I Could Love You

William Nicholson's bid to become the Balzac of Sussex now consists of two novels, The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life and this follow-up set in 2008, eight years after the original. The challenge facing most of the characters here is banishing loneliness. Nicholson delivers an enjoyable if not especially challenging tale, but much of the dialogue in this dialogue-heavy novel has a cloying, stagey aspect. It could probably be re-sold as young adult fiction if all of the (many) four-letter words were struck out. Rather than Balzac, in fact, Nicholson more resembles J.B. Priestley and his 1930s novels featuring large casts of ordinary Londoners, each with a problem that gets resolved by the final page.