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A review by sarahetc
Us by David Nicholls
1.0
Every time I picked up this book, the Jojo Moyes blurb stared back at me, gushing about its marvelousness and about how we all enjoy a story about what happens "after happily ever after." And while it started out well enough, by the time I got about 2/3 of the way through, the blurb was like a millstone every time I picked it up. Because really, nobody cares about the after. That's why we end the story with "happily ever after."
Nicholls writes in a memory driven, flashback-heavy sort of stream of consciousness that reminds me of Nicholson Baker, if Baker was less creative and had problems with executive function. It's almost like Nicholls wrote a long outline of very banal events (go on a date; book a hotel; eat breakfast) and decided to write a book about them. If he had to flashback to make his random bullet point work, he did. If not, whatever. In doing so he created two banal characters and the shades of three or four more caricatures. At one point, I was actively rooting for the whole crew to get obliterated by a space toilet, just so some part of the book would be interesting.
So yeah. Could be improved with space toilet! Because nobody gives a shit about your happily ever after, no matter how unhappy it is.
Nicholls writes in a memory driven, flashback-heavy sort of stream of consciousness that reminds me of Nicholson Baker, if Baker was less creative and had problems with executive function. It's almost like Nicholls wrote a long outline of very banal events (go on a date; book a hotel; eat breakfast) and decided to write a book about them. If he had to flashback to make his random bullet point work, he did. If not, whatever. In doing so he created two banal characters and the shades of three or four more caricatures. At one point, I was actively rooting for the whole crew to get obliterated by a space toilet, just so some part of the book would be interesting.
So yeah. Could be improved with space toilet! Because nobody gives a shit about your happily ever after, no matter how unhappy it is.