One Day: Best Beach Read of 2010

It's not often that a cover of a nearly-kissing-couple reveals a profound novel underneath. David Nicholls bucks the trend by combining breezy language and fast-paced storytelling with epic themes and deep character portrayals in his new novel One Day.

One Day is quite gimmicky on the surface. It's about a boy (Dexter Mayhew) and a girl (Emma Morley) who have a one night stand the evening of university (they're British) graduation on July 15, 1988. The book then checks in with the two of them on July 15 of every year for the next twenty years. But the way Nicholls does this sets it apart from typical chick-lit fare. Instead of contriving a meeting every year, say at a wedding or randomly bumping into each other at a restaurant, Nicholls deliberately checks in with them each July 15, using the opportunity to fill us in on their lives the other 364 days of the year. Nicholls makes clear that Dex and Em are part of each others' lives year round. Instead of filling us in on their lives through removed third-person omniscient, he spends equal amounts of time communicating in Dex and Em's respective voices.

Through this method, we get two fully realized characters. One chapter set in the early Nineties begins with Dexter's voice: "These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another. Old fashioned notions of a.m. and p.m. have become obsolete and Dexter is seeing a lot more dawns that he once used to." A couple pages later, Nicholls switches to Em: "Emma Morley east well and drinks in moderation. These days she gets eight good hours sleep then wakes promptly of her accord just before six-thirty and drinks a large glass of water." These sentences don't simply fill us in on the characters' lives, but do it in such a way that shows what the characters think of themselves. These are thoughts that they would have believably used to describe themselves.

Sure, the characters each do a few things that make you want to roll your eyes, but their big decisions are recognizable to all. Immediately after the one night stand, for example, Dexter does a stint of world traveling, going from country to country "teaching English," but also bedding various women. He is then saved from the nomadic lifestyle by a television gig, becoming rich and more dependent on drugs in the process. Though this screams cliched rich-kid story, Nicholls excellent portrayal renders Dexter as a real person who needs to reconcile luck with success. In one passage, Dexter muses on how to "dump" his friends for more successful, attractive friends. Even if you haven't faced this specific problem, everyone can relate to the idea of outgrowing acquaintances. Meanwhile, Em must ask how to find the courage to do what she really wants as she endures a thankless job while yearning to be a writer.

Though Dex and Em eventually grow out of their twenties, the early twenties is a great time to read this book. From my perspective as a recent college grad, One Day provides perspective on how one's priorities change through the ages. Obsessed with success and being other people when their young, the characters learn to appreciate family and themselves over time. In this sense, it reminds me of a much more serious book, The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, that follows two sisters from the 1950's through the 1980's. The difference is that One Day is written in a way that's conducive to the beach.

Nicholls provides some acute social commentary throughout. From the beginning, he makes fun of Emma's type even as he creates her. Looking around Emma's progressive, hipster-ish room during the one-night stand, Dex notes that "the problem with interesting girls is that they were all the same." Later, Nicholls jabs at overblown weddings:
"They have started to arrive. An endless cascade of luxuriously quilted envelopes, thumping onto the doormat. The wedding invitations."

Current events from 1988 to 2007 take a backseat in this book. (There's no mention of 9/11, but some discussion of the subsequent war). While the cultural references--"I have tickets to the London premier of Jurassic Park"--might attract audiences of a certain age, they are entirely gratuitous. Though the situations could have only occurred in the late 20th century and first decade of the twenty-first, the story of two young people figuring out their lives is timeless.