One Day by David Nicholls

$11.50 in Paperback from Amazon

(or you could rent the movie.  For once, it holds up…but read the book.  Really.)

Buy it if: Nicholas Sparks makes you feel physically ill, but you’re not opposed a decent long-term relationship story.  You’d just prefer it be well-written and not dripping in saccharine.

Don’t Buy it if: You think what I just wrote is sacrilege.  Or you like Tom Clancy

            The story of young lovers drifting in and out of each others’ lives has been beaten to death more often than Stephen King novels have been optioned for movie rights.  It’s an old premise.  A good one.  A relatable one.  But definitely not an original one.  And I’m willing to bet more dreck has been created by mediocre scribblers pining for lost young love than deserves to have ever been committed to the written page.

            And yet, One Day has something to it.  It’s tempting to say it’s the premise (July 15^th is the only day captured in the prose.  The author leaves events from the other 364 to allusions and brief flashbacks.  Nothing that “happens” in the book avoids the rarely heralded St. Swithins Day) but that’s only a device.  There’s something real captured in the mundane details of lives that plow steadily through the ordinary and banal.  

            Clearly, there’s a bit of poetic happenstance in play, but the repetition of the date is cleverly downplayed.   Sure, you could focus on the odds of one day being so repeatedly important, but I’m willing to bet you won’t.  The story is such that it serves to distract from the simple premise.

            All told, David Nicholls handles the reality of life and relationships better than most, and the story would have been strong told through a traditional arc.  But method of delivery really makes the story of Emma and Dex something oddly…familiar.  It mournful and joyful.  It’s touching for the familiarities of ordinary life inherent to the couple’s story.  

            Ironically, One Day the movie follows the book so closely that you could skip the written word entirely and get nearly the whole story.  But you shouldn’t.  Like life, the details matter.  And this is one worth a few extra hours’ involvement.