One Day: A Review
ReviewOne Day
1. For my home reading I have chosen the book written by an English novelist and screenwriter, David Nicholls. I’ve chosen this book because I’ve heard about the movie based on it. I’d never read works of this writer before but I’ve heard about one more his work “Starter for ten”. And moreover I had it in the list of authors approved by our teacher.
Each chapter covers the lives of two protagonists on 15 July, St. Swithin's Day, for twenty years. The novel attracted generally positive reviews, and was named 2010 Galaxy Book of the Year. Nicholls has also himself adapted his book into a screenplay; the feature film, also titled One Day, was released in August 2011.
2. The young, impressionable Emma Morley meets the roguish Dexter on the day they graduate from college. The book then chronicles their complex history together by checking on them one day each year. Their journey through life takes them to London, Paris, and so on. The annual updates charting the course of their lives and their continuing though not always flourishing friendship.
Emma has to work hard at coping with the disappointments of post-university life and several years as a waitress in a ghastly Tex-Mex restaurant in north London. Dexter, on the other hand, doesn't have to work hard at anything, as a couple of agreeably hedonistic gap years give way to an agreeably hedonistic life after graduation. While Dexter enjoys as many drugs, cocktails and women as he can get his hands on, Emma continues to serve up noisome nachos in Kentish Town. But things gradually pick up for her. She escapes her Tex-Mex hell to become a teacher. And year after year, we can see, how Emma slowly blossoms into a smart, beautiful and sage woman.
3. I enjoyed the format. We don’t really need a full depiction of every single event in their lives to have a sense of what they are going through. Equal parts are heartbreaking and hilarious yet also suspenseful as each chapter takes place a year to the day
1. For my home reading I have chosen the book written by an English novelist and screenwriter, David Nicholls. I’ve chosen this book because I’ve heard about the movie based on it. I’d never read works of this writer before but I’ve heard about one more his work “Starter for ten”. And moreover I had it in the list of authors approved by our teacher.
Each chapter covers the lives of two protagonists on 15 July, St. Swithin's Day, for twenty years. The novel attracted generally positive reviews, and was named 2010 Galaxy Book of the Year. Nicholls has also himself adapted his book into a screenplay; the feature film, also titled One Day, was released in August 2011.
2. The young, impressionable Emma Morley meets the roguish Dexter on the day they graduate from college. The book then chronicles their complex history together by checking on them one day each year. Their journey through life takes them to London, Paris, and so on. The annual updates charting the course of their lives and their continuing though not always flourishing friendship.
Emma has to work hard at coping with the disappointments of post-university life and several years as a waitress in a ghastly Tex-Mex restaurant in north London. Dexter, on the other hand, doesn't have to work hard at anything, as a couple of agreeably hedonistic gap years give way to an agreeably hedonistic life after graduation. While Dexter enjoys as many drugs, cocktails and women as he can get his hands on, Emma continues to serve up noisome nachos in Kentish Town. But things gradually pick up for her. She escapes her Tex-Mex hell to become a teacher. And year after year, we can see, how Emma slowly blossoms into a smart, beautiful and sage woman.
3. I enjoyed the format. We don’t really need a full depiction of every single event in their lives to have a sense of what they are going through. Equal parts are heartbreaking and hilarious yet also suspenseful as each chapter takes place a year to the day