Where to Start with David Nicholls: A Reading Guide
Where to start with David Nicholls — whether to begin with One Day, Starter for Ten, or Us. A complete reading guide to the British novelist.
David Nicholls (born 1966) is the British novelist and screenwriter whose One Day (2009) — following Emma and Dexter across twenty years of friendship and love, on the same date each year — became one of the bestselling British novels of its decade, was adapted for film in 2011 and for a Netflix series in 2024, and established him as one of the most beloved writers of contemporary British fiction. Nicholls also writes screenplays; his adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) and his television adaptations of his own novels demonstrate the narrative compression that distinguishes his fiction.
Where to Start: One Day (2009)
The essential Nicholls — and one of the most emotionally effective structural conceits in recent British fiction. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet on 15 July 1988, the night of their graduation from Edinburgh. They don’t quite sleep together; they become something harder to name. The novel visits them on 15 July each subsequent year: 1989, 1990, 1991… through to 2007.
The conceit allows Nicholls to show time passing without showing it continuously. In each annual visit, he reveals what has changed and what hasn’t — Emma’s career, Dexter’s television success and subsequent decline, their friendship’s separations and returns, the way each thinks about the other in years when they’re not in contact. The reader accumulates a twenty-year relationship without reading a twenty-year account of it.
The novel is very funny — Nicholls’s comic timing is exceptionally precise — and devastating in its second half in a way that feels earned rather than manipulative. The structural choice means the reader cares about both characters deeply before anything is asked of them emotionally.
Starter for Ten (2003)
Nicholls’s debut — Brian’s first year at Bristol, his University Challenge ambition, his romantic disasters. Warmer and funnier than One Day; the best introduction to his comedy.
Reading David Nicholls
Begin with One Day — it is his essential novel and the one that best demonstrates his full range. Read Starter for Ten for his comic mode; Us (not in this collection) for his examination of long marriage and parenthood. All his novels are standalone.
For the full David Nicholls bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the David Nicholls author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with David Nicholls?
One Day (2009) is the essential starting point — Nicholls's novel that follows Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew across twenty years of friendship, love, and loss, visiting them on the same day (15 July, St Swithin's Day) each year. One of the bestselling British novels of its decade and adapted twice (for film in 2011, for Netflix in 2024); its structural conceit — seeing the same people on the same date across twenty years — gives the novel an extraordinary compression and an emotional trajectory that has made it one of the most widely wept-over books in recent British fiction.
What is One Day about?
Emma and Dexter meet on graduation night at Edinburgh in 1988. Emma is clever, politically serious, from Yorkshire, and uncertain about her future; Dexter is handsome, privileged, and beginning a career in television. The novel visits them on 15 July in each subsequent year, tracking their lives — sometimes together, sometimes far apart — through the 1990s and 2000s. The formal device is not a gimmick: visiting them once a year produces a specific kind of intimacy, showing how people change while the things that matter between them remain consistent.
What is Starter for Ten about?
Starter for Ten (2003) is Nicholls's debut — Brian Jackson, a working-class boy from Southend, arrives at Bristol University and pursues his dream of appearing on University Challenge. The novel is sharply funny about the gap between Brian's aspirations (intellectual, romantic, political) and his actual performance; it is also a warm and honest coming-of-age story about the experience of being the first person from your family to go to university. Adapted for film in 2006.
How does One Day compare to Nicholls's other novels?
One Day is Nicholls's most successful and most emotionally ambitious novel; it is the one that most readers start and end with. Starter for Ten is warmer and funnier but less tragic; Us (2014) is more mature and deals with marriage and parenthood; Sweet Sorrow (2019) is about a teenage summer romance. All his novels share his gift for capturing the gap between aspiration and reality with affection rather than contempt; One Day is the best expression of his range.
