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.
Why One Day Is the Ideal First Book
For a reader new to David Nicholls, One Day is the ideal first book because it is his most celebrated and beloved novel and the fullest expression of his distinctive gift, the combination of warmth, humor, emotional depth, and acute observation of love and relationships. The novel that made his name and became a phenomenon, One Day exemplifies everything that makes Nicholls a beloved storyteller, the engaging and witty prose, the emotionally resonant story of love and friendship, and the acute, affectionate observation of his characters’ lives over time. As an entry point, it offers the most accomplished and characteristic of his novels, following two characters through the years by revisiting them on the same date each year, and tracing the evolution of their relationship with humor, warmth, and emotional power. It welcomes the newcomer with its engaging premise, its witty and warm prose, and its emotional resonance, drawing the reader into a moving story of love and friendship over time. It is his best-known and most beloved novel, the one that best represents his gifts, so that the new reader encounters Nicholls at his finest. For the newcomer, then, One Day is the natural and ideal starting point, the celebrated novel that offers the best first taste of his warm, witty, and emotionally resonant fiction.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect One Day to be a warm, witty, and emotionally resonant novel, a story of love and friendship traced over many years with humor, acute observation, and genuine emotional power. You can expect an engaging premise, for the novel revisits its two central characters on the same date each year, tracing the evolution of their relationship across the years through these annual snapshots. You can expect warmth and wit, for Nicholls writes with an engaging humor and an affectionate observation of his characters that make the novel a pleasure to read, and you can expect acute observation of love, friendship, and the passage of time, for the novel captures the changes, missed chances, and deepening bonds of a relationship over the years. You can expect, above all, emotional power, for the novel moves toward a genuinely affecting conclusion, and its blend of humor and emotional depth gives it its distinctive resonance. Expect, in short, a warm, witty, and deeply affecting novel that traces love and friendship over time with humor and emotional power, an engaging and moving introduction to Nicholls’s warm and emotionally resonant fiction.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once One Day has introduced you to Nicholls’s warm and witty fiction, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other novels, which continue his distinctive combination of humor, emotional depth, and acute observation of love, relationships, and the passage of life. His earlier comic novel and his later fiction continue his characteristic blend of comedy and emotional resonance, exploring love, relationships, youth, and the changes of life with the same warmth, wit, and affectionate observation. Reading these after One Day deepens your appreciation of Nicholls’s distinctive gifts, the engaging humor, the emotional depth, and the acute, affectionate observation of his characters that run through his work. His recurring concerns, love and relationships, the passage of time, the blend of comedy and feeling, run through his fiction, and the reader who has been moved by One Day will find them developed in his other novels. Building your reading journey through Nicholls’s work is a matter of following his warm, witty, and emotionally resonant fiction from one engaging story to the next. The reader who begins with One Day and continues through his fiction will find a writer of consistent warmth, wit, and emotional power, a beloved storyteller of love and life.
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.
