I read Starter For Ten a few months back, after walking into Waterstone’s and discovering the film was based on a novel (hadn’t yet seen the film). As the film stars James McAvoy (best young actor to come out of Scotland in the last 5 years IMO) I had intended to see it in the cinema, but picked up the book when i saw it in order to read it before seeing the film. I thouroughly enjoyed that, so ordered the understudy when i bought a load of books a short time ago. I finally got around to reading it, and found it less engaging and more clichéd than Starter…
The characters are believable, but for each one i could imagine who would play them in the film (which Nicholls is writing a screenplay for) and found their interactions less than realistic. I know Nicholls has a full CV, but i wouldn’t be surprised if this is his final book, nor would i be surprised if his next book is about a journalist or a screenwriter, as he seems to only be able to draw on his own experiences when writing