Sweet Sorrow, by David Nicholls

Charlie has just finished school, having trashed his final exam. His mates are working and he’s at a loose end so meanders around town on his bike, occasionally dipping in to a book. Charlie’s dad is unemployed and in a deep depression following the failure of his music shop business. His mother has left, taking his little sister and leaving Charlie as virtual carer of his father. The world starts to look brighter when he meets Fran and gets drawn into her world of amateur theatre and a production of Romeo and Juliet. As a tale of first love, coming of age, outgrowing your peer group, the novel works quite well. Charlie is a far from perfect hero, but he has a lot to deal with and could easily take a wrong turn. Unfortunately the tone is very uneven, with Nicholls switching in and out of the voice of Charlie at 16 and Charlie as an adult. This is compounded by insertion of snippets of Charlie as an actual adult, which add nothing to the story and in fact undermine it by foreshadowing much of the outcome.