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David Nicholls rounds up his favourite books
David Nicholls' favourite books
Few books have captured readers’ hearts like One Day. So which novels does its author David Nicholls love most? We spoke to him to find out...
Book now to hear him speak about his latest novel, Us, at The Curious Arts Festival.
'Collected Stories' by John Cheevor
'John Cheevor writes wonderful prose about the high drama beneath seemingly conventional lives. His Collected Stories are very dark and very funny.'
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'Tender is the Night' by F Scott Fitzgerald
'Tender Is The Night by F Scott Fitzgerald is a much better book than The Great Gatsby. It's bizarrely underrated. It centres around a seemingly perfect American couple in Europe in the 1920s. But there are dark secrets behind the façade and the novel charts the breakdown of their relationship. It’s quite dark, yet incredibly touching.'
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'Franny and Zooey' by JD Salinger
'People see JD Salinger as serious and philosophical, but to me he’s a great comedic writer. He’s wonderful on family dynamics. The Glass family in Franny And Zooey is so plausible and real.'
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'The Girls of Slender Means' by Muriel Spark
'I can never understand why The Girls Of Slender Means by Muriel Spark isn’t better known. It’s a very strange, memorable novel about a group of young women living in a boarding house who are taking their tentative first steps into romance and adult life. Like a lot of Spark’s work, it’s sharp and clever and spiky.'
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'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens
'All of Charles Dickens’ novels are masterpieces but if I had to pick just one it would be Bleak House. He manages to be both popular and experimental - and an emotional writer.'
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