One Day

You know you’ve read a great book when as soon as you’re done reading, you instantly just want to start over and read it again.

It comes rarely these days, but that’s how it was for me as soon as I finished David Nicholls’ One Day. The novel, set in Britain, traces the intersecting lives of good friends (and sometime lovers) Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew on the same day, July 15^th , of each year. It begins on the day they graduate college when you find Dexter, the classic playboy with money and good looks and charm, and the bookish, political and less “popular” Emma somehow in bed together. It’s really kind of an awkward match, but “something” pulls them together. (Okay, it’s totally sounding corny to you guys right now, I’m sure, but this is not the standard, run of the mill “chick-lit”.) The next day they go on with their lives, figuring they’d never see one another again, but end up becoming close friends via letters while Dexter goes off traveling (and womanizing) and Emma takes a job at a lowly theater production. The novel is staged so you only get the glimpse of their relationship on that same day each year, but Nicholls is very good at weaving the other details of the year in and filling you in on what’s happened without being overtly obvious (i.e. them having new jobs or living situations or relationships). In fact, it is so stupendously written. The unique insight, and perhaps male author perspective for a love story, gives it charm and makes it different.

Of course it has a “When Harry met Sally” aspect of, “Oh my gosh, they’re such good friends why are they not together?” but really, as a reader, you come to understand all the life reasons as to why they’re not together that you’re not constantly thinking that. Whether it’s Dexter’s self-involvement or eventual alcoholism, or Emma’s indecision about what to do with her life and her stubborn denial to herself that NO they are just friends, they do not have feelings for each other… somehow it never works out. Until (SPOILER ALERT) it does. But that’s just the beginning, really (even though it doesn’t happen until well into the book). The rest is so gut-wrenching, powerful, emotional, lovely.

Honestly, while the writing is really wonderful, often it’s not so much that as it is Nicholls’ ability to tell a gripping and relatable story. He does it masterfully, ordering everything just right in his weird web of time. My heart was aching at so many points, and I cried not once, but twice while reading. And not just a few tears. I was sitting by the pool at my beach place, tears streaming down my face and gasping for air a little bit. People were staring so I had to leave, haha. But I love when a book makes you do that. Just the written word. And it’s not this overly professed lovey dovey bullshit. It’s very real, very straightforward. And yet, as simplistic and straightforward as it is, it is so powerful. He packs so much meaning into the characters that you feel as if you know them, that this is something personally affecting you. He’s able to say things so simply because you understand the gravity of everything behind it, how Emma and Dexter feel about everything and how it impacts them.

When I was done the book, I was like, What do I do now? Aren’t Emma and Dexter, like, real people? What, do I just not get to experience the rest of their lives with them? It was so surreal.

“One Day” is not a love story, it’s a life story, and at the end of it, I was like, Holy shit. What I am doing with my life? Why am I wasting my precious days lounging on a beach, not doing anything or being with the people I love or having an impact on something?

It had one of the best endings to a novel I’ve read in a long time, simply because it went back to the beginning when they first met, and you knew everything that had transpired since then. Nicholls’ says,

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over.”

And he goes on to say more, but that is effectively the ending and it was entirely the message of the novel, and of life itself. The importance of cherishing the simple, perfect beauty of one day, one moment, seizing that (cliché, but true), because someday, inevitably, it will be over. And you will never, ever feel as if you’ve had enough time at the end of it, but that’s life. That is just how it goes. But, as Nicholls says, you will always have that "one day", or the memories you can cherish together.

PS, they are making a movie out of it, and it looks GREAT too. Hopefully the movie doesn’t ruin it! It has Anne Hathaway as Emma and Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe guy) as Dexter. And they look perfect and here is the link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfmh2FqhqIk

PPS, I know this post is already way too long but I miss you all dearly. Thinking of you during all my reading and wishing you were here! xoxo