A Question of Attraction - David Nicholls

The year is 1985. Brian Jackson, a working-class kid on full scholarship, has started
his first term at university. The usual freshman anxiety over fitting in is compounded
by the gap between his own humble origins and the privileged backgrounds of his better-off
classmates.

Brian also has a dark secret-a long-held, burning ambition (stoked
by his late father) to appear on the wildly popular TV quiz show University Challenge-and
now, finally, it seems the dream is about to become reality. He’s made the school
team, and they’ve completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their first televised match. (And, what’s more, he’s fallen head over heels for one of his
teammates, the beautiful, brainy, and intimidatingly posh Alice Harbinson.) Life
seems perfect and triumph inevitable-but as his world opens up, Brian learns that
a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Reminiscent of such classic coming-of-age
works as The Graduate and Goodbye, Columbus, A Question of Attraction marks the literary
debut of David Nicholls, one of England’s most highly praised television writers.
It is an unforgettable story of love, class, finding one’s place in the world, and
the all-important difference between knowledge and wisdom.


From the Hardcover edition.