Us

English author and screenwriter David Nicholls’s contemporary novel Us (2014) tells the story of fifty-four-year-old Douglas Petersen who attempts to both save his marriage and heal his relationship with his moody son while on a family trip to Europe. With humor and pathos, Nicholls explores the dynamics of marriage and family relationships, and the aftermath of divorce. Us earned Nicholls the 2014 Specsavers National Book Awards UK Author of the Year award. The novel was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Nicholls adapted Us for a four-part BBC television drama which began filming in July 2019.

Englishman Douglas Timothy Petersen, the first-person narrator of the novel, moves his story between the present day and past memories of his early life with his wife, Connie. Douglas describes himself as “not particularly courageous, not physically imposing.” Orderly and scientific, he is generally unremarkable with his brown eyes and “perfectly fine face.” Douglas is the kind of person no one compares to a movie star. A biochemist, he has given up on pure research to become a corporate head of research and development. Although he tries to keep fit—aware that his father died from a heart attack—Douglas feels his middle age, noting that aging “happens in a rush, like snow falling off a roof.”

Douglas fondly remembers his days as a young scientist and the excitement of studying Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, for his post-doc work. Yet Douglas admits that he may have been a little more solitary than he wanted in his youth, and there may have been something missing from his life. He agrees with his boisterous sister, Karen, “It was true, I suppose, that I’d never got the hang of being young.”



Douglas meets Connie, a free-spirited artist, at one of Karen’s dinner parties. Douglas is impressed with Connie’s low, appealing voice, her stylish appearance, and her ability to listen. She agrees to marry him some months after he proposes. Theirs is a marriage of opposites. The two eventually move from their city apartment to a country house.

Douglas and Connie have one living child, their seventeen-year-old son, Albie, nicknamed “Egg.” Albie is artistic like his mother, and the two bond over art, photography, and music. Douglas realizes that “raising Albie accentuated the differences between us, differences that had seemed merely entertaining in the carefree days before parenthood.” He feels that Connie’s approach toward raising Albie is “absurdly informal and laissez-faire.” While Connie protects Albie’s artistic inclinations, Douglas presses Albie on his plans for the future. Contemptuous towards his inflexible, methodical father, Albie joins with Connie in mocking him. Douglas loves Albie dearly and is sad and regretful at the “pure and concentrated disdain” that Albie shows him.

One night, Connie wakes Douglas up and announces that she feels their marriage has run its course and she “thinks” she wants to leave him. They have been married for twenty-one years. Douglas is dismayed. He loves Connie, but has always had trouble telling her, commenting, “I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.”



Douglas and Connie have planned a month-long family tour of Europe before Albie goes off to University in the fall; they decide to go ahead with the trip and wait on the divorce until Albie leaves. Douglas sees it as a chance to both save his marriage and get closer to Albie. Together they visit cities across Europe—Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Barcelona—touring the great museums and viewing classic works of art. Douglas is determined to make the trip a success, winning back Connie and winning over Albie. In his organized, meticulous way, Douglas has booked all their rooms in advance and created a detailed itinerary. Douglas creates a private enumerated list of behavioral guidelines for himself to ensure his success, which includes items like “Maintain a sense of fun and spontaneity,” and “Avoid conflict with Albie.”

Despite his efforts, Douglas unintentionally insults Albie, who abandons the family tour and runs off with Kat, a sexy twenty-six-year-old accordion player and ventriloquism major from New Zealand. Connie decides to go back home to London. Douglas embarks on a quest to find Albie. Along the way, Douglas is forced into greater spontaneity, having to navigate jail, a school of jellyfish, and the attentions of a Scandinavian divorcee. Douglas learns from Kat that Albie is worried about disappointing him.

Douglas finds Albie and apologizes. Albie saves Douglas’s life when he has a heart attack in Madrid. Albie reveals that he is gay. Douglas and Albie reconcile and begin building a more positive relationship.



Douglas cannot save his marriage, however, and in the end, Connie leaves Douglas and enters a relationship with an ex-boyfriend: an artist she had broken up with before she married Douglas. Connie begins to paint again. Douglas moves into a plain apartment near Oxford. Connie has no regrets about their marriage, pointing to their shared, wonderful son. She encourages Douglas by declaring that, however bad it feels at the moment, their divorce is not the end of his world. They part amicably, meeting for lunch every other month. Douglas is hopeful that a relationship will evolve between him and Freya, the Scandinavian lady he met while searching for Albie.