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What starts as a fleeting connection between two strangers soon becomes a deep bond that spans decades.
Paperback Original. It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. They both know that the next day, after college graduation, they must go their separate ways. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. As the years go by, Dex and Em begin to lead separate lives—lives very different from the people they once dreamed they'd become. And yet, unable to let go of that special something that grabbed onto them that first night, an extraordinary relationship develops between the two.
Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.
You can see the full discussion in our legacy forum here. This discussion will contain spoilers!
Some of the recent comments posted about One Day:
Do Emma and Dexter make a good match?
Emma certainly knew enough about him -- warts and all. I am not sure he was ever capable of really investing in anyone the way she was until the child -- and that took awhile. - carolynd
Do you think Emma and Dexter ever achieve true happiness?
I think they achieved true happiness right at the end, right before Emma's death. No life is perfect, but they seemed to find happiness with each other, despite their issues (infertility, etc.) - gwendolyndawson
Funniest part?
I thought the parlor scene was also funny! - dorianbc
How can this book be described as a "series of missed opportunities"?
They were psychologically unmatched in maturity levels. Emma grew up faster than Dexter and wanted a more stable life. Dexter was more interested in himself and his immediate needs for fame and hedonism at the time that Emma would have wanted a ... - bonnieb
How important or meaningful is the structure of the story built around the anniversary of the same date each year?
I, too, liked the structure of the book and found it to be a creative and unique way to show how characters and relationships develop over many years. It did seem a bit of a stretch, however, that so many momentous things happened on the same day. ... - gwendolyndawson
With a nod to When Harry Met Sally, this funny, emotionally engaging third novel from David Nicholls traces the unlikely relationship between Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew... . Told with toe-curlingly accurate insight and touching observation ... If you left college sometime in the eighties with no clear idea of what was going to happen next, or who your lifelong friends might turn out to be, this one's a definite for your holiday suitcase. If you didn't, it still is." - Daily Mail (UK)
"[An] instant classic...One of the most hilarious and emotionally riveting love stories you'll ever encounter." - People
"Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable." - Nick Hornby, from his blog
"[Nicholls] has a gift for zeitgeist description and emotional empathy that's wholly his own...[A] light but surprisingly deep romance so thoroughly satisfying." - Entertainment Weekly
"Nicholls offers sharp dialogue and wry insight that sounds like Nick Hornby at his best." - The Daily Beast (A Best Book of the Summer)
"[One Day] will leave you hungrily eating up the words. At times, you will experience 'can't breathe' laughter, then 'publicly embarrassing' sobs. Whatever emotion, all will feel uncontrollable; precisely like the lives of the characters you so badly want to see end up together." - Seattle Post Intelligencer
"Fluid, expertly paced, highly observed, and at times, both funny and moving." - Boston Globe
"Those of us susceptible to nostalgic reveries of youthful heartache and self-invention (which is to say, all of us) longed to get our hands on Nicholls's new novel...And if you do, you may want to take care where you lay this book down. You may not be the only one who wants in on the answers." - New York Times Book Review
"Who doesn't relish a love story with the right amount of heart-melting romance, disappointment, regret, and huge doses of disenchantment about growing up and growing old between quarreling meant-to-be lovers?" - Elle, Top 10 Summer Books for 2010
"A great, funny, and heart-breaking read." - The Early Show [CBS]
"Funny, sweet and completely engrossing ... The friendship at the heart of this novel is best expressed within the pitch-perfect dialogue/banter between the two." - Very Short List
"A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad ... the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up!...Nicholls's witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you don't notice all the hard work that it's doing." - The Times (London)
"Just as Nicholls has made full use of his central concept, so he has drawn on all his comic and literary gifts to produce a novel that is not only roaringly funny but also memorable, moving and, in its own unassuming, unpretentious way, rather profound." - The Guardian (London)
This information about One Day was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Nicholls is the bestselling author of Starter for Ten, The Understudy, One Day, Us and Sweet Sorrow. One Day was published in 2009 to extraordinary critical acclaim: translated into 40 languages, it became a global bestseller, selling millions of copies worldwide. His fourth novel, Us, was longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. On screen, David has written adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, When Did You Last See Your Father? and Great Expectations, as well as of his own novels, Starter for Ten, One Day and Us. His adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was nominated for an Emmy and won him a BAFTA for best writer. The Netflix adaptation of One Day was executive-produced by David.
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