I got my People magazine in the mail today (yes, I admit it: I subscribe to People! But hey, I don’t watch television, so I figure I’m entitled to a little mindless entertainment now and again) and in the books section I see that David Nicholls has a new book out. It’s called One Day, releases this coming Monday, so naturally I went right to Amazon to have a look.
I loved Nicholls’s first novel, A Question of Attraction—absolutely hilarious (that is, don’t read it in public or you’ll embarrass yourself), veddy British (with all the emphasis on the working-class scholarship student trying to fake it in the midst of his middle-class college mates), and a male protagonist that both men and women can relate to. Felt real (set in 1985), had something to say about humanity, and a satisfying ending. My kind of book. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered just now A Question of Attraction is not really the name of the book. No, in England it’s called Starter for 10 (click here if you want to know why) and they’ve even already made it into a movie. (Of the same name, released in 2007, starring James McAvoy, for whom I have the hots, so how did I miss it? It’s a mystery.) It was, apparently, a massive best seller across the pond. (A Question of Attraction not so much, I guess, since it released in hardback, but Nicholls’s subsequent US releases have been paperbacks.)
This isn’t unusual. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was retitled …and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the American market (as a side note, the British covers can’t hold a candle to Mary GrandPre’s gorgeous illustrations for the US editions). Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights was retitled The Golden Compass for us. It happens with movies too: the little flick we know as Rory O’Shea Was Here (James McAvoy; you’ll note a trend here) is Inside I’m Dancing in its native Ireland. (Which is not, I hasten to add, in any way, shape, or form English or British.)
At any rate, I had a look at AbeBooks.com and picked up an English edition (in hardback) of Nicholls’s newest title, One Day, for a couple bucks. Even shipping all the way from England it’ll be less than the paperback American edition. 🙂
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