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For many, the university holidays signal the end of microwaveable meals and frighteningly close essay deadlines. However, as an English Literature student they offer up so much more. They create the opportunity to read books which are not attached to a compulsory, and lengthy, reading list at the start of each term. Delighting in this new-found freedom I went out and found the most brightly coloured romance novel I could, David Nicholls’ One Day.
One Day, however, is so much more than a selection of flirtatious anecdotes contained within a garish cover. The premise of the novel is that of a journey, one which admittedly becomes slightly clichéd as the book progresses. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew encounter one another on the night of their graduation, the first of their somewhat perfectly-timed meetings. Destiny, it seems, has brought these two ill-fated souls together for that brief spark to be ignited before real life cruelly tears them apart, thrusting them out in to the barren, post-graduation world. The cynic in me could almost predict the conclusion of their interweaving lives for the next twenty years. However, there is something refreshingly real, and scarily recognisable, about the pair.
Emma, with her threadbare t-shirt, steamed up glasses and fiercely held feminist views, seems worlds apart from Dexter whose obvious charm descends regularly into arrogance. Despite their encounter’s origin in 1988 their bitter-sweet relationship, with its genuinely awkward conversations, misconstrued moments of affection and warm banter, is highly reminiscent of my university experience to date. Nicholls goes on to write a chapter on the 15th of July every year for the next twenty years; two decades which encompass unemployment, alcoholism, a failed marriage and death. Undoubtedly, these elements could have so easily become contrived and yet Nicholls’ skill is to set these events solidly within the banality of everyday life with its trivial disappointments and mundane compulsions. By making Emma so very ordinary and Dexter so very fallible, he has moulded personable characters whose disappointed ambitions become touchingly identifiable.
Certainly, this is an easy read, but delightfully so. In no way does that take away from the fact that One Day is extremely moving. Nicholls does a very powerful thing by starting the novel with two students full of aspirations and dreams and then noting their small failures and sometimes even frailer successes in the coming years. It is a very disconcerting clash between a romance, which despite its tumultuous beginnings was always destined to succeed, and the uncontrollable and harsh realities of life.
Nicholls ends his novel back in 1988 with the parting of the hopeful pair, which is very poignant when read in conjunction with the sadness that their lives contained. It is also very fitting, especially for those of us who are about to make that daunting step in to the real world. Easy it may be, and yes clichéd at times, but (without ruining the surprise- which I can promise you left me welling up) it is also a novel which makes you want to do something to make the next twenty years live up to their promise.
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