London Book Club: January

Posted on March 10, 2010 in Uncategorized

Starter For Ten by David Nicholls

One of the first things that everyone in our group noticed was that there was no mention of the name of the university in the book, all we were told was that it wasn’t Oxbridge. We noticed how the main character of the book, Brian Jackson, has an idealistic view of university life. We also found this business of house-sharing as a Fresher (and thus with total and utter strangers) a little unusual, but maybe this was common practice for university students in the Eighties.

Out of the three main girls in the book, only Lucy appeared to be ‘normal’. Alice, the girl with whom Brian is infatuated throughout most of the story, is deceitful, doesn’t treat Brian well and appears to be playing some sort of mind game with him. On the other hand Rebecca, the girl who Brian eventually ends up with, was an extreme socialist and generally a very opinionated person.

Lucy, a girl of oriental descent who has grown up in America, is on the University Challenge team with Brian. We both liked and were amused by the beautifully-described scene in which Brian walks Lucy home after a team meeting. On the way, Lucy confesses to him that she actually finds the way he constantly feels the need to correct her English, or speak slowly to her, extremely patronising.

Most people at our meeting had studied English Literature at university (a subject which is commonly referred to by Brian as ‘Eng. Lit.’) and thus felt that they could relate to Brian. We all felt that he came out with some excellent reasons for studying English Literature, whenever a student studying a different subject had grilled him about the purpose of studying a subject such as this.

It was noticeable how the University Challenge team captain – Patrick – seemed to be completely obsessed with University Challenge. He made the rest of the team practice answering questions during the drive to the television studio, and he also made them watch video recordings of previous University Challenge programmes during the team meetings that he held at his house.

While we felt that the part where Brian had cheated during ‘the Challenge’ was annoying, we could appreciate that it did serve its purpose to the plotline, because Brian then had to transfer to a different university. Although we didn’t condone Brian’s dishonest behaviour, we did think that the reason he gave to the television studios to explain how he knew the answer to a question before the main part of the question had been asked, was actually quite a clever and plausible explanation. I personally would have preferred it if he had come clean about the whole thing, and admitted to cheating, however other people at the book club meeting pointed out that he was already in a lot of trouble so we could understand why he decided to lie.

Some of us (myself included) hadn’t actually expected the cheating scene. Maybe this is because one often expects the lead character in a story to be almost perfect. One often assumes that the lead character will be honest, and won’t be the type of person in which their tutor is disappointed because their grades are gradually getting lower. As the story progressed, it emerged that Brian was certainly far from perfect. By his own admission, he was very unattractive and had low self-esteem. It was also noticeable that he has a tendency to say the wrong thing at completely the wrong time. In spite of all this, we didn’t completely dislike Brian, as he was intelligent, and had proved himself to be a good friend to both Tone and Spencer. Spencer also made a point of telling Alice what a loyal person Brian was.

Most people at our meeting had watched the film before reading the book. The ending in the film is different to that in the book, and one person certainly thought that the ending in the book was better than that in the screenplay adaptation. So for anyone who’s seen the film, but is dithering about whether or not to read the book, I think you may find that the book holds some pleasant surprises.