “I do keep coming back to it. It’s a very hard thing to shake off. I’m 52 now and I’ve been living a very middle-class life for most of my life now, even though that’s not the background I’m from. But I still have an awareness of how class impacts on relationships. It’s not something that I can ever imagine being unaware of.”
Nicholls grew up in Southampton. His parents worked as a factory engineer and a local council worker and he was the middle child of three. He attended sixth-form college, taking A-levels in Drama and Theatre Studies along with English, Physics and Biology and when the time came to choose his path, it was a break from his parents great expectations – Drama and English at Bristol University. “I remember very powerfully how thrown my parents were by me giving up a conventional vocational path like science or medicine to be in plays and stuff. They were really fearful, and a bit angry. My father certainly was because I suddenly had these opportunities that nobody else had and I was throwing it away on poetry. He couldn’t work out why I wasn’t grabbing hold of the security that a middle-class career would bring.”
Though there is a focus on class, Sweet Sorrow is not so much a story about the haves and have nots, but more about how privilege allows you to ask yourself the question, why not? Why should I not pursue whatever career path I wish? When 16-year-old Charlie joins an amateur dramatic society to impress a girl he fancies, he feels immediately out of his depth. It is the summer they have all just finished their exams; while everyone else is looking forward to university, Charlie knows that for him it isn’t an option. “When I started writing it and it was about Romeo & Juliet, I wondered did we need a Montague/Capulet divide. All love stories need a barrier, and I wondered what could it be, that isn’t insurmountable, but is still present. And I suppose in this book it’s education and culture and an attitude to it. The only reason I am able to write professionally is that I had a grant. I had free education. If it had been a loan, or involved a huge amount of debt, I wouldn’t have been frightened and I wouldn’t have done anything as nebulous as English or drama. It’s not okay as it should be open to everyone.”
It’s interesting that Nicholls chose to focus on this time of life, as his eldest son Max has just turned 13. I wonder was this his way of reminding himself of what it is like to be a teenage boy. “When I was writing it I was still thinking of him as an older kid at 11 then 12. But over the last year he’s shot up and changed completely. He has re-invented himself, from his taste in music to his clothes. It’s like he is trying on various costumes and trying to find the one he likes.”
While Nicholls acknowledges that already his son is way more mature than he was at that age (“Thinking about it now, I really was making model planes way into my mid-teens”) he says that part of the aim of the book was to show that often teenage boys are grossly misunderstood. “Often they have a shyness that manifests as boisterousness, insecurity that manifests in noise and being endlessly cynical and constantly facetious. You jump on anyone who is sincere and really stomp on it, and yet I remember it as being quite a tender, vulnerable, frightening time. I wanted to get that across. Charlie can’t quite find a way to walk through the world and talk to people.”
If writing the book has made him reflect on his own experience as a teen navigating the murky waters of the class divide, then I have a feeling he has a tendency to be overly harsh on himself. In conversation, Nicholls is quick to downplay his talents, and says of his teen self: “I have a sneaking feeling that I might have been quite gauche, a bit pompous and pretentious, and insensitive.” He recalls that in his total immersion in his own educational exploits and his new friends, he might have neglected the emotional needs of his own parents. “I certainly was insensitive towards my family. Because I was doing well at school and was so passionate about that and education, I don’t think I was necessarily as considerate as I could have been. For instance, my father lost his job when I went to university and I don’t think I thought about it as much as I should have. I was so swept away with new friends, new worlds and opportunities. I didn’t really pay attention to other things, like domestic, family things.” But he acknowledges that adolescents are naturally quite self-centred and preoccupied with what’s going on inside. “I’m really proud of the work, but I don’t think I’ve ever shaken off that particular period of life.”