His novels have broken our hearts, made us want to hug our dads and, now, sent us on long rainy walks through the Lake District. Bestselling author David Nicholls talks to Jessie Thompson about love, parenthood, publishing – and that infamous ending Author David Nicholls Watch out, people. David Nicholls has been thinking about his next novel.
“I’ve been trying to draw up a list in my mind of really great literary love stories that I might reread for inspiration,” he tells me. This is the man who broke the nation’s heart with One Day and whose latest novel, You Are Here , is making us all want to go on rainy hikes in search of our soulmate. Now he appears to be restocking his arsenal.
Except...
it’s reminded him that the great love stories don’t tend to be about love at all. “Often what seem to be love stories are really about class or family or education,” he says, turning it over in his mind. It’s true of his own work, too.
His Booker-longlisted Us (2014) was meant to be the story of a relationship, but it ended up being about fathers and sons. Sweet Sorrow , his 2019 novel about a teenage drama group’s production of Romeo and Juliet , is as much a coming-of-age story as one of first love. One Day, in hindsight, seems to him to be a book about friendship.
“The things I’m drawn to tend to be about not just falling in love, but fears of the future, and hopes for the future and how we navigate our lives,” he says..