Gorgeous Chloe is now 19, and takes it upon herself to set Alice up with Jack, which would be great except Jack’s dreaming of Chloe… Chloe’s mother Belinda, aged 50, wistfully reflects how much better at sex she is now than when she was young, but she’d never be unfaithful to her husband Tom. So when she discovers he’s having an affair she’s more than angry….

Why did I write Rich and Mad?

Reviews

Falling in love for the first time is also the primary theme of William Nicholson’s compelling and funny Rich and Mad, now out in paperback. An astonishingly versatile author, who has written plays and screenplays (Shadowlands and Gladiator among them), as well as adult fiction, Nicholson began writing for children a few years ago and this is his first novel for young adults. I would definitely place it at the adult end of the spectrum, since there is plenty of graphic sex and adisturbing subplot concerning violence against women. But within that it is a tender, moving, unexpected and intelligent take on family life, sibling relationships, mid-life angst and, above all, first love and first sex, which examines why we always want what we can’t have and don’t want what is there for the taking. The central characters are wonderfully believable and in Rich, Nicholson has created a lovable, geeky antihero who worships Larkin and gets his ideas about love from a battered copy of The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm’s 70s classic on human behaviour, which his friends suspect is a sex manual. He feels so real you suspect he might well be based on the author’s young self. Alone among his peers, Rich refuses to have a laptop or a phone, reasoning that anyone who really wants to talk to him will actually come and find him. That’s what I call brave.

Lisa O’Kelly, The Observer, April 4 2010

WITH screen credits for blockbusters such as Gladiator and First Knight, William Nicholson must be a writer well used to the term ‘epic’. For the rest of us, perhaps, the closest we can come in real life are those all-consuming feelings of falling in love for the first time, and fortunately Nicholson’s on hand to guide readers on this equally heroic journey. One of the most striking aspects of Rich and Mad (Egmont, 6.99), however, is the lack of histrionics, special effects or CGI set-pieces. Rich Ross and Maddy Fisher are pretty average 17-year-olds and their quest for love is gently witty and moving, never over-blown or gushing. Undoubtedly the final ten pages of the 440-page novel are what everybody will talk about: first love naturally leads to first sex. Yet Nicholson wants to tell the full story of an epic teenage adventure and robbing the audience of this particular climax would surely feel dishonest.

Keith Gray, The Scotsman, April 5 2010

Writers rarely stray as far from their territory as WILLIAM NICHOLSON has in RICH AND MAD (Egmont, £6.99). To go from fantasy writing – he is best known for his Wind on Fire trilogy – to teen fiction is tantamount to dating outside your species. But for something that is against the laws of nature, Nicholson has done a fine job. He has spoken of his concern about the “pornification” of teenage sexuality and this novel is an attempt to redress the balance, but anyone hoping for a literary crusade in favour of abstention will be disappointed. Maddy’s mission to fall in love and understand sex starts with her and a friend watching porn, a woman with bunny ears fellating a headless man “…it was like a little god wanting to be worshipped. On and on with the worshipping, bowing before it, kissing it, on and on. I wanted to hit it with a spoon…”. Nicholson is brilliant on the anxieties and awkwardness of sex, and when Maddy and Rich finally realise their destiny, after both suffering the bitter humiliation of unrequited love, their consummation is realistically short but sweet. But it’s definitely national-curriculum-approved “sex within a loving relationship”. Less realistic is the instant repair job done on Maddy’s parents’ broken marriage, and Rich’s reliance on The Art of Loving – romantic heroes should not read self-help books. (Age: 13+)

Dinah Hall, Sunday Telegraph, April 4 2010

Each decision she takes has a ripple effect on her husband, her children, and all those she comes into contact with. In short chapter after short chapter we follow the chain of human interactions, shifting each time to a new viewpoint, discovering that our characters know nothing of what’s going on inside each other. They misread each other, fail to notice the dramas being played out before them, absorbed as they are in their own intense inner lives. Over six short days in Sussex we watch a dozen lives collide and transform each other, without any of the protagonists realising the true impact of their words and actions.

These are ordinary middle-class people, getting on with unremarkable lives. But for each one their life is a passionate drama in which they take the lead part. Running through each story is the question: how happy can I expect to be? Is what I’ve got enough? Am I leading the life I meant to live?

Observer Article

Telegraph Article

In this gripping searching novel of ideas, art and literature, William Nicholson weaves an intricate tale of suspense as he explores what it is men and women really want from each other.

“He has nowhere to go. So he goes there.”

Thus begins a novel that is part spy story, part philosophical treatise, one that sweeps the reader along. Hypnotic, intellectually challenging, with all the pace and thrust of a thriller.

Reviews
“A novel I would dearly love to have written… Exciting, funny, wise, and beautifully written…
Nicholson has to my mind established himself with this first work of adult fiction as one of the best novelists around.”
Piers Paul Read, The Spectator

“Buttock-clenching thriller.”
Tatler

“It is thrilling in every sense, but it is also hypnotic, fast-moving, and intellectually challenging and, as it twists and turns, leaving you confused, uncertain, even uncomfortable, and yet utterly hooked. A philosophical master class, it is quite staggeringly good.”
Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

“Like a ratings-grabbing episode of Holidays from Hell… A thought-provoking testament.”
Andrea Henry, Sunday Mirror

“Nothing prepares you for the journey you undertake while reading this incredible thought-provoking novel.”
Waterstones Books Quarterly

“Alongside the action, you have a continual debate over ideas about as the blurb puts it the meaning of life. This is a rare book that does precisely what it says on the tin. This makes it a very un-English novel. There is nothing parochial or narrow about it. It puts you in mind more of a Camus or a Pushkin…. You turn the pages as your mind turns in circles following the mental games going on. It’s a challenge as well as a pleasure, but The Society of Others is a novel that demands attention.”
Peter Stanford, The Catholic Herald