Us (novel)
novel by David Nicholls
Us is a 2014 novel by English author David Nicholls for whom it won the Specsavers "UK Author of the Year" award. It was also long-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. The BBC screened a four-part TV adaptation of the novel, by Nicholls, in 2020, starring Tom Hollander, Saskia Reeves and Tom Taylor. In Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) broadcast it as a six-episode mini-series.
Plot introduction
The book begins when Connie, frustrated artist and Douglas Petersen's wife of nearly 25 years, tells him that because their son Albie is about to leave home for college, she wants to leave too. Douglas resolves that their last family holiday together, a 'grand tour' of the cultural and artistic gems of Europe, will "be the trip of a lifetime, one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again".
The narrative then alternates between the story of the disastrous trip, at the start of which Albie deserts his parents in Amsterdam, and that of Douglas's unlikely courtship and marriage to Connie, contrasting his disciplined scientific life as a biochemist with Connie's spontaneous artistic character.
Reception
Tim Auld in The Telegraph, praised the novel, concluding "Us is a quiet joy, written with an undemonstrative simplicity that is hard to achieve. It’s also a novel that captures the zeitgeist and will speak to many middle-aged people who find that their marriage has run its course and realise they must start out on a new romantic journey.
“Us (novel)” enters the record as novel by David Nicholls. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what novel, David and Nicholls can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Us (novel)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, novel, David and Nicholls provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19902830. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Us (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.