DAVID Nicholls’ Us did not make the cut for The Man Booker Prize 2014 shortlist and it is true that it was berated by many who thought it too mainstream to be longlisted in the first place. However, I simply adored this book.

From the very first page the protagonist won me over with his sincere, warm, and often witty narration of his life story. The plot is fairly simple: a white middle-class man goes on a family Europe tour in the hopes of saving his marriage and reconnecting with his 17-year-old son. However, it is in the execution of this plot that the subtle yet unmistakable genius of Nicholls’ craft is apparent, making you question the legitimacy of the literary and popular fiction divide.

A short time before their son, Albie, is due to leave for college, Douglas is woken up by his wife Connie in the middle of the night to be told that their marriage has “run its course.”

The form isn’t complicated: the book is divided into sections according to the Europeans cities they are visiting and chapters alternate between the present and the past. As Us unravels the story of Douglas and Connie’s love, we come to know their ‘love story’ in bits and pieces as it is interrupted by Douglas’s present frustrating attempts at salvaging his old life. However, it does not mean that the structure is sloppy; on the contrary, it is impeccable.

Douglas is a biochemist who fell in love with Connie, a bohemian artist and a rebel soul. However, Us is not a love story in the traditional sense because it’s more about a disintegrating marriage and the difficulties of accepting change over love. Despite her best efforts Connie was unable to instill her carefree spontaneity in her husband and the opposite-attracts theory that brought them together becomes their doom in the end. “But the trouble with living in the moment is that the moment passes. Impulse and spontaneity take no account of the longer term, of responsibilities and obligations, debts to be paid, promises to be filled,” observes the jilted spouse.

Against Connie’s wishes Douglas left his research job to work in the private, commercial sector so that he would be able to support his family. Now his son calls him a “corporate sell-out” and his wife doesn’t find him interesting anymore. Connie also gave up her dream of painting to work in an art gallery and later in a museum when they started their family. Perhaps it is because they gave up their personal dreams to start a family that Connie isn’t happy in this marriage. Douglas, on the other hand, is still very much in love with his wife but is not a very expressive man: “The fact was I loved my wife to a degree I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.” And he often says the wrong things to both his wife and son who treat him as an outsider.

Douglas cannot understand why his son is constantly trying to act like a rebel when he and his wife have provided him with love and comfort. As they are quite incapable of having a decent conversation without one of them losing all self-control, he claims that Albie makes him feel like his stepfather did. “I have had some experience of unrequited love in the past and that was no picnic, I can tell you. But the unrequited love of one’s only offspring has its own particular slow acid burn,” bewails the spurned father.

I can see how many people would dislike Connie for being strong-headed, selfish and unappreciative and get annoyed at Albie’s rudeness and indifference but forgive him in the end because what can you expect from a 17-year-old boy? Nicholls isn’t trying to create likeable characters that we can relate to but instead show us the dynamics of sustaining that initial feeling of love in middle age.

There are no heroes and villains in everyday lives, Nicholls shows. Although Douglas is devastated and unable to make sense of his life, his family tragedy is not tragic in a grand Shakespearian sense. While Douglas has his tragic flaws, unlike standard tragedies, the other key characters also have similarly big flaws. It is precisely this palpable humanity and ordinary vitality of the characters that gives them a three-dimensional aura. Moreover, Nicholls succeeds in presenting the points of view of both Connie and Albie despite the limitations of the one-person narrative.

Nicholls has laced this heartwarming story with a merciless humour that elevates his book above silly categorisations like ‘chic-lit’. For instance, he writes on the increasing demand for humour in relationships: “A great deal of stress is placed on the importance of humour in the modern relationship. Everything will be all right, we are led to believe, as long as you can make each other laugh, rendering a successful marriage.” Douglas, who is constantly thinking of ways to sound witty and intelligent to his wife and son, says “I sometimes felt that Connie had spent the first three years laughing at my jokes and the next 21 sighing at them.”

Although Nicholls’ previous book, One Day, was a phenomenal hit, I believe Us is his best work to date. He is as poignant and hilarious in Us as he was in One Day but it is flawlessly balanced with a delicate practical wisdom that gives it a zesty quality. In short, a pure joy.

Us

(NOVEL)

By David Nicholls

Harper Collins, UK

ISBN 978-0062365583

416pp.