One Day (2009) - David Nichols

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle”

This book, now a popular series on Netflix, is a romantic comedy steeped very much in the Richard Curtis / Nick Hornby tradition of middle class white people doing middle class white people things. On paper, this sounds potentially irritating, instead it's written in such an earnest and disarming way that you find yourself not only caring about these two characters, but being hit with a surprising emotional oomph by the time you're done. 

The story focuses on two friends from University, Dexter - a well-off dreamboat, and Emma - a slightly rougher round the edges lass from Leeds. They begin their journey by sleeping together on July 15th, 1988. This date is important because each chapter from here on out happens on the same date, but a year on in their respective lives. Of course, the path to love isn't simple and their trajectories differ greatly over this time period. Emma initially works at what sounds like a god-awful Mexican themed restaurant somewhere in London, she then becomes a teacher, then a writer. Dexter rises to become a Television presenter of some infamy, succumbing often to the pitfalls of life in the shallows. They date other people, but they always stay in each other's lives as friends. Of course the question of 'will they won't they' lingers throughout and there are many times where we know, and they know, that they should be together. But life is never that simple, is it? 

Where this book succeeds is in it's evocation of time itself. Our two leads go from bright-eyed hope, to world-weary, to resigned to the complexities of fate and the very passing of twenty years makes for an atmosphere of reflective melancholy. This being despite the fact that, based on the dialogue, situations and interactions of the characters in the story, this plays out like a light-hearted comedy and a pithy remark is never too far away. But as the realities of life kick in, you can't help but feel that magical air of reflection and, to a degree, remorse that we often feel looking back over the past. And, despite the fact that one is a celebrity and one becomes a writer (because god forbid we should ever have a romantic novel about people with normal jobs), it's hard not to pull for these two the further you get into the book itself. 

Nicholls is a fantastic writer in this sense. He takes two pretty ordinary lives and makes them big, exploring their emotions, thoughts, dreams, successes, failures with a sharp lens and it becomes a quite sweeping narrative as a result. Even though for the most part we are talking about the very mundane things of normal lives, it feels especially poignant. Indeed I found myself so inadvertently invested that I had an audible gasp at a few bits and by the end, found myself a quivering, sobbing, mess. Again, if you can stick the landing, it only gives added weight to everything that came before it. This ending in particular scores very high in that respect. It left me deeply moved. 

That said, the one sour note here is the very thing that gives the story what marketers term a 'unique selling point'. The concept of visiting the same day each year for 20 years sometimes seems to be a hinderance, rather than a help. Nicholls does a great job of doing his best with it, but you can't escape the feeling that this was an interesting gimmick at first and becomes somewhat irrelevant after a while. Many important things happen outside of these days and there's a lingering feeling that these characters become so interesting that we could've abandoned the 'one day' concept altogether and it would have only enriched the novel. There's also a slight feeling of contrivance that this many things happen on the same date each year. But I guess that's the point. None of which is to say that it derails the book entirely, far from it, you just wonder what might've been if not being hamstrung to this format. Nicholls is a great writer and you feel he's slightly caged in by the concept here. 

Of course it doesn't get in the way too much and this book stands proudly up there with any other in the genre of modern romance. It is highly entertaining, poignant, funny, and unexpectedly mournful. It pulls you in to the point where you feel like a fly on the wall in the lives of the lead characters and, even though there are times where you'll want to look away, you'll find yourself rooting for them in a way that certainly surprised me. A worthy addition to any fiction collection, and packs a hefty emotional punch by the end. It'll make you think about your own life in a way you might not be ready for and proves, once again, that you don't need a huge plot to make an interesting story, you can just examine the feelings of ordinary people and achieve something equally meaningful. 

★★★★☆

JB.