“It’s a book about a relationship. “ 

I’ll be honest, being a keen science-fiction/fantasy reader, it’s very rare that any modern fiction which deals with love, or affection makes my ‘need to read’ list. However, when the book is a Christmas present from your mum, who’s dead set on hearing what “you think about it”, it’s less hassle to actually find the time to read the thing than it is to keep coming-up with excuses as to why you haven’t yet. 

So, it’s safe to say that I started the book with some scepticism and felt that all my worst fears about what lay ahead had been confirmed within the first few pages. True to my mum’s word, the book did indeed appear to be about a relationship or the beginning of one at least, between two university students - Dexter and Emma - who celebrate the end of their undergraduate degree with a drunken one-night-stand before parting company the next morning ready to embark on a post-university future, full of excitement and uncertainties. 

It was at this point, bored and unengaged, that I seriously contemplated leaving the book at the foot of my brother’s door to help him through the come-down from serious ‘chick-lit’ addiction he contracted whilst reading the regularly discarded train-station romance novels on his daily commute. However, I’m pleased to say that it was with the beginning of the next chapter that my interest was piqued. 

Rather than following each character on their journey through life in a very staid, linear fashion, the author, David Nicholls, has structured the book so that each subsequent chapter narrates the life of the two protagonists and their continued contact with each other during just one day of each year – July 15th. As a result, the reader gets a twenty-four hour snap-shot of ‘Dex and Em’ every year over the course of their lives, from idealistic, adventurous twenty-somethings to responsibility-laden, middle-aged professionals. What surprised me most about this mechanic wasn’t the intimacy it gave you with the characters, or the satisfyingly self-contained yet inter-related chapters it provided; the biggest surprise was that fact that I’d never read anything else that had made such good use of this elegantly simple idea before. While I’m sure some people might disregard it as a gimmick to help provide yet another way to sell romance to the masses, I have no qualms with saying that even if Nicholls had forgone the unique structure, his writing ability and the depth of character would’ve shone through even in a more run-of-the-mill, regularly-chaptered novel. 

By the end of the book I found that both characters felt like old friends due to the fact that over the course of the story you have unrestricted access to all areas of their lives – the successes, the failures, the surprises – and consequently come to understand and anticipate their varying thoughts and emotions in, what feels like, real depth.

While the book snob in me desperately wanted to read One Day and still be able to turn his nose up at it, I simply can’t. The matter wasn’t helped when I found out just how popular it’s become recently, currently sitting at number six in the Waterstone’s bestsellers chart, but there’s no doubt it deserves this success and then some. I’m not sure it’ll convert those readers out there who are resolutely stuck in their particular genres of safety but I would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who fancied taking a chance on reading a book about the ever-uncertain relationships between ‘real’ people. 

8/10