David Nicholls - One Day
The hype around this book made my expectations very high. I was sick of stepping onto the train in the morning and literally seeing half the carriage readin it, and I was even more sick of hearing my friends talk about how the film version is not as good as the book and Anne Hathaway's northern accent is just terrible (really, did you expect anything different?!)
Hence, having read a fair few romantic drama comedy's in my time, I was expecting this one to be really different. I was expecting some sort of ecclectic mix of true deep intimacy found in the classics and the funnier ridiculous natural scenes you experience in chic lit. I was disappointed on both counts. I think it would have been better had I come to read this book having never heard of it before. Honestly, I have come to conclusion that the only innovative thing about this story is the way it is told. The idea is the same - university sweethearts who are entirely different people and pulled apart by circumstances, inwardly struggling to be together. Because of course at university you meet so many people who are nothing like you............... I think most people tend to become the best friends with others who are actually rather like them, having just left university. One of my best friends is pretty much my double - we are two sides of the same coin. I do have friends who are nothing like me too who I met in Manchester, but I am much closer to the ones who are like me - the ones who I don't have to constantly justify or explain myself to or argue with. I think that's where the antagonism between the characters comes from in this novel - it's not because they are lovers who are struggling against their true feelings; that's far too obvious. They are struggling against the differences in each other which they hate yet love. Their differences is what makes them interesting.
This is hardly a new concept - the freshness comes only from the composition of the novel, which gives are flash points on the same day every year throughout a 20 year period. Indeed, this is one part of the book which I would praise; at no point did I think "god there's just been a massive leap in time and I don't understand what's gone on in between". Nor did I ever think "what a pointless descriptive paragraph just to keep the reader up to speed with the facts that the author has purposely ommitted". The jumps in time were seamless, and the catch up paragraphs were so well integrated into the overall text and story that at no point did the plot stutter in fluidity.
I had a problem connecting with the characters also. I hated Dexter. I'm not sure if we're supposed to hate him, but I really did. I found him arrogant and obnoxious and completely self centred. His personality was just abhorrent. In the beginning, I honestly thought Emma was an absolute IDIOT for maintaining her friendship with him, and honestly the only reason she did because he was so "handsome". I liked Emma more, I found her a much more believable character, although I thought she was lazy. I've worked in a restaurant which, from the sounds of it, is just like the one she wasted several of her best years in, when she could actually have been accomplishing something in. She got stuck in a rut and I think the author could have done much more with her life than just define her by her relationships and her job. Emma was far less motivated and strong than she considered herself to be.
If you don't want the end of the book spoiled for you, don't read on.
The ending was by far the worst part. Emma's death was just such a lame way to end it. It excused the author from having to really think about what Emma and Dexter's life would have been like together, how their contrasting and conflicting personalities actually would have conjoined into one marital unit. This would perhaps have been a much more interesting endeavour, rather than analysing how Dexter coped on his own without Emma as his crutch. I also like to think that some people want a book to have a happy ending - because despite all the divorce and heartbreak and adultery there undoubtedly is in the world, there ARE happy people out there too. It seems that people would rather have an unfulfilling and predictable ending than a happy one; there must be a lot of depressed people on my train in the morning!
Overall, disappointing. Makes a good holiday read but nothing more than that.
