I always find it difficult to write reviews of books I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but my prompt for this review came when a Twitter buddy asked what book had best held my lockdown-brain-attention. The answer was instant – Us by David Nicholls.

I half expected a book about a European tour would have made me feel a little wistful, given current travel restrictions. Instead, Us made me laugh-out-loud, cry, and pause, when the main character reflected on his family circumstances and specifically how the relationships we either had or didn’t have, shape the present.

…grief is as much about regret for what you’ve never had as sadness for what you’ve lost.

The story focuses on Douglas and Connie. They are opposites in every way – Douglas is a mild-mannered biochemist, with a stable and methodical approach to life. Connie is an artist – impulsive, extroverted and independent. They are an unlikely match but Douglas’s dry sense of humour ultimately wins Connie over.

Certainly I was happy and proud, grateful and relieved. An underrated emotion, I think, relief. No one presents a bouquet with the words, “I’ve never been more relieved in my life.” But then I had never expected to marry at all, and to be marrying this woman…

The story opens with Connie telling Douglas she thinks she wants a divorce. The news comes weeks before they embark on a month long trip to Europe with their moody seventeen-year-old son, Albie (the trip planned to mark the time before Albie begins art college, in the tradition of the Grand Tour). Largely because he had already planned the itinerary for the trip in minute detail, Douglas convinces Connie to suspend her decision until their return to England.

What unfolds is Douglas’s well-meaning but often painful-to-witness attempts to rekindle his relationship with Connie and to create a stronger bond with Albie, as the trio navigate trains, hotels, breakfast buffets and museum queues from Munich and Paris to Florence and Madrid.

I loved the magnificent sense of place in Us.  Nicholls writes with accuracy about the idiosyncrasies of the cities they visit, and his descriptions added a layer to the story without overrunning it – after the ‘fun’ of Amsterdam and the romance of Paris, you are hoping for a relationship renaissance in Florence, but as any traveler knows, the smallest thing can upset the itinerary.

She knew the city well, of course. The trick in Venice, she said, is to see St Mark’s once, then bounce off it to the outer edges. The trick is to be spontaneous, curious, to get lost. Instinctively, I resisted the notion of getting lost. For accomplished and enthusiastic map-readers like myself, Venice offered untold challenges…

Douglas’s shifting self-awareness is the highlight. As the story progresses, we see his strained attempts to be part of Connie and Albie’s version of ‘fun’, only to end up saying or doing the wrong thing. The scenes in art galleries best demonstrated this – while Douglas searches the internet for random facts about paintings and makes a bee-line for the big-ticket pieces, Connie and Albie’s derisive attitude excludes him, and worse, leaves him confused and doubting himself.

Perhaps this is why those museum audio-guides had become so popular; a reassuring voice in your ear, telling you what to think and feel. Look to your left, take note, please observe; how terrific it would be to carry that voice with you always, out of the museum and throughout all of life.

Douglas’s voice was engaging from the outset, and I stayed with him, keen to discover if this ordinary man could articulate his hurt and fears, and find a new version of happiness.

Lastly, the story was a realistic portrayal of a long relationship; how a couple manage challenges individually and together; and how, having had shared experiences, they arrive at different conclusions – ultimately, Connie considers their marriage a success, and one that can finish on a ‘good note’ before they part and begin a new phase of their lives. Douglas also sees their marriage as a success and therefore can’t understand why it shouldn’t continue. 

After nearly a quarter of a century, the questions about our distant paths have all been posed and we’re left with ‘how was your day?’ and ‘when will you be home?’ and ‘have you put the bins out?’ Our biographies involve each other so intrinsically now that we’re both on nearly every page. We know the answers because we were there, and so curiosity becomes hard to maintain; replaced, I suppose, by nostalgia.

There is much about the plot of Us that is conventional and predictable but Nicholls lifts it with humour and an ending that is not exactly what I expected but one that felt just right.

4.5/5 This happy-sad-relationship-story is my favorite kind of book.

…we did what tourists do in Venice in the winter. We sheltered from the rain and when the sun came out drank bitter hot chocolate in chilly squares of quite staggering grace and beauty, and sipped Bellinis in dim, expensive bars, bracing ourselves for the bill. “It’s a tax on beauty,” said Connie, doling out the notes. “If it were cheap here, nobody would ever leave.”