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 … 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.
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Nobody does nostalgia as well as David Nicholls. Absolutely loved it.
What would you do if you had the chance to meet your first love over two decades later? For Charlie, the answer feels immediate and necessary, even if complicated by his upcoming marriage to a woman who is not his first love.
Charlie has clung to the memory of Fran Fisher, the girl he fell in love with when he was sixteen. It isn’t that he needs to move on so much as he needs to reconcile who he was then and who he is now. His childhood almost made Fran necessary. The scenes depicting his relationship with his parents and the forced lack of a relationship with his sister reinforce his lack of self-knowledge. He doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be, making him something of a tabula rasa for Fran.
The two meet when she believes he is part of a players’ troupe putting on Romeo and Juliet. If the title doesn’t tell you how this romance will go, surely the crazy kids from Verona will. Yet we idealize Romeo and Juliet as some sort of romantic icon in the same way Charlie idealizes Fran. You know she isn’t a lifelong love for him, but that’s a lesson he needs to learn himself.
If you’re familiar with David Nicholls’ books (Us is my favorite), then you know his characters never find their paths easily. For Charlie, the thought of Fran helps inform who he will be. What if he runs into her as an adult? He needs to show himself worthy and make her regret the demise of their relationship, doesn’t he?
When adult Charlie and adult Fran finally meet, it is a delight. Yes, painful, but crucial. Charlie needs to see who he is now with her–who she is now–in order to determine what he will do.
This book begs to be discussed, so I hope you consider it if you’re in a book club. Please hit up the comments and let me know what you thought of Charlie. And Fran, too.
this was pretty good i didn’t hate it or would consider it a new favorite of mine i definitely wouldn’t read a book like that again but it was okay and i liked the hook “one summer can change everything” which made me want to read this and because i loved his other book one day but this was sweet coming of age story and i loved charlie and fran’s story but it was little slow and boring which were my problems with this it was a big let down from one day and the timeline was kinda messed up with the book which made this confusing to get through but other than that i liked it and would enjoy reading more from David Nicholls over time if it was more fast paced and more easy to follow i would probably like this
Charlie Lewis is about to get married to the woman he loves at the age of thirty-eight. Before he does, he reminisces about his first love and his life as a teenager. He recalls how he joined the Company in order to pursue his first love. Joining the company forced him to change nearly everything about himself. He painfully recalls the catastrophe of his father’s bankruptcy and his parents’ divorce. He recalls how he tried to hold his father together. His flashback is the story.
During the first half of the book, I seriously considered quitting before the end. I never do that! However, the story was so slow, mundane, and uninteresting. But I am not one to give up, and I was glad I held on for a bit longer. At that point, the story line finally became more interesting, and, for a time, I could not stop reading.
In short, this book about first love and the struggles of growing up is good and bad. It sure dragged for a long time at the beginning, but there are some more exciting and interesting moments, if you hang in there.
I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
This was so nostalgic! The characters were amazing, the writing was amazing, the pace! I loved this so much! Everything was created beautifully
Wins:
-the characters, Charlie was absolutely amazing and I loved him. The peaks at his life were written so well.
-the slice of life amazing ness. I haven’t read a lot of slice of life novels, but I enjoyed it. It was new to me for sure.
-the pacing. The pacing was well put together, not too slow, not too fast
-the time hops were well done. We got a peak behind the curtains at current day that I enjoyed a lot.
Opportunities
-there was some odd formatting. I think that may have just been because it was an arc and wasn’t fully edited
-the cover is cute but it’s not my favorite
I really liked this. It was nostalgic and completely different from anything I have read. I definitely want to read more of his writing because this was amazing
David Nicholls has been one of my favourite authors for over a decade. Sweet Sorrow is such a delight. Laugh-out-loud funny, but poignant, too, this coming of age story is pure magic.