Starter For Ten

Nicholls, David

ISBN 10: 1840328347 ISBN 13: 9781840328349

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004

Synopsis

The year is 1985 and Brian has just started his first term at university, armed with the obligatory CND membership and a complete set of Kate Bush albums. But he also has a dark secret - a long-held, burning ambition to appear on University Challenge and now, finally, it seems the dream is about to become reality. He's made the team, they've successfully completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their first televised match in January. Surely it's only a matter of time before Brian is shaking hands with Bamber Gascoigne and holding aloft the silver-plated commemorative plaque?

But Brian has a whole lot of living to do before then and when he falls in love with his team-mate, the off-puttingly posh Alice, he finds there's more than a spanner in the works ...

In STARTER FOR TEN, David Nicholls has written a novel that will have you sniggering uncontrollably for days and leave you begging for more. Are you up to the challenge?

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

Starter for Ten is the debut of the year; a recommendation repeated by all who come in contact with it ... Trust us, you'll love it (Arena)

Nicholls' portrayal of student affectations is accurate and funny ... clever and well-written (Independent)

Brilliant... we would recommend it to anyone (Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan)

A funny, touching novel reminiscent of the classic film Gregory's Girl with an authentic 1980s backdrop (Sunday Mirror)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1840328347
• ISBN 13: 9781840328349
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 180