Bristol Festival of Ideas - David Nicholls - Sweet Sorrow

David Nicholls is one of Britain’s most successful writers. It’s ten years since his novel One Day became an international bestseller, and five years since the journey of Us took him to the Man Booker Prize long-list. Patrick Melrose, his recent screen adaptation from the novels by Edward St Aubyn, was loved by critics and viewers alike and won him a BAFTA for best writer and an Emmy nomination. In this event, he talks about his new novel Sweet Sorrow, the story of one life-changing summer for sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis with Jenny Lacey.

Charlie is the kind of boy you don’t remember in the school photograph. As the summer stretches before him, his exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way around, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and although it’s unthinkable, Charlie, despite himself, begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must accept a challenge that will lose him the respect of his friends and almost 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.

Poignant, funny, enchanting, devastating, Sweet Sorrow is a deeply evocative novel about negotiating the rocky path to adulthood, a hymn to the tragicomedy of family life, a celebration of the deep, reviving power of friendship and the brief, searing explosion of first love.

Purchase a copy of David Nicholls’ new book Sweet Sorrow at a special advance discount of £15 (£17 at the event) at time of booking. This offer is for online purchases only. Books to be collected at the event where David will be signing books afterwards.

Photograph of David Nichols by Hal Shinnie