His anger at his Mother leaving him with his father and at the lethargy and depression of the latter, already struggling from the collapse of the family record shop chain and his earlier saxophone player career – was played out in a complete failure to study for. Back in an age before artificial intelligence could teach itself to play chess in a few hours better than any grandmaster that ever lived, Philip K Dick was using the concept of android life to explore what it meant to be human, and what it is to be left behind on a compromised planet. It’s not hard to read the Count as a shadowy sexual figure surprising straitlaced Victorian England in their beds, but in Stoker’s hands he’s also bloody creepy. The dramatic longing and immediacy of youth. The story follows a boy named Charlie throughout the summer after leaving school. Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate? Nicholls trained as an actor before making the switch to writing, and he recently won a BAFTA for Patrick Melrose, his adaptation of the novels by Edward St Aubyn, which also won him an Emmy nomination. Soon after I went back and tried another novel by this author and couldn't have been more disappointed. As atmospheric, psychological horror it just gets darker and darker. A decade after his phenomenal bestseller One Day, David Nicholls returns with a bittersweet and brilliantly funny coming-of-age tale.Told over one life-changing summer, Sweet Sorrow explores the transformative impact of first love in an ordinary life, masterfully conveying what … Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates. Nicholls' writing is really something else, he is an incredible storyteller and this book is a wonderful display of his talent. The ultimate piece of dystopian fiction, 1984 was so prescient that it’s become a cliché. The adults trying to make Shakespeare cool are pitch-perfect too, one of them insisting he was “the first rapper”. And Nicholls always writes well on how class manifests in confidence and cultural capital, and Charlie’s insecurity next to Fran’s worldliness brings in a taste of bitterness. Some 200 years after it was first published, the gothic tale feels more relevant than ever as genetic science pushes the boundaries of what it means to create life. His anger at his Mother leaving him with his father and at the lethargy and depression of the latter, already struggling from the collapse of the family record shop chain and his earlier saxophone player career – was played out in a complete failure to study for his GCSEs. Need to read something lighthearted, Summer Reading from Mystery & Thriller Authors.