Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342801 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 378 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Jenny Eclair, Richard & Judy's Book Club, 11th Feb 2004
'A classic...I sniggered, snorted and hooted.'

Paul Morley, Richard & Judy's Book Club, 11th Feb 2004
'Exquisite.'

Customer Reviews

Uncomfortably exact
I borrowed this off a friend last week, and read it very quickly in a paroxysm of embarrassment for the hero as he grapples with the pitfalls of fashion, popularity, love, learning and personal hygiene that beset male adolescents in their first year at university. The story moves along at a brisk pace, centering on his twin obsessions (the beautiful Alice and his participation in "University Challenge") but also taking in his relationship with his widowed mother and his left-behind schoolfriends. Some members of the supporting cast are more credible than others: I particularly liked the feisty Rebecca, but thought it wasn't clear what the role of Brian's posh housemates in the story was supposed to be following their introduction.

The writing is very good (a simile that compares the smell in a teenaged boy's room to that of "the back of a wrist-watch" was uncomfortably exact, I thought) as is the dialogue (hearing Brian say "Oh God, Faux-Pas City!" tells you almost everything you need to know about him). Although you can probably guess how the story is going to end, I thought the way it was handled was very deft, with a neat twist that had me laughing out loud.

Hilarious
This was laugh out loud hilarious. I've read his other book, The Understudy and didn't like it but I found this so funny. It was also reminiscent of university and being young. Very light but extremely funny.

Mostly Unfunny, Predictable, and Implausible
I love both coming-of-age books and comic novels, especially British ones, and like the protagonist of this book I was a teenager in the '80s -- so this seemed to be right up my alley. The story follows Essex schoolboy Brian Jackson off to his first term of college, a process he looks forward to as being transformative. He yearns to listen to classical music and jazz ("real jazz, not Sade or The Style Council"), engage in vibrant debates into the wee hours, and of course, have sex with sultry intellectual girls. If this makes him sound annoying and pretentious, well, that's pretty much how he comes across...for the entire book. Which is more or less why I couldn't stand this book.

Part of the problem with Brian is that he makes social and personal blunders on a scale that simply aren't plausible for anyone other than a caricature. Some of his mishaps are the products of too much drinking, but there are far too many times in the book where Brian says to himself, "Don't say X" and then proceeds to. Yes, to a certain extent this is the author setting a character up for later change/improvement, but his antics are predictable and quickly tiresome. And yes, to a certain extent this is excusable in the service of comedy, but it's the same joke over and over...

A much larger problem with the book is that Brian is portrayed as (A) average looking at best, (B) intellectually shallow, (C) socially inept, and yet he manages to win the semi-affection of a wealthy, sexy, Alpha-female totally out of his league. Alice doesn't appear to like him very much, has plenty of other suitors, but does invite him home for Christmas Break (among other things)! This is ridiculous enough, but Brian is also pursued by a sassy, sexy, socialist, Scottish lassie who is out of his league in a different way. It's one thing to derive comedy out of the protagonist's improbable social floundering, but it's totally nonsensical to take the same character and make him the object of not one, but two different women's affections! It's as bad as Woody Allen's worst excesses.

In addition to Brian's personal life, there are subplots involving Brian's relationship with his two friends from back home, his relationship with his mother, and his lifelong ambition to appear on University Challenge (kind of a high-brow British version of Jeopardy played by teams from different universities). The first of these plays out in improbable fashion, and is resolved rather conveniently. The storyline involving his mother is probably the best part of the book, and is vastly more realistic and affecting than anything else. The story climaxes with the taping of the quiz show, and Brian's action there is so wildly implausible (and yet predictable) that I threw the book across the room. I then picked it back up to discover a coda even more predictable, if not quite as infuriating.

The book has its moments (very few of them), but the joke gets old quick, and I'm baffled as to why so many people rate it so highly.