One Day by David Nicholls

Our book for April in the ‘bloggers’ book club’ was One Day by David Nicholls. Now I have to confess I failed with the March book which was Dracula by Bram Stoker….because I had so many books on the go. I should really have read this though because Bram Stoker’s mother hailed from Sligo. So one day (no pun intended), I might get around to it.

On to the book review. One Day is the story of Dexter and Emma who meet in university and have a one night (or one day 😉 ) stand on the night of the graduation, which is July 15th, 1988. So each year after that we revisited them on July 15th to see what is happening in their lives.

Dexter becomes somewhat of a celebrity and starts to believe his own hype. He dabbles in drink and drugs and sees his career collapse. Emma ends up in a lot of low paid jobs before eventually becoming a teacher and later a writer. They both end up in different relationships throughout the book but they still keep in touch with each other.

It’s quite a predictable book, it’s touching and humourous. I enjoyed it but I think I preferred ‘Starter for ten’ which was David Nicholls first novel. There were times I wanted to give Dexter a good talking too. Emma was a nice character though and very much grounded which made a change to Dexter’s ‘loose canon’ approach to life.

I won’t give away the ending I will say though if you have the choice of reading the book or watching the film, go for the book. I found the film very annoying in places…one chapter was condensed down in the film to Emma swimming!

Check out Lorna’s blog for her review here.