Cannonball Read 3 - Review #7 - One Day by David Nicholls

I've been hearing about this book and found out it's been adapted to a movie with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, and the premise is interesting, so I thought I'd check it out. The story centers around Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, and each chapter shows a snapshot of their relationship on the same day, each year, for about twenty years. The book starts out with them on the night of their graduation from college at the University of Edinburgh, where they hook up at a party. Then their lives diverge, but they stay friends, keeping in touch while Dexter travels the world and Emma tries to figure out what to do with herself. She received high marks in school, but is utterly directionless. Dexter is just as directionless, partying and sleeping with many, many different women. Over the years, we see Dexter and Emma's lives and relationship change, as they are wont to do. Dexter is kind of a cad who gets swept up in the glamour and flash of his career in television, but makes decisions which sometimes leave him in the middle of an empty and unsatisfying existence. Emma is a loyal and grounding presence, who knows everything about him and calls him out on his bad behavior. Emma is smart, romantic, but self-loathing and unsure of herself in her youth. Both see the good in each other that they can't see in themselves, and that is what makes them such necessary people in each other's lives.

One Day was satisfying, without too many cliches, and with well-rounded and realistic characters. I have little patience for the trite novels of Nicholas Sparks and his ilk, and One Day is what all of that nonsense is trying to be. Nicholls writes about this very intimate, important long relationship so well. The changes the characters go through and the hurdles their relationship faces over twenty years are so realistic. I really don't want to give too much away, as waiting to see the changes each year brings on July 15th was a lot of the fun of reading this novel. As Dexter and Emma develop as people, their relationship changes, but they continue to be in each others lives. I hightly recommend this book. I'm glad I jumped on this particular bandwagon.