Review of One Day by David Nicholls
I first read One Day in 2011 leaning against the luggage rack in a train carriage. Two trains had been combined into one and it wasn’t the most comfortable journey. Perhaps that’s what makes the books stick in my mind, but I like to think that it’s the characters! I’ve since read it over twenty times, and even now I still find new things in it which deepen the story and make it more enjoyable.
The book tells the story of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, who meet on the night of their graduation from Edinburgh University on 15th July, 1988. We then catch-up with them on the 15th July each subsequent year up to 15th July, 2007. The reader is left to fill in the gaps of the other 364 days a year.
As well as being a clever structure, the characters are great, mainly because they’re not always likeable and I always like characters who are at best frustrating and at times really awful. While both Dexter and Emma have their good points, they both have their drawbacks as well and that makes them all the more interesting and all the more intriguing.
By only seeing one day a year for nineteen years, we see their lives go through ups, downs, excitement and mundanities and by seeing ‘real life’ (there isn’t a murder in sight), you build up a real picture of their lives, both together and separated by space and life getting in the way. I guess the principle is finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and how everything adds up to create a life.
Some extraordinary things do still manage to make their way into the 15th July, but I don’t want to say too much about that as it would spoil the story. Suffice to say, this is possibly the only book I’ve read where I had to pause, read the few paragraphs I’d just read again, and then readjust my understanding of the entire story.
By Jonathan Freckleton, Senior Information Adviser at York St John
