In Which I Talk About the First Third of One Day

I’m in Atlanta this week at the NACS show, surviving terrible occurrences like Ritz-Carlton Hotel upgrades and delicious three course meals. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult to be me.

Actually, what IS challenging this week is a) reading and b) finding time to write about it. Because I’m making such lousy progress on the book, and have been seeing various people contribute chapter-by-chapter reviews on other sites, I feel confident that I won’t seem like a total tool for reviewing this book a section at a time.

In a second.

Before I get in to that, I would like to propose that in addition to my ineffectual weekly book reviews/rants, that I want to add a weekly feature of something else fun. Smart Bitches has Friday Videos, DearAuthor has Friday movie reviews, etc. If doesn’t have to be Fridays and it doesn’t have to be movie related (in fact these days you’re better off asking me to talk for hours about television), but I’ve decided we need to step up to twice weekly posts. One of which is a regular “thing.” I’m thinking about it, so you think about it too. Suggestions welcome.

One Day by David Nicholls. If you’re confused about why I’m talking about this book, you might have missed a post.

I’m only about a third of the way through, but I find that it’s actually getting better as time goes on, easier to read in addition to easier relation with the characters. One Day follows Dexter and Emma, two students who had a one night stand the night before their college graduation, and the story checks in with them every year on the same date for the next twenty years.

While it’s very apparent from Day One that Emma is in love with Dexter (but knows it’s futile), it’s fun to watch her accept the not-gonna-happen-ness of it all and try to find what makes her happy. It takes a long time. And it’s equally apparent that Dexter is in love with Emma in the too-dumb-to recognize-it, TSTL hero kind of way. Which is annoying. And slightly refreshing. But whatever.

Part of the problem I had with initially getting in to this book is that it’s so obvious we are not going to see them together in the end. It’s one of “those” love stories. This isn’t a SPOILER ALERT situation here. I haven’t finished the book yet. But its so clear from page one that if Dexter and Emma were going to waltz into happily ever after, there wouldn’t even be a book to read. It’s not about the HEA. It’s about the journey.

What’s interesting about the format is the problems and issues that arise from year to year, that are resolved (or not) with the merest casual mention in later years. Their wildly complicated trip to Greece together? Apparently they laughed the week away, though Dexter’s then-girlfriend, we’re told, has subsequently threatened to cut out his heart if she ever sees him again. Implying... something happened. Or nothing happened, and her bitterness is a completely unrelated incidental.

Currently the year 1993 is being split into two chapters because Dexter and Emma seem to spend no part of the day together. That doesn’t mean they’re not still very much involved in each other’s lives, or that Dexter is not currently making very inappropriate drunken calls to Emma’s answering machine, the ramifications of which will surely be felt well into next year. Dexter’s about to complicate things, and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.

I tend to dislike stories like this, wanting to punch the hero, the heroine, or both in the face. My “an honest conversation would save you a lot of time” assessment stands more than ever, but the story is genuinely more complicated than that. It’s a real life story. The conflicts that are (usually) not confronted or addressed properly in traditional romance novels are being confronted in spades (bad jobs not meant for comic relief, bad breath, dying parents whose death will do the opposite of solving long-standing problems). Because it’s the depiction of a more real-life scenario, the lack of honest conversation between the characters is almost acceptable. Because honestly, if I were in their place, I might not always say what I was thinking, either.

Oh, who are we kidding? Of course I would.