Sweet Sorrow (Nicholls)

Sweet Sorrow 
David Nicholls, 2020
HMH Books
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780358248361


Summary
From the best-selling author of One Day comes a bittersweet and brilliantly funny coming-of-age tale about the heart-stopping thrill of first love—and how just one summer can forever change a life.
 
• Now:
On the verge of marriage and a fresh start, thirty-eight year old Charlie Lewis finds that he can’t stop thinking about the past, and the events of one particular summer.
 
• Then:
Sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don’t remember in the school photograph. He’s failing his classes. At home he looks after his depressed father—when surely it should be the other way round—and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread.
 
But when Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope.
 
In order to spend time with Fran, Charlie must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person. He must join the Company.

And if the Company sounds like a cult, the truth is even more appalling: The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet learned and performed in a theater troupe over the course of a summer.
 
• Now:
Charlie can’t go the altar without coming to terms with his relationship with Fran, his friends, and his former self.

Poignant, funny, enchanting, devastating, Sweet Sorrow is a tragicomedy about the rocky path to adulthood and the confusion of family life, a celebration of the reviving power of friendship and that brief, searing explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly after it has burned out.
Show More (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1966
• Where—Hampshire, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Bristol University; American Musical and Dramatic Academy
• Currently—lives in London, England

David Nicholls is an English novelist and screenwriter. His novels include Starter for Ten (2003), The Understudy (2005), One Day (2009), Us (2014), and Sweet Sorrow (2020).

Early years
He attended Barton Peveril sixth-form college at Eastleigh, Hampshire, from 1983 to 1985 (taking A-levels in drama and theatre studies—like his elder and younger siblings—English, physics and biology), and playing a wide range of roles in college drama productions.

He then attended Bristol University in the 1980s (graduating with a BA in Drama and English in 1988) before training as an actor at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. Throughout his twenties, he worked as a professional actor, using the stage name David Holdaway. He played small roles at various theatres, including the West Yorkshire Playhouse and, for a three year period, at the Royal National Theatre.

Screenwriter
As a screenwriter, he co-wrote the adapted screenplay of Simpatico and contributed four scripts to the third series of Cold Feet (both 2000). For the latter, he was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award for Best New Writer (Fiction). He created the Granada Television pilot and miniseries I Saw You (2000, 2002) and the Tiger Aspect six-part series Rescue Me (2002). Rescue Me lasted for only one series before being cancelled. Nicholls had written four episodes for the second series before being told of the cancellation. His anger over this led to him taking a break from screenwriting to concentrate on writing his first novel, Starter for Ten. When he returned to screenwriting, he adapted Much Ado About Nothing into a one-hour segment of the BBC's 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told season.

In 2006, his film adaptation Starter for 10 was released in cinemas. The following year, he wrote And When Did You Last See Your Father?, an adaptation of the memoir by Blake Morrison. He penned an adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles for the BBC, which aired in 2008, and an adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd for BBC Films. He has also adapted Great Expectations; the screenplay has been listed on the 2009 Brit List, an annual industry poll of the best unmade scripts outside of the United States.

In 2005 he wrote Aftersun for the Old Vic's 24-Hour Play festival and later developed it into a one-off comedy for BBC One, broadcast in 2006. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A beautiful paean to young love.… Sweet Sorrow is a book that does what Nicholls does best… pinning the narrative to a love story that manages to be moving without ever tipping over into sentimentality, all of it composed with deftness, intelligence and, most importantly, humour. We may think of Nicholls as a writer of heartbreakers… but he has always been a comic novelist and Sweet Sorrow is full of passages of laugh-out-loud… humour.
Guardian (UK)


Nicholls' literary talents are impressive…. [T]he sense of nostalgia is visceral and intense, almost time-bending.
Sunday Times (UK)


A compassionate, intelligent look at the raw pain and loneliness of a teenage boy, the everyday miracle of first love and the perennial power of Shakespeare’s language.
Spectator (UK)


[A]n ideal blend of the gently humorous and utterly heartfelt…, and readers are liable to find their thoughts drifting over their own misspent school holidays or crushingly ardent first loves. Bag a copy immediately, because this has got "perfect summer read" smeared all over it like so much factor 30.
Independent (UK)


[T]he novel skips along merrily; the repartee frequently sparkles, the jokes are genuinely funny, walk-on characters are brilliantly sketched into life, and his genuine affection for the main players is evident throughout.
Financial Times (UK)


Nicholls excels at capturing Charlie’s insecurity, the messy exuberance of first love, and the coarseness of teenage male friendships…. A good deal of fun.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) With his usual grace, Nicholls plumbs human relationships… offering a singular reading experience…. Nicholls masterfully unfolds events. The depth of feeling between friends, family members, and lovers, first time or not—Nicholls captures it all. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


(Starred review) With fully fleshed-out characters, terrific dialogue, bountiful humor, and genuinely affecting scenes, this is really the full package of a rewarding, romantic read.
Booklist


[L]eisurely, nostalgic, and often amusing…. Charlie and his theatrical colleagues make good company, and even the fraught family situation is satisfactorily resolved. An old-fashioned, endearing romance for readers with time to spare.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What kind of portrait does the book paint of adolescence? How is it characterized and what makes it  remarkable? What does Charlie think is "the greatest lie that age tells about youth" (165)? As he looks back upon the summer of 1997, what does he seem to have learned or taken away from the experiences he had?

2. Consider how the novel offers up a dialogue about the power of art. How does learning Shakespeare change Charlie and alter the course of his life? How are he and others in the book affected by their newfound interests in music, art, and theater? How have the arts been influential—either directly or indirectly—in your own life?

3. What does the book reveal about the dual themes of nostalgia and memory? How does the author’s choice of narrator play a part in this? Is Charlie a reliable narrator? How does he view his past and how has his way of looking at the past changed? Is there a time in your own life that you feel particularly nostalgic about? Why do you think these particular memories are so enduring?

    …Alternatively, is there a time or event in your life that you felt nostalgic about something that has since lost its power? If so, why do you think this is? What does the book ultimately suggest about memory and our relationship with our past? How does the book’s epigraph correspond to what the book reveals about memory and storytelling?

4. What does Charlie mean when he says that he "watched a cult of nostalgia grow" (97) over the years, and what, in his mind, caused this growth? How does he think this influenced the cultural relationship between memory and storytelling? Do you agree with him? Discuss.

5. Explore the major theme of love. What kinds of love are depicted in the novel? How does the book characterize first love?Where does Charlie say the story of first love really lies? How does the book’s treatment of love change or evolve as readers have an opportunity to see the characters as adults? How would you say the book ultimately defines love?

6. What does Sweet Sorrow suggest about cultural gender norms and, specifically, masculinity? As Charlie grows up, what do he and his friends believe masculinity is? What is his relationship like with Harper, Fox, and Lloyd? How do they spend their time and how do they relate to one another?

   …Why doesn’t Charlie tell his friends about his involvement with the Full Fathom Five? What does he notice is missing in his relationship with these friends? What role might these norms have played in his relationship with his father and how did it affect that relationship? How have cultural ideas about masculinity evolved—or remained the same—during your own lifetime?

7. How does Charlie’s story parallel that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? What common themes, symbols, and motifs do the two stories share? What leads to the downfall of the protagonists in each tale? Does either story offer any portrayal of catharsis or redemption? If so, how is this achieved?

8. Reflecting on the title of the book, what causes the sorrow that many of the characters experience throughout the story? How do they respond to and manage—or fail to manage—this emotion? Could their pain have been avoided? Why or why not? Do they seem to learn anything by way of their suffering?

9. What does Charlie fear most about living alone with his father? What word does he say he and his family found ways to avoid? Why do you think they went to such great lengths to avoid this particular word? What stigma does this attitude reveal? Do you think that the stigma surrounding this issue has changed much since 1997? Discuss.
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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