Nicholls writes with such tender precision about love * The Times * David has a sublime talent for illuminating the murky causeway that most of us have to navigate between darkness and light -- Donal Ryan Nicholls's gift is character. There is a sharp empathetic intelligence to his writing that makes his characters real . . . the clear writing often dazzles with truth . . . sad funny, soulful * Observer * Praise for David Nicholls * - * Few pleasures in life compare to a David Nicholls novel and this is his best yet. -- Donal Ryan It's everything a story should be. Beautiful and clear and heartfelt, and it will do what all brilliant stories do: it will find the very pinpoint of who you are and it will stay there. -- Joanna Cannon Astutely observed, and almost painfully nostalgic, SWEET SORROW reads like a true story. -- Clare Mackintosh Funny, engaging and moving, another triumph from the brilliant David Nicholls. -- John Boyne It's just perfect in every way. -- Jill Mansell Such a beautiful book. Captures perfectly a moment in time we've all experienced. -- Graham Norton I don't think anyone writing right now captures youth and adolescence better; I'm not sure anyone even gets close. -- Jenny Colgan, author of The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After

One life-changing summer Sixteen-year-old Charlie meets Fran... Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. His exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person. He must join the Company. And if the Company sounds like a cult, the truth is even more appalling. The price of hope, it seems, is Shakespeare. Poignant, funny, enchanting, devastating, Sweet Sorrow is a tragicomedy about the rocky path to adulthood and the confusion of family life, a celebration of the reviving power of friendship and that brief, searing explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly after it has burned out. 'Such a beautiful book. Captures perfectly a moment in time we've all experienced.' Graham Norton