I have just finished reading the much hyped new novel about family life by David Nicholls, Us. My wife loved it, whereas I only thought it was OK – but then my critical faculties are probably warped by the fact that Nicholls, a novelist who operates in my own imaginative territory of domestic drama, is so stratospherically successful that I am a little jealous.
However, I am sure Nicholls has written another surefire winner. He is a deft storyteller, with wit and warmth. Above all, he understands what his readers – whom I must surmise are largely women – want from a book. I suspect they are women because Us – as in so many popular domestic narratives – goes out of its way to flatter the female protagonist. The man, though decent enough, is rather hopeless and blundering, while the woman is cool, clever and emotionally tuned in. Nicholls’ trump card I cannot give away because I do not want to spoil anyone’s reading pleasure. But suffice to say it involves, for the wife, “the one that got away”.
Most bestselling novels may be tinged with reality but wish fulfilment and reassurance run as deeper threads. How much this book has to do with “the truth” about family life I cannot say, but I suspect it does reflect the way many women feel about their husbands: that the men try hard and that they love their wives (of course). But they are ultimately defeated by their own limitations – of an overactive rationality, a lack of emotional empathy and so on and so forth.
This wife looks on at her husband’s efforts sadly and fondly, even with love. She does not regret marrying this solid, dependable man (he is called Douglas, which says it all. Many women marry a Douglas, while believing that they themselves are a Scarlett). But really their true love is still out there – dashing, rebellious, handsome, unpredictable. And perhaps one day …
This same fantasy you can often find in family narratives – most recently inflected in the film Boyhood, which shows a sensitive, artistic woman, whose first love is wild, romantic and undependable. But she marries a series of dull, dependable and sometimes violent men, while still holding a candle for the first. Likewise, the narrative of Us indulges the wife’s deepest fantasy in order, perhaps, to assuage her deepest regret – as Chris Rock says in one of his most famous routines: “You know the number-one reason your woman’s always mad with you? Cuz YOU AIN’T HER FIRST CHOICE.”
I look forward to seeing the family novel that shows the woman as hopeless and incompetent and the man as wise and thoughtful. I suspect I’ll have a long wait. Negative portrayals of mothers are politically taboo – certainly by male authors. The most honest book I’ve read about family life, Other People’s Children by Joanna Trollope, could not have been written by a man, I suspect.
Us isn’t niggardly with its stereotypes. There is also a rebellious, nasty teenager who makes his father’s life hell (naturally the son gets on well with his more empathetic mother). It would be interesting to see a sensitive and polite teenager in the novel – I know from experience that they do exist – but one suspects that this, too, would offend conventional wisdom. And, of course, it would make for a very flat character in a novel.
Douglas is on a desperate mission to save his marriage and his relationship with his son. On the way, he learns a lot about his own failings, but he’s the only one who does. As far as it goes, this is perfectly believable narrative, but I think families fail in so many different ways that I am disappointed those failures are too often portrayed identically. Tolstoy wrote “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. All I can say is, you wouldn’t know it from modern fiction.
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