Sweet Sorrow: The Long-Awaited New Novel from the Best-Selling Author of One Day

A tale of first love that hits all the right notes . . . [it] just might be the sweetest book to brighten your late summer. --The Washington Post Dazzles with wit.--People From the bestselling author of One Day comes a bittersweet and brilliantly funny coming-of-age tale about the heart-stopping thrill of first love--and how one summer can forever change a life. Now: On the verge of marriage and a fresh start thirty-eight year old Charlie Lewis finds that he can't stop thinking about the past and the events of one particular summer. Then: Sixteen-year-old Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. He's failing his classes. At home he looks after his depressed 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. But when Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself Charlie begins to hope. In order to spend time with Fran Charlie 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 Romeo and Juliet learned and performed in a theater troupe over the course of a summer. Now: Charlie can't go the altar without coming to terms with his relationship with Fran his friends and his former self. 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.