BOOKS
Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls
(Hodder, £20)
Remember 2011, when every bus, train
and beach seemed to be populated
exclusively by people reading One Day
by David Nicholls? Well, with Sweet
Sorrow, Nicholls may well be poised
to do it again.
The narrator is Charlie Lewis, now in
his mid-thirties—although the main
action takes place in the summer of
1997, when he’s 16. Following his
parents’ separation Charlie is living with
his deeply depressed father (whose
preferred euphemism for his condition
is “a bit blue”). “The tyranny of banter”
means that his social life consists mostly
of exchanging insults with his friends—
rather than, say, talking to them.
Then, while escaping it all on a bike
ride, Charlie meets the dazzling,significantly posher Fran
and is so smitten that he
even joins her amateur-
dramatic company. Cue a
pitch-perfect portrait of
the thrills, joys and
annoyingly intrusive
anxieties of first love.
Sweet Sorrow describes what’s still
the most memorable summer of
Charlie’s life with a tenderness that’s
never remotely soppy. It also displays
the same miraculous ability as One Day
to combine lightness of tone and lots of
good jokes with an underlying
melancholy—and, by the end, real
emotional punch.The Carer by Deborah Moggach
(Tinder Press, £16.99)
In our hypercritical age—where one
slip of the tweet can lead to any amount
of gleeful outrage—the novels of
Deborah Moggach are a much-needed
tonic. It’s not that she’s unaware of
human foibles. On the contrary: her
books are full of people who follow their
hearts (or loins) in all sorts ofJuly Fiction
Exploring first love and later life, this month’s page-
turners come from two much-loved British writers
at the top of their game...James Walton is a
book reviewer and
broadcaster, and has
written and presented
17 series of the BBC
Radio 4 literary quiz
The Write Stuff122 • JULY 2019