Obstacles to Young Love
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Product Description
Review
Praise for Obstacles to Young Love:
‘Painfully hilarious, wonderfully observed and slight sour at the same time.’ Guardian
‘Thank goodness for David Nobbs! He carries on the comic tradition of P G Wodehouse with this marvellous new book; a sweet and touching love story written with his trademark sly and subversive humour. A perfect antidote to these dark times.’ Joanne Harris
Praise for David Nobbs’s novels:
‘Probably our finest post-war comic novelist’ Jonathan Coe
‘A delicious entertainment, as comic and sharp as they come’ Guardian
‘The most satisfying novel I have read in years’ Express
‘A marvellously comic novel’ Sunday Times
‘One of the most noisily funny books I have ever read’ Michael Palin
‘Very funny sketches of provincial newspaper life’ Sue Townsend
‘We should be thankful for the continuing brilliance of David Nobbs … Going Gently is richly funny and rich in many other ways. Buy it’ Mail on Sunday
Product Description
From one of the greatest comedic writers of a generation comes a story of love, faith and taxidermy.
‘Three mighty obstacles threaten the burgeoning love of childhood sweethearts Timothy Pickering and Naomi Walls. They are Steven Venables, a dead curlew and God.’
1978: Two lovers perch precariously on the cusp of adulthood. Timothy’s father decides it’s time for him to take on the family taxidermy business; while Naomi dreams of a career on the stage.
Across the decades their lives continue to interweave, and occasionally cross – bound by the pull of intoxicating first love. But will their destinies ultimately unite them?
Nobbs moves his exceptional comic talent to a new-found depth. Memorable and moving, a tale of love won and love lost. You will never look at the art of taxidermy in the same way again.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This is a really excellent book. It is exceptionally well written, witty, humane, perceptive and extremely touching. The plot is simply a chronicle of how the lives of two people and those associated with them develop as they grow older. There is marriage, birth, death, divorce, friendship and some tragedy, but no car chases, grisly murders or anything of the kind, and yet I found it utterly gripping. It kept me engrossed in the lives of people whom I really cared about in a way that few other books have done and genuinely made me think about what is important in relationships and in life.
The story opens in 1978 with Naomi and Timothy discovering sex together aged 18, and follows episodes in their lives for the next thirty years, sometimes apart and sometimes together. David Nobbs has a wonderful talent for seeing honestly and describing brilliantly the way people behave, think and feel. With Timothy in the first section of the book, for example, he catches with perfect delicacy the teenage sense that everyone else somehow knows how to behave, what to say, what to wear and so on, and that you don't but must try look as though you do. He paints a full cast of real, genuinely believable characters, and gently lays before us their foibles and mannerisms, the little lies they tell themselves to survive, the things they try to ignore because they are painful but know to be true, and so on. I felt that I had already met several of them in my life. David Nobbs is terrifically perceptive about them. He doesn't spare us their humiliations or their failings but treats them with tenderness and compassion. He reminds you, too, of people like the bloke who is always hanging around but is never really included, and that he, too, has feelings and a life, even if no-one ever takes an interest in him.
Important themes in the book are faith and organised religion, how they impact on lives and whether it is possible to have a meaningful, fulfilled life without them. It's exceptionally well done here: Nobbs's own position is very clear by the end of the book, but it's never preachy. He is very even-handed and he shows some of the fine and the ignoble aspects of both faith and atheism with equal insight, which makes this an enjoyable and thought-provoking aspect of the book, whether or not you agree with his final stance.
Nobbs's prose is a delight. He writes in the present tense here which I seldom like, but it works very well, giving the narrative a real flow through the years. It is straightforward, poised and excellently crafted, so that I seldom actually noticed the writing, and when I did it was just to notice how much I was enjoying it.
I don't often rave unreservedly about a book, but I think this is simply fantastic. Beautifully written, extremely readable, hugely entertaining and very thought-provoking, it's one of the best novels I've read for years and I recommend it very warmly indeed.
The story opens in 1978 with Naomi and Timothy discovering sex together aged 18, and follows episodes in their lives for the next thirty years, sometimes apart and sometimes together. David Nobbs has a wonderful talent for seeing honestly and describing brilliantly the way people behave, think and feel. With Timothy in the first section of the book, for example, he catches with perfect delicacy the teenage sense that everyone else somehow knows how to behave, what to say, what to wear and so on, and that you don't but must try look as though you do. He paints a full cast of real, genuinely believable characters, and gently lays before us their foibles and mannerisms, the little lies they tell themselves to survive, the things they try to ignore because they are painful but know to be true, and so on. I felt that I had already met several of them in my life. David Nobbs is terrifically perceptive about them. He doesn't spare us their humiliations or their failings but treats them with tenderness and compassion. He reminds you, too, of people like the bloke who is always hanging around but is never really included, and that he, too, has feelings and a life, even if no-one ever takes an interest in him.
Important themes in the book are faith and organised religion, how they impact on lives and whether it is possible to have a meaningful, fulfilled life without them. It's exceptionally well done here: Nobbs's own position is very clear by the end of the book, but it's never preachy. He is very even-handed and he shows some of the fine and the ignoble aspects of both faith and atheism with equal insight, which makes this an enjoyable and thought-provoking aspect of the book, whether or not you agree with his final stance.
Nobbs's prose is a delight. He writes in the present tense here which I seldom like, but it works very well, giving the narrative a real flow through the years. It is straightforward, poised and excellently crafted, so that I seldom actually noticed the writing, and when I did it was just to notice how much I was enjoying it.
I don't often rave unreservedly about a book, but I think this is simply fantastic. Beautifully written, extremely readable, hugely entertaining and very thought-provoking, it's one of the best novels I've read for years and I recommend it very warmly indeed.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
It's the late 70s and sixth formers Naomi Walls and Timothy Pickering discover love in an Earls Court Hotel (particularly the second night of their stay). They've both lied to their parents (or in Timothy's case parent, singular) about where they are but inevitably they're found out. They split up not long after and the novel charts the passage of the years to date (actually 2008), following their two lives, together with their friends, families and acquaintances. There's a lot more to it than that of course, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
The book is a touching portrayal of two people who were `right' for each other, but initially just drift apart, meeting again at odd points throughout the years. There's absolutely nothing new in the story, but it's the quality of Nobbs' writing that elevates it above the rest of its ilk. I read his `Reggie Perrin' series decades ago and there's nothing as biting or satirical in here, but then it's not that type of novel. Characterisation, as you'd expect from such a writer, is spot-on; there are REAL people to be found among the pages of this book.
I can't say I laughed much while reading it, but I did find it moving, showing as it does the effects of love, death, reconciliation and the changes that time produces on the lives of ordinary people. And Nobbs never, repeat, never allows it all to drift into mere sentimentality.
There's a nice little twist at the end (that recalls Stephen Fry's `The Stars' Tennis Balls') that had me smiling. This is recommended to anyone who likes a nice, well-observed love story between two well-drawn and likeable characters.
The book is a touching portrayal of two people who were `right' for each other, but initially just drift apart, meeting again at odd points throughout the years. There's absolutely nothing new in the story, but it's the quality of Nobbs' writing that elevates it above the rest of its ilk. I read his `Reggie Perrin' series decades ago and there's nothing as biting or satirical in here, but then it's not that type of novel. Characterisation, as you'd expect from such a writer, is spot-on; there are REAL people to be found among the pages of this book.
I can't say I laughed much while reading it, but I did find it moving, showing as it does the effects of love, death, reconciliation and the changes that time produces on the lives of ordinary people. And Nobbs never, repeat, never allows it all to drift into mere sentimentality.
There's a nice little twist at the end (that recalls Stephen Fry's `The Stars' Tennis Balls') that had me smiling. This is recommended to anyone who likes a nice, well-observed love story between two well-drawn and likeable characters.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
David Nobbs is perhaps my favourite comic novelist of all time, so it pains me to say that this is the first of his books I haven't thoroughly enjoyed.
Whilst the topic is classic Nobbs territory - difficulties with forming and sustaining relationships - an issue I first noticed in his previous novel 'Cupid's Darts'' comes to the fore here.
'Cupids Darts' was temporally, all over the shop, concerning as it did a romance between a 1960s-style university Don and a late 70s, new-wave punkette type. their romance took place in the 1980s world of televised, celebrity dart matches and was set in the mid 2000s. One got the sense then that Mr Nobbs had started to float free of reality and begun to set his novels in a sort of optional era where characters and themes from the entire post-war period could mingle at will.
'Obstacles',then, plotted as it is as a series of visits to the protagonists over many years, brings this problem into sharper relief.
We start off in what I initially presumed was the 1950s, with the two young lovers running away from a cozy world of teacosies and sensible cardigans for a dirty weekend in London. In fact, it's 1978, but a 1978 in which punk rock and urban rioting have been replaced by a revival of interest in the craft of taxidermy. You'll remember the late 70s, when there used to be a taxidermists on every street corner. Happy days.
Next we're in the early 1980s, when our two star-crossed lovers happen to bump into each other on a package tour of... the Amazon Rainforest. Readers in their mid-40s will recall what a popular holiday choice this was for cash-strapped 21 year old couples in 1982. All the lads in the factory where I worked then stuck a fiver in the post office every week so they could have a fortnight canoeing down the Amazon every August.
And so on. The novel is so full of these sort of anachronisms that I kept getting angry with it and putting it back on the shelf, only finishing it as I'm reviewing it on behalf of the Vine program. Whilst it till retains a lot of Nobbs trademark charm, it's lack of any basis in reality spoilt it for me.
Whilst the topic is classic Nobbs territory - difficulties with forming and sustaining relationships - an issue I first noticed in his previous novel 'Cupid's Darts'' comes to the fore here.
'Cupids Darts' was temporally, all over the shop, concerning as it did a romance between a 1960s-style university Don and a late 70s, new-wave punkette type. their romance took place in the 1980s world of televised, celebrity dart matches and was set in the mid 2000s. One got the sense then that Mr Nobbs had started to float free of reality and begun to set his novels in a sort of optional era where characters and themes from the entire post-war period could mingle at will.
'Obstacles',then, plotted as it is as a series of visits to the protagonists over many years, brings this problem into sharper relief.
We start off in what I initially presumed was the 1950s, with the two young lovers running away from a cozy world of teacosies and sensible cardigans for a dirty weekend in London. In fact, it's 1978, but a 1978 in which punk rock and urban rioting have been replaced by a revival of interest in the craft of taxidermy. You'll remember the late 70s, when there used to be a taxidermists on every street corner. Happy days.
Next we're in the early 1980s, when our two star-crossed lovers happen to bump into each other on a package tour of... the Amazon Rainforest. Readers in their mid-40s will recall what a popular holiday choice this was for cash-strapped 21 year old couples in 1982. All the lads in the factory where I worked then stuck a fiver in the post office every week so they could have a fortnight canoeing down the Amazon every August.
And so on. The novel is so full of these sort of anachronisms that I kept getting angry with it and putting it back on the shelf, only finishing it as I'm reviewing it on behalf of the Vine program. Whilst it till retains a lot of Nobbs trademark charm, it's lack of any basis in reality spoilt it for me.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Two lovers story told over several years. Sounds famililar?
Timing is everything in comedy and perhaps the timing of this book, so soon after David Nicholls One Day, was not the best. Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Moseley
Hit the spot for me
I have some respect for those reviewers who have found fault with this book. There is always an element of escapism with David Nobbs, but you could include Reggie Perrin in that. Read more
Published 13 months ago by C. JONES
A flawed book from an excellent writer
David Nobbs is one of my very favourite authors, has been kind enough to reply to a couple of my fan letters over the years (I first wrote to him after reading "Sack Race"), and... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Peter Cockerell
Comedy and drama combined
This is a lovely, bittersweet, witty comedy romance story, charting the rather bumpy course of love and life of two young teenage lovers, Timothy and Naomi, with some clever lines... Read more
Published 16 months ago by L. H. Healy
Too Much of Everything . . . But Not Enough
Although there were things to like in this novel, in the end it just didn't cut the mustard. David Nobbs may be an excellent TV scriptwriter but unfortunately he's no more than an... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Jonathan Posner
Funny, touching and well-observed
1978, Timothy and Naomi have escaped to London under the pretence of a French field trip in order to book into a hotel and lose their virginity together. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Victor Ward
Tender, touching, often with a smile, and some deeper themes.
David Nobbs always delivers the goods. This novel is focused on two young lives, Timothy and Naiomi, and how they interact, or not, across three decades. Read more
Published 19 months ago by R. F. Stevens
A love story for life
Once upon a time...
This is a traditional love story about Naomi and Timothy, two young lovers who meet as 17 year old classmates. Read more
This is a traditional love story about Naomi and Timothy, two young lovers who meet as 17 year old classmates. Read more
Published 19 months ago by H Pedder
Tragi-farce?
David Nobbs has long been a favourite of mine (and my wife's), for his ability to write about what can be difficult subjects whilst still managing to place his characters into... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mr. Christopher Lancaster
Warm, Funny & Moving
This is a genuinely intelligent novel that will have you laughing and crying in equal measure, such is the skill of the writing, the engagement in the central characters lives and... Read more
Published 21 months ago by I. Bullen
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