One Day, David Nicholls

I read One Day by David Nicholls last week before I moved.

I actually quite enjoyed it. When it had first come out I had (in my high-brow fashion) shunned the book as best-seller rot but having read it, I will revise my statement. It’s not exactly what you would call literary history stuff but it is pretty decent. The concept alone is enough to garner my praise.

We meet Emma and Dexter on July 15^th, 1988 after their graduation from Edinburgh University. The book is their life on July 15^th for the next twenty years. You don’t see anything that happens before or after it and you’re left wondering what you missed but it all adds to the mystery of the novel, the feeling of trying to piece together where their lives have been and where they are going.

The characters are likeable, if a little stereotypical. Dexter is the rich boy who gets everything handed to him and goes off the rails for a bit. Emma is from a working class family, feminist, pacifist whose life is not exactly what she wanted it to be until, eventually, she swallows her pride and asks for a favour and everything ends up brilliant (she gets her book published and spends a lovely summer in Paris (for which she learned to speak French. Yeah.)). But all through it you just want to bash their heads together (particularly Dexter’s) and make them see what is right in front of them. But I guess that’s the beauty of the story; they had to go through all that they went through for them to be able to be together. If they’d gotten together at uni… Yeah. Dexter wasn’t ready for that and Emma’s view of him was too wide-eyed and rose-tinted.

The only thing I didn’t like about was the ending. I mean… I actually loved the ending (eee, the angst!) but I didn’t like the way it was written. It just sort of… happens. I guess it’s to show the suddenness with which life can change but still… It’s. Emotionless. And in the next chapter Dexter is back to his old ways and while we know why it makes him look like a complete arsehole.

Regardless, I would still recommend it. I would recommend the movie, too, if it wasn’t for Anne Hathaway’s accent. If her accent was the same and bad all the way through, fair enough. But it changes to a plethora of different accents throughout which makes it difficult to ignore.

A good read. ***

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Now reading The Passion of New Eve