Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Starter For Ten - Nicholls

David Nicholls 
(received from goodreads)

Brian Jackson has high ambitions for university. He wants to be brilliant, and have a real girlfriend, and maybe, if he's lucky end up on the University Challenge team. Starter for Ten follows Brian as he lumbers through his first year of school, making friends, not making friends and overall being a self conscious 19 year old.

David Nicholls (One Day) is really good at making full fleshed characters. While I admire this quality in him, sometimes I find his characters a bit trying. Brian Jackson is one of them. Since the story is driven by Brian's life, it's kind of a requirement that he be interesting. For me Brian is that friend everyone talks about behind their back. Sure you'd be there for them in a heartbeat, but you just don't really like them, much less want people to see you actually being nice to them. I spent the entire novel pitting the acne faced protagonist and wanting him to just get a clue.

I probably wouldn't have finished Starter for Ten if I hadn't gotten it for review. For me the day to day activities and sob stories were really dull. This really just wasn't a book for me. It's well arranged, and I genuinely like Nicholls writing style. Really, I feel like if you can relate to or at least sympithyze with Brian you're in for a mostly enjoyable story of unrequited love and teenage oblivion, but if he makes you cringe you're best putting the novel down.

4 comments:

Rummanah Aasi said...

Hey, Sarah :) Has this book been made into a movie? There is a movie with the same title starring James McAvoy and it has a similar plot. I enjoyed the movie, but didn't know it was based on a novel. Could it be the same one?

Sarah Joyce said...

@Rummanah Aasi - It's the same one. I've been meaning to see it because I have a mean crush on Mr. McAvoy :)

Ellen said...

This keeps getting recommended to me on amazon and based on your review I probably won't go for it...but I was trying to remember why it sounded SO familiar and now I remember I saw the film of this book. I thought the movie was pretty good, but probably not enough to inspire me to read the book.

Anonymous said...

Where can I find this book for FREE download?