It Had to Be You [Paperback]

James Hollinghurst is driving to a meeting with the American head of Globpack and he is afraid he might be losing his job.

"Globpack! How had they come up with that? He had inherited a bit of his dad's artistic taste and he found it hard to believe that a career that had begun in the Basingstoke Box Company had led him, Nobbs inexorably, to being employed by a firm called Globpack"

While this is going on his wife, Deborah, is driving to a rendezvous with a Man in a White Linen Suit who is hoping that after their lunch they will retire to the room he has booked in the hotel.

She never arrives. Deborah is killed in a collision on her way to her prospective lover and everything changes.

James and Deborah have been married a long time and, while still happy, their lives had inevitably settled into a routine and James has had a mistress, Helen, for several years. OK they both knew that he would never leave Deborah, but now she has gone, what does he do? Is there a formula for telling one's mistress that your wife is dead? "Silence. Words churning through her mind. Thoughts and emotions churning uncontrollably. No social formula in which to clothe her naked feelings. He senses it all, and he felt for her. He knew what it was like"

When a tragedy occurs such as this family relationships and tensions come to the fore. James has always felt inferior to his elder brother Charles, a world famous concert pianist, and his younger brother Philip has suffered in the same way. James's daughter Charlotte has not spoken to her parents for five years and he doesn't know why; his son Max is working in forestry in Canada. All these people have to be told.

I know David Nobbs from his TV work as a scriptwriter and I am ashamed to say that this is his 18th novel and yet it is the first one I have read - it won't be the last now that I have discovered him. One of his hit series A Bit of a Do starring David Jason was one I never missed and thought simply delightful full of wit and humour and, despite the sorrowful centre to this novel, the same humour is there. One friend who would love to come to the funeral, has tickets for Wimbledon one day that week and asks if possible, if the funeral could be on another day; another, a gourmet, has a long booked lunch at a posh restaurant which has a waiting list for months is reluctant to forgo that as well - having arranged my mother's funeral a year or so ago, I know that sometimes these appointments, seemingly trivial in comparison, are part of people's lives and they are reluctant to change their arrangements. David Nobbs understands this and the natural reactions are dealt with in a quiet and amusing way.

I loved It had to be You and I became very fond of James. He is pretty unsparing in his opinion of himself, his guilt at realising that now that he is free he doesn't want to be with Helen any more which makes him feel guiltier than ever, his realisation that he cannot cry for Deborah even though he gradually realises just how much he had loved and depended on her - beautifully done. So as well as making me laugh quietly while reading It had to be You, this novel also made me well up a bit as James has to come to terms with his past and present.

The lover who waits in vain for Deborah - well, who is he? He is engaged in an amusing sub-plot when he finds he has left his wedding ring in the loo at the hotel where he was to meet her and finds that the staff at the hotel have sent it to his address. Unfortunately, it was a false address and he ends up having to fly to Belfast to an office there to collect it.

"Do you have some identification on you sir?" "I certainly do" He handed the man his driving licence. "This is not the name on the package sir. You told me you had given a false address sir. I didn't realise you had given a false name as well.......rules do not permit me to give this passage to anyone other than Mr J rivers"

"Mr Rivers does not exist" "I know and therein lies the horns of our quandary sir. I've never met you before.....the criminal mind is devious. Criminals do not look like criminals.... you yourself have told me that you gave a false name and address so, with respect sir, it is proved from your own mouth that you are capable of dishonesty......there is no way that I, a simple postal employee, could risk my career, my job and perhaps the safety of my fellow citizens by handing a package to any man other than this addressee"

Brilliant.

So who is the Man in the White Linen Suit? You can try and guess - I did and I was wrong.

A rather touching and unexpected book. I loved it

David writes with humour but his novels aren't all comic. Yes, there are some fine one liners amongst the prose but there is so much more. He writes with a passion that keeps the pages turning.

It Had to be You covers that awkward time between a death and a funeral - awkward enough without the problems that main character, James Hollinghurst, has brought upon himself. At times it was so truthful as to be sad. At times I wanted to shout at the selfishness of the main character but, by the next page, I was completely on his side. David took a simple life story and made it into compelling reading. I wondered as I read it how many people had been in this particular situation and wondered equally what their outcomes had been.

I really enjoyed it.

I loved this book.
The cover talks about Nobbs as a comic novelist; and it is true - he is a great comic novelist. But this isn't a comic novel. It is a thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent, amd frank exploration of a man dealing with the death of his wife. Which makes it sound very 'worthy' - but it isn't at all - it is gripping, funny, surprising and it blows the lid on the world of global packaging.
A new novel by David Nobbs always goes to the top of my reading list, and never disappoints.