Us

by David Nicholls

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Not really sure what I think of this one to be honest. I found it all a bit of a mixed emotional bag. My partner asked me what I thought of it when I was just getting into it and I commented that I found it odd how much high praise it seemed to have garnered, including a Booker prize listing. I said then that if it had been written by a woman I thought it would just have been in the “chick lit” corner, nothing special. Perhaps I’m being gullible to the review quotes on the cover etc which are, of course, supposed to make you think it’s the best … book … ever.

But then the central character seemed to be set up as someone to make fun of, even though he was the narrator. A clumsy scientist who didn’t quite get the wider world. I liked him, and understood a lot of his dilemmas and his social awkwardness. I didn’t want him to be a comedy character, I wanted the book to make you understand people like him.

But maybe it did. Towards the end of the book everything got smoother and nicer and he fitted better into the in-book world (though I thought the very end of the book was weird and a bit out of place with the rest of the narrative).

So overall I enjoyed the book but had a lot of “but”s about it, I enjoyed the book but not the story perhaps would be a better way of putting it. I think it just hit a few resonant frequencies in my brain and I can’t quite make sense of how I feel about it.