‘LOVE HAS ALWAYS FELT LIKE THE BEST SUBJECT MATTER’
As David Nicholls releases his new novel, Sweet Sorrow, Natasha Lunn finds out how he feels about first love, parenting and the legacy of his iconic bestseller One Day
David Nicholls talks about his new book
The man sitting in front of me in a slightly crumpled suit and oxblood brogues has made millions of us cry. In One Day, a love story between hedonistic Dexter Mayhew and lovable Emma Morley, Nicholls compelled more than 5m readers to fall in love with two Edinburgh graduates – and then he broke our hearts. It’s testament to his writing that, 10 years later, I – like many others – am still not over it. Why did he have to kill Emma?! ‘Well, I don’t know if I would now,’ says Nicholls, shifting position in an armchair at his publisher’s office in London. ‘I probably would think it’s a bit much. I might have killed Dexter, which could’ve been interesting, too, but Dexter learns from Emma and I’m not sure Emma learns from Dexter, so there are mechanics to it that maybe
I would shy away from now, which at the time felt like the only story to tell.’
We’re here to discuss Nicholls’s new novel, Sweet Sorrow, a story of first love and the complicated cocktail of joy and sadness that comes with teetering on the edges of adulthood. Nicholls was drawn to writing about teenagers because ‘that little window in between school and college was an intense time of excitement coupled with fear. You were like jelly beginning to set – starting to work out who you were and what you believed and who you wanted to be with.’ He set the novel over summer because it has three acts (June, July and August) and is often ‘a hinge in your life’, with a ‘sense of wanting to hold on to something that’s inevitably passing.’
If Richard Curtis were to write a British author into one of his films, I imagine they might be a lot like Nicholls. He’s charming but self-deprecating, thoughtful but slightly hesitant, and quick to remind me that although his novels rise out of periods in his life, they aren’t autobiographical: ‘When I wrote Starter For Ten in my 30s, I was still living in the shadow of university. When I started One Day, I’d just become a father; it was a swan song to the days when friendships and dating were the overwhelming things in my life. The books I’ve written now, even though they’re not about my family, are about how we get on with our parents or children, because that’s become a preoccupation for me. My son is 13 and my daughter is 11, and I can feel [the teen years] looming. I wanted to write about that, rather than the aches, pains and moroseness of being 52!’
As a teenager, Nicholls was ‘swotty, awkward, solitary, with terrible skin’ and ‘part of a popular group but sort of on the edge of it’. Did writing about teenagers make him nostalgic, or thankful to be older? ‘The latter,’ he quickly replies. ‘I have a lot of regrets about that time. The summer Charlie [Sweet Sorrow’s main character] spends falling in love, I spent in a factory making coffee percolators, so there was none of that elation or romance. I feel much happier in myself than I did at 16. It gives me the shivers, actually, talking about it too much.’ Nicholls’s regrets are ‘hard to talk about’, but mainly concern the ‘pretty gruesome’ way his friends treated each other then. ‘A great deal of energy in those friendships was spent undermining each other; I feel quite sad about that.’
From Emma and Dexter’s friendship-turned-love-affair in One Day to Pete and Jen’s divorce in Cold Feet (Nicholls was a screenwriter on the show), he continues to write about love because it ‘offers up the most opportunity for comedy, drama and sadness. It has always felt like the best subject matter to me. Often it alters your direction, it’s immense, and I’ve never felt that there wasn’t anything more to say about it.’
At points in Sweet Sorrow, Nicholls suggests first love is a fantasy; at others, he implies it’s an intense connection you’ll never experience again. What does he believe? ‘First love, by definition, is something that only happens once; it’s a whole new range of sensations and emotions that suddenly hit you… and yet it’s not real. It depends on where you are in life, but it’s free of the domestic concerns and social awareness you inherit in your 20s and 30s: where you are in life and work, where you live, what you want from the future. None of that crosses your mind when you’re 15. Instead you have this poetic, intense, almost physical sensation that’s different from the mechanics of love later in life. That isn’t to say that it’s better, but it’s very particular.’
Unlike the tumultuous relationships he writes about, Nicholls’s own love stories are quietly romantic; he has been with his partner, Hannah, for 22 years and is ‘an embarrassing father’ to Max, 13, and Romy, 11. The past 12 years of his life ‘have been dominated by the business of parenthood’, which has also made him more curious about how he got where he is today. ‘The past seems to take up, literally, more of your life. And, having kids, every day you have a little reminder of what things felt like. Things you didn’t notice or give enough weight to as a child. You’re reminded not just of your own childhood, but of your parents’ experience of your childhood.’ As well as the business of domesticity,
‘THE PAST SEEMS TO TAKE UP, LITERALLY, MORE OF YOUR LIFE’
Nicholls’s recent years have been dominated by career success. This year, he won a BAFTA for best drama writer for his adaptation of the Patrick Melrose novels (‘I’m not cool about it at all! I’m thrilled’) and next he’s working on a four-hour TV drama based on his novel
Us (starring Tom Hollander). Although, in typically self-deprecating fashion, he’s wary of assuming any success. ‘I’m still convinced there’s going to be some horrific backlash and it’ll be torn to pieces just to teach me a lesson,’ he admits. ‘But I’m very proud of it.’
Given Nicholls found fame writing about love, I ask what he wishes he had known about it. ‘Goodness,’ he replies, taken aback by the vastness of the question. ‘Well, I suppose I wish I’d been a little more confident and known [love] isn’t something anyone is excluded from. When I was a teenager, I did feel it was something that everyone else was up to. You see so many people around you who seem to be having this extraordinary time. It doesn’t feel like something that you deserve, or that might happen.’
With so many triumphs, it’s difficult to imagine Nicholls as the solitary teenager, unsure if he would ever find love or success. Part of me wishes he’d known about all the wonders that would be waiting for him on the doorstep of adulthood. Then again, if he’d been more confident, we might not have his beautiful love stories on our bookshelves.