My life in BOOKS
WITH A NEW LOVE STORY, YOU ARE HERE, OUT THIS MONTH, BESTSELLING AUTHOR David Nicholls SHARES THE BOOKS THAT HAVE SHAPED HIM
My favourite character from a book is…
Where to start? The most vivid characters are often unbearable or deeply unlikeable, and who’d want to spend time with Miss Havisham or Miss Jean Brodie? And yet the pleasant characters are often deeply dull, and David Copperfield is lousy company, too. Perhaps someone funny then. I love Zooey in Salinger’s Franny And Zooey, his cool and his cynicism. It would be good to sit and smoke and drink martinis with him.
The character I most relate to is…
When I was younger, Adrian Mole was like looking in a mirror and Pip from Great Expectations still resonates; the vague aspirations, the terrible mistakes, the desire to be decent and the failure to do so. I’ve never really let go of that book.
The book that helped me get through a difficult time was…
When my father died, I reached for Philip Roth’s Patrimony, a beautiful, frank and tender book about a sometimes difficult relationship. It was a great comfort, though it’s a real heartbreaker, too.
A book that shaped my teenage years was…
Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’urbervilles. All that doomed love, the twist of fate, the terrible men. Many years later I adapted it for the BBC, starring Gemma Arterton and Eddie Redmayne, a dream come true for teenage-me, and a line in one chapter also gave me the idea for One Day’s structure. A life-changing book then; imagine if I’d had a different A-level set text. None of that would have happened.
A line from a book that has stayed with me is…
‘Oh, thank God’ in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful Of Dust. It’s just three words, but in context they are absolutely chilling.
My all-time favourite book is…
It changes week to week, almost day to day, but I do think The Great Gatsby is a wonder. A truly terrible love story, almost anti-romantic, but hard and sharp and brilliant.
A book that really made me laugh was…
Penelope Fitzgerald is one of my favourite writers, and At Freddie’s is her funniest book, a brilliant comedy about a crumbling acting school in 1960s London. It’s so witty and dry.
The book I wish I had written is…
It’s so far beyond my own abilities as a writer, but Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson is the most perfectly written book I can think of. The prose on every page is so precise and exquisite. A true masterpiece.
You Are Here (Sceptre, £20) by David Nicholls is out 23rd April