One Day: Review

Every chapter of this book pulls you into the lives of Emma and Dexter on 15th July of a different year from 1988 to 2007. Sometimes they are together, sometimes apart, occasionally they get on, but it is clear that they love each other from beginning to tragic end. 'One Day' is unique, hilarious and stunningly written throughout so that by the end you feel like you've been there for twenty years through the ups, the downs and all those missed opportunities.

Emma and Dex meet on 15th July 1988, the night of their graduation. After an awkward morning following their one-night-stand they must go their separate ways, but that is just the beginning of their intensely complicated friendship.

Dexter dives straight into two adventurous gap years travelling the world, living a charmed life. Rich, gorgeous and charismatic, the world is like putty in his hands, as are the many women he encounters. Meanwhile Emma is stuck in a rut in a Tex-Mex restaurant in London, wondering how she ended up there and how on earth is she to get free and make use of that glittering potential that only Dex seems to appreciate.

However Dexter's life of Riley has an expiration date, which he hurtles towards with the grace of a drunken elephant crash landing a plane. Dex is forced to grow up despite his Peter Pan attitude and becomes trapped as his various vices catch up with him. As Emma gets her life together Dexter is unable to keep up. This pattern weaves its way through the novel, Emma's up and Dexter's down then they're up, down and confused all at once and never at the same time. As their relationship develops and dwindles over the years, they try to keep track of their own complicated lives and it certainly takes a life-time for them to find that same page they both need. 

This will-they-won't-they rollar coaster is enchanting, enthralling and impossible to put down. One Day made me laugh, cry and laugh a whole lot more. David Nicholls keeps you guessing as you leap from year to year dipping into the successes, disappointments and catastrophe's of Emma and Dexter's lives. I found myself excited at the beginning of each chapter to know what had occurred in these charmingly flawed brutally realistic characters' lives, as if catching up with old friends after a year apart. I emerged from this book (finishing it on 15th July might I add) feeling like I had known Emma and Dexter for twenty years and already missing them. Call me crazy but thats how involved I became in their extraordinary, and yet, surprisingly ordinary story. 

I am now exceedingly excited for the film to come out on 26th August and I urge you all to read this smashing book before seeing the film. Here's hoping Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess can do it justice as they tread that tricky tight-rope of literary adaptations, I have a feeling they'll carry it off with style.