One Day is one of those genius concepts that make you wish you would have thought of it before. It’s a story that spans a couple decades, revisiting the lives of two people on a single date every year. That date is the 15th of July.
On July the 15th 1988, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew wake up after a one-night-stand. They appear to hit it off well for two people engaging in a random act of intimacy, but Dexter has his reservations about Emma at first. From then on their relationship becomes strictly platonic as the story moves on over the next few years.
On the surface, being friends is harder on Emma than it is for Dexter who bed hops on the regular; but as we get to delve deeper into his character we see that he truly harbours some feelings for Emma that he has trouble coming to terms with. The continuous tease of a love held back by friendship becomes an excellent display of David Nicholl’s ability to write characters that provoke you; simply by making things more difficult for themselves than they need to be.
Throughout the years there are times when Emma and Dexter’s friendship is on rocky roads, and other times when they’re inseparable. What’s good is that we get a decent amount of solo character growth from each so that we can come to understand their clashing personalities separately. We see both characters take a nose dive through some of the most common and brutalising life challenges; like being stuck in an unfulfilling job post-graduation and dealing with death in the family. That’s where the brilliance of the books structure is best realised. We’ll see one of the characters lose someone close to them but then the story will jump ahead to the next year of events so that we miss out on the grim logistics of death. Instead, we get to witness how that death has affected the character in the long-term. It’s a structure that keeps the pace moving, providing us with a fresh look at their lives every chapter.
One Day will also bring out a range of different emotions from within you. It can be both hilarious and absolutely heart-breaking. Very rarely does a book have me laughing out loud multiple times in one sitting, but One Day has some of the most amusing passages you’ll find in this genre. Nicholls should be praised for his depth as a writer, especially for coming up with a story that can captivate both genders so flawlessly.
We see Emma go from being an underachiever, working in a Tex-Mex burrito restaurant, to becoming a teacher and eventually a published author. Dexter on the other hand peaks earlier on in life, making it as a TV show presenter. This in effect opens him up to lots of drunken nights and one-night-stands that Emma has to endure all the details of. Dexter accumulates a fair amount of lovers throughout the story, while Emma is left trying to settle into a relationship she doesn’t really want. These external relationships cause an impairing distance between the two at times, and it keeps you wondering if they will ever give in and get it on.
As we see Emma and Dexter age into their mid-thirties, their chances of ever becoming more than friends seem to slim. Marriage and Children come into play on Dexter’s end, and a moment of confusion leads Emma to indulging in an affair with her school headmaster. Just when the tease is on the verge of annoyance, we’re given the moment we’ve been waiting for in a playful scene that’s written all too beautifully. At this point the books journey feels all so fulfilling that a happy ending would have been totally accepted. But being the excellent writer that he is, David Nicholls throws us further through the loop with a shocking (but questionable) twist.
The twist does come off as slightly forced at this point in the book, but One Day wraps up so fittingly that it’s easy to forgive any doubts about the direction.
All in all, I’d say this is a book that everyone can enjoy. One Day is a book I could recommend to both a romance reader, and someone just looking for standard contemporary fiction. It’s just as well a study of two people’s lives over the span of 20 years than it is a book about love and friendship.
One Day is such a compelling novel that I can feel comfortable in calling it a must-read. One day it may even be looked back upon as a classic.
