Snapshot
Siella Agostino
One Day by David Nicholls
“The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but just the little bit around you” (Nicholls 12).
The novel One Day, by David Nicholls, is a coming-of-age romance story that centers around two college graduates, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, and their relationship. It shows how they find their way in the world over the span of almost 20 years by describing the events occurring in snapshots from each year on the same date, July 15.
From what I have read about this book so far, it focuses on both their relationship as well as their individual experiences as they try to figure out what they are going to do with their lives, and how they will go about do that. Dexter and Emma meet at their graduation and spend one day together. They talk about their plans for the future and how Emma has her long-term all planned out, while Dexter cares more about the present and wants to travel and see what happens. They can’t stop thinking about each other and plan to keep in touch.
In the future, it is revealed that Emma is now into theatre and writing and that she and Dexter are just friends. They send one another letters to stay in touch and notify each other of important events.
A few years later, Emma is now working at a dingy, old Mexican restaurant and Dexter has been teaching English to people in Rome, but gets banned for dating his student. He decides to pursue photography and continues traveling the world.
Dexter and Emma remain a big part of one another’s lives and are very important to each other. They continue sending letters and in one, he writes, “I think you’re scared of being happy, Emma. I think that you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim… you’re young, you're practically a genius, and yet your idea of a good time is treating yourself to a service wash” (Nicholls 45). He tells her to leave her sad and gloomy life and to come and meet him in India at the Taj Mahal, but he loses the letter and she never gets it.
Emma and Dexter constantly change their passions, jobs, and lifestyles as they can’t find one that quite sticks or fits well until Dexter starts working on television. Emma is still struggling more than ever when he visits and he tells her that if she’s still single at forty, he will marry her.
They then take a trip to the Dodecanese Islands in Greece. They have made a set of rules to protect their friendship and manage to violate almost every single one. They truly begin to recognize their really strong feelings for one another over the course of this trip but do nothing about them.
Where I am in the book right now, Emma is finally doing much better for herself whereas Dexter has been drinking a lot and is having a tough time.
Throughout the first half of this book, I have just wanted to keep reading and reading. With every chapter comes a new year and a new adventure for the two of them in their relationship and in their lives in general. I love this book and highly recommend it!
I really enjoyed this book because it’s different than any other one I’ve ever read. I love how it takes small snippets from each year and each chapter is one year. This really made the book go by super fast and resulted in easy to understand miniature stories all incorporated into the one main storyline. This made me feel as if I wasn’t reading such a long book, but instead like I was looking at a timeline of their lives and relationship only seeing the highlights and most important parts. The book went by incredibly fast, which is good if you are like me and dread reading long passages and having to remember everything in order to connect the dots.
I also really like how the book wasn’t only about Emma and Dexter’s relationship. I really connected to how the characters really didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives and how they kept switching their passions. I, personally, don’t really know what I want to do in the future and am really unsure about what I want to do with my life, but this book has made me realize that it’s okay to not have everything all planned out. It has shown me that there will always be ups and downs in life and relationships regardless of whether you have every detail mapped out or not. Things don’t always go as planned, and that’s okay. It takes a really good book to make me realize something like this, and this book did just that while entertaining me with a riveting and engaging romance that left me wanting to find out what happened next with every page.
I am and always have been a sucker for a good, sappy romance, and this is exactly that. These two people have liked each other since the day they met and have still never dated. The author does an amazing job at portraying and conveying that through not just their words, but their actions as well, like when he wrote “He should hang up, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to see Emma Morley so that he might confess his sins, but she’s on a date. He pulls his mouth into a grin and says ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. I want to know everything! Heartbreaker you’ “ (Nicholls 136). These simple little moments are the ones that are the most engaging and are the ones that make you smile when reading this book. The little details and things that the characters say are what makes you so invested in Emma and Dexter’s relationship; like when they are on vacation, Emma says, “When we first met, at University, before we became, you know, pals, well, I had a bit of a crush on you. Not a bit of a crush, a major crush actually. For ages. Wrote dopey poetry and everything” (Nicholls 94). These moments just make you want them to end up together with all your heart!
So far, after reading about half of this book, I think that this is one of my favorite books I’ve read. I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves a book with a strong storyline that is fast-moving and incorporates romance in a way that doesn’t take over the entire story and meaning of a book. I think that people who enjoy romance novels and coming-of-age stories alike will enjoy this book because of its interesting setup, its romantic storyline, and because of its underlying storyline about two young adults trying to figure out their lives. All in all, this is a great book, and I can’t wait to finish reading it!
One Day by David Nicholls
“The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but just the little bit around you” (Nicholls 12).
The novel One Day, by David Nicholls, is a coming-of-age romance story that centers around two college graduates, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, and their relationship. It shows how they find their way in the world over the span of almost 20 years by describing the events occurring in snapshots from each year on the same date, July 15.
From what I have read about this book so far, it focuses on both their relationship as well as their individual experiences as they try to figure out what they are going to do with their lives, and how they will go about do that. Dexter and Emma meet at their graduation and spend one day together. They talk about their plans for the future and how Emma has her long-term all planned out, while Dexter cares more about the present and wants to travel and see what happens. They can’t stop thinking about each other and plan to keep in touch.
In the future, it is revealed that Emma is now into theatre and writing and that she and Dexter are just friends. They send one another letters to stay in touch and notify each other of important events.
A few years later, Emma is now working at a dingy, old Mexican restaurant and Dexter has been teaching English to people in Rome, but gets banned for dating his student. He decides to pursue photography and continues traveling the world.
Dexter and Emma remain a big part of one another’s lives and are very important to each other. They continue sending letters and in one, he writes, “I think you’re scared of being happy, Emma. I think that you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim… you’re young, you're practically a genius, and yet your idea of a good time is treating yourself to a service wash” (Nicholls 45). He tells her to leave her sad and gloomy life and to come and meet him in India at the Taj Mahal, but he loses the letter and she never gets it.
Emma and Dexter constantly change their passions, jobs, and lifestyles as they can’t find one that quite sticks or fits well until Dexter starts working on television. Emma is still struggling more than ever when he visits and he tells her that if she’s still single at forty, he will marry her.
They then take a trip to the Dodecanese Islands in Greece. They have made a set of rules to protect their friendship and manage to violate almost every single one. They truly begin to recognize their really strong feelings for one another over the course of this trip but do nothing about them.
Where I am in the book right now, Emma is finally doing much better for herself whereas Dexter has been drinking a lot and is having a tough time.
Throughout the first half of this book, I have just wanted to keep reading and reading. With every chapter comes a new year and a new adventure for the two of them in their relationship and in their lives in general. I love this book and highly recommend it!
I really enjoyed this book because it’s different than any other one I’ve ever read. I love how it takes small snippets from each year and each chapter is one year. This really made the book go by super fast and resulted in easy to understand miniature stories all incorporated into the one main storyline. This made me feel as if I wasn’t reading such a long book, but instead like I was looking at a timeline of their lives and relationship only seeing the highlights and most important parts. The book went by incredibly fast, which is good if you are like me and dread reading long passages and having to remember everything in order to connect the dots.
I also really like how the book wasn’t only about Emma and Dexter’s relationship. I really connected to how the characters really didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives and how they kept switching their passions. I, personally, don’t really know what I want to do in the future and am really unsure about what I want to do with my life, but this book has made me realize that it’s okay to not have everything all planned out. It has shown me that there will always be ups and downs in life and relationships regardless of whether you have every detail mapped out or not. Things don’t always go as planned, and that’s okay. It takes a really good book to make me realize something like this, and this book did just that while entertaining me with a riveting and engaging romance that left me wanting to find out what happened next with every page.
I am and always have been a sucker for a good, sappy romance, and this is exactly that. These two people have liked each other since the day they met and have still never dated. The author does an amazing job at portraying and conveying that through not just their words, but their actions as well, like when he wrote “He should hang up, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to see Emma Morley so that he might confess his sins, but she’s on a date. He pulls his mouth into a grin and says ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. I want to know everything! Heartbreaker you’ “ (Nicholls 136). These simple little moments are the ones that are the most engaging and are the ones that make you smile when reading this book. The little details and things that the characters say are what makes you so invested in Emma and Dexter’s relationship; like when they are on vacation, Emma says, “When we first met, at University, before we became, you know, pals, well, I had a bit of a crush on you. Not a bit of a crush, a major crush actually. For ages. Wrote dopey poetry and everything” (Nicholls 94). These moments just make you want them to end up together with all your heart!
So far, after reading about half of this book, I think that this is one of my favorite books I’ve read. I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves a book with a strong storyline that is fast-moving and incorporates romance in a way that doesn’t take over the entire story and meaning of a book. I think that people who enjoy romance novels and coming-of-age stories alike will enjoy this book because of its interesting setup, its romantic storyline, and because of its underlying storyline about two young adults trying to figure out their lives. All in all, this is a great book, and I can’t wait to finish reading it!
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