Book Review: Starter for Ten

2.5/5

I really wish I hadn’t read this book after The Elephant Whisperer. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls seemed particularly trivial after Lawrence Anthony's tale and I found Nana and her herd of elephants much more appealing characters than whatshisface and the girl he should clearly not be trying to date. Although to be fair to David Nicholls, The Elephant Whisperer was so fantastic I would probably have felt this way about the next book regardless of what it was. Have I mentioned you should go read The Elephant Whisperer?

Starter for Ten is a coming of age story about the main character whose name I honestly cannot remember (I left this book in Watamu because I am trying to shed the aforementioned 28391983701923081293 books along the way and I am too lazy to look up his name). This character has just started university and becomes part of the University Challenge* team at his school where he inevitable falls in love with the unattainable, beautiful, intelligent blonde who strings him along for the entire book and then at the end predictably dumps him. He then ends up with sidekick-best-friend-character who he should have been with the entire time. The love story is painfully obvious, but the writing is quite funny and the characters - although unappealing - are believable. I picked this book up because I like David Nicholls – he has also written One Day (which I love) and The Understudy (which is absolutely hilarious for anyone involved in theatre).

Before I finish my review, I need to mention the book's saving grace. I had started writing this review to criticise the internal monologue of the main character. Much like in Almost English, the main character’s thought are very dull and revolve around him overanalysing everything he does and says to the point where he cannot see the forest for the trees. I was thinking about this when I had a REVELATION.

I do that all the time. Not the revelations bit, the annoying internal monologue bit. Whenever I meet someone new, I (more often than not) assume that they don’t like me because it seems the safer option. If they do like me – that’s a pleasant surprise, if they don’t – well I knew that anyway so nothing gained nothing lost. I overthink all my interactions with people and constantly believe I am not “cool enough” to be speaking to pretty much everyone. If someone was to write a book which recorded my internal monologue, I would probably get so bored reading it and want to yell at the protagonist (me): GET OVER YOURSELF, NOTHING IS THAT BIG OF A DEAL. I'd give it 1/5 and never think about it again. Besides, interactions with people are bound to be much more pleasant if you aren’t in your own head and the majority of the time everyone is just thinking about themselves anyway. So I gave this book another half in my out-of-five rating because it prompted self-reflection and a desire to change the way I think so that my internal monologue stops sounding like the narration in a sub par coming of age story.

*A quiz show in Britain where teams from different universities compete in a trivia competition. It’s pretty intense though, and kind of a big deal (I think).

#Bookreview #Kenya #Watamu