A Question of Attraction ( US publication of Starter for Ten ) - Softcover

Nicholls, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081297140X ISBN 13: 9780812971408

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2005

Synopsis

The year is 1985. Brian Jackson, a working-class kid on full scholarship, has started his ?rst term at university. The usual freshman anxiety over ?tting in is compounded by the gap between his own humble origins and the privileged backgrounds of his better-off classmates.

Brian also has a dark secret—a long-held, burning ambition (stoked by his late father) to appear on the wildly popular TV quiz show University Challenge—and now, ?nally, it seems the dream is about to become reality. He’s made the school team, and they’ve completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their ?rst televised match. (And, what’s more, he’s fallen head over heels for one of his teammates, the beautiful, brainy, and intimidatingly posh Alice Harbinson.) Life seems perfect and triumph inevitable—but as his world opens up, Brian learns that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Reminiscent of such classic coming-of-age works as The Graduate and Goodbye, Columbus, A Question of Attraction marks the literary debut of David Nicholls, one of England’s most highly praised television writers. It is an unforgettable story of love, class, ?nding one’s place in the world, and the all-important difference between knowledge and wisdom.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

Review

Is David Nicholls' Starter for Ten a throwback? Many readers look back with nostalgia to a recent golden age of comic writing, when David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury and Tom Sharpe were producing some achingly funny work, with brilliantly realised characters. But Nicholls' sharp-as-nails novel has all the comic acumen of his great predecessors (along with their frequently-utilised university campus milieu) and, like Lodge and co., Nicholls writes real characters, not just boobies suitable only for pratfalls and sexual embarrassment. So even though the situations may often be ridiculous, we're still engaged by the protagonists.

Here, they are university student Brian Jackson and aspiring actress Alice Harbinson. Brian has arrived at his place of learning with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz. But his progress on "The Challenge" is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.

What makes this novel such a delight, apart from the strongly drawn characters (both major and minor) is the coruscating dialogue: Nicholls writes comic dialogue like a dream, and his targets are many and varied: the idiocies of love and sex, the ludicrous pursuit of meaningless TV celebrity, fat cat businessmen lining their pockets--you name it, and it's probably here; Starter for Ten is a panoply of modern Britain with all its glories and excesses writ large. Nicholls wrote the third series of the hit TV series Cold Feet, which is as good a demonstration of his credentials as one could wish for. But Starter for Ten is his best work; there are no false notes struck by miscast actors, just prose that has a comic energy not often encountered these days. --Barry Forshaw

Review

"I feel for A Question of Attraction as I do the pick 'n' mix counter at Woolworth's: nostalgic, giddy, happy, sick, and then devastated when there is none left. I could not put this book down. I love it. Literally."--Alan Cumming, author of Tommy's Tale

"Relentlessly delightful."--Mil Millington, author of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

"A Question of Attraction is the funniest book I've read in years and I am now awash with gratitude that I will never again have to be eighteen, and that my university days are well and truly over."--Emily Barr, author of Backpack and Baggage

"What a delight. Every five minutes I was shouting 'ha ha ha' and reading out great swathes of hilarious narrative to whoever was in the room. David Nicholls is enormously talented, he has an exquisite eye for detail, humour and the ridiculous and he deserves every ounce of the huge success he will undoubtedly have with this pleasure of a book."--Anna Maxted, author of Getting Over It and Behaving Like Adults

"Absolutely fabulous. And so painfully reminiscent: God, it whipped me right back. That's exactly what it was like for me. Brilliantly funny."--Jenny Colgan, author of Talking to Addison and Amanda's Wedding

From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 081297140X
• ISBN 13: 9780812971408
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 338