Reviews

Un giorno by David Nicholls

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rogerspaige's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

samharnold's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

abiforslin's review against another edition

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2.0

It's like, I knew how this was going to end, but I still pretended I didn't, but I actually did. So then I just started hoping that it'd end a different way, but then it didn't, so I was overall disappointed. But there were some funny parts, and some good words in there. So that's good.

nineinchnails's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

this feels a lot like a couple of my all-time favourite books i've ever read which is probably part of why i enjoyed this so much but it isn't perfect. just to get this out of the way, it was annoyingly obvious that this was written by a man at parts - emma was mostly well written (i kept forgetting she was written by a man) but this showed a lot in the way that the other women were written in this book. just straight up caricatures. it also felt like it would've done numbers on tumblr (for the same reasons The Fault in Our Stars did) but despite all of that i really loved this novel. i loved the characters - they were complex and flawed but they felt so real and it made it even more frustrating to watch them constantly fuck up. the ending hit me like a truck and i'm so glad i picked this up. this is (almost) everything i wanted Talking at Night to be!

Content Warnings

sweet_mangocake's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

4 out of 5 stars.

 This is not a romance novel. And certainly not a romantic comedy. In my opinion, it's a contemporary late coming of age literary fiction novel with people WHO happened to fall in love. 

The passage of time. Aging. Adulting. Those are the more predominant themes in One Day than love EVER was. Yet, the book is marketed as a romantic comedy and a love story. I still admit it was a good book—I laid there on my bed just speechless and almost spiraled into an existential crisis about my own 20s and 30s that are to come—but in no way is this a love story, and I'll get into that.

Here's the thing—I don't understand why Emma and Dexter like each other. Sure, I know that it happened over time and they've had their ups and downs, but I don't think I ever properly understood or was given proper reasons why these two like each other or stuck by each other. For Emma, I can't even pinpoint a real reason why she stuck with Dexter, so the answer I gave myself was chemicals. For Dexter, Emma always felt like Bob the Builder. He would more likely think of her when his life was at its lowest (Alison's passing, the divorce, when he was nervous about presenting, etc.) and want to share those things with her, and felt as if it's a chore to be with her or think about her when his life was subjectively well (doing those food reviews, being a TV presenter, etc.). It never felt like love, but it felt like he was reliant on someone to bring him back and fix him. There's even a line in the book that explicitly says;

 "The idea [Dexter's cafe] was hatched in Paris, during that long strange summer in which they had dismantled his life, then put it back together again. " 

So to me, it never felt like a romance story. And I'm not one to disagree that love and romance looks different for all and this is more like one of those realistic romances. But just because you think about someone here and there and has physical attraction to them, doesn't feel enough to complete that it's love. Additionally, while this strives to be a realisitc romance, there are obvious cliches (like what happens to Emma Morley) present in the novel. So the novel goes back and forth with cliche and down-to-earth writing, that it promotes this jaggedness to the reading experience. I couldn't fully get onboard with it.

But if you treat Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhem as a friendship duo—or even an unlabelled duo because their relationship is just THAT complicated—this book leaves a mark on you. I am sucker for passage of time stories where you see snapshots of a person's life and be there with them and see how they evolve. And David Nicholls did fantastic with that. There's the nostalgia of the 80s and 90s that's already enough to pull empaths, but if that doesn't do it, Nicholls also matures the writing right in front of your eyes. This happens in the topics of conversation that appear in the chapters or just in the pacing that the characters think or speak in. As they age and life happens, their wit and youth begins to wither. Rhetorically, David Nicholls does a great job showing the progression of time. By the end, you can see that Dex and Em are not kids anymore in their early or late twenties. These are adults with sagging chests and grey hairs worrying about house prices.

One of the places this feeling of "they grew up" hit hard was in Chapter 22. Dexter goes through Emma's belongings and Nicholls uses this as an opportunity to remind us of all the people Emma Morley met and all things she has done. It opens up a can of worms and questions about the littlest things in her life. Like, how will a reader of one of Emma's books feel in this universe after hearing her passing? She never got to finish the finale. If we zoom in on their life, how will this young woman who graduated from University of Edinburgh, worked at a Mexican restaurant once, and then as a teacher who directed Oliver! , and other great things she did in her life, have an impact on this reader of her book? What about Sonya Richards, Emma's project? What is she up to and how will she react to the passing of her Mrs. Morley? This sort of deep empathetic thinking is the result of Nicholl's detailed writing. I did wonder why this book was so long and if it was necessary to even have all these details included. It all cumulatively builds up to Emma Morley's rich life to reflect and grieve upon and I just... think David Nicholls is fantastic on that matter.

Now, there's a double edged sword deal with such sort of time-passage-and-snapshots writing: jaggedness. I never understood why Emma was so keen on getting pregnant. There was something in between the years that I was missing, because the change—only a chapter for us, but a year for the characters—is drastic. It's not just "people change" because this change felt abrupt and illogical. There's a lot of important things that readers miss in between the years, because Dex and Em's growth does not ONLY happen on July 15th. One of those changes that I'm most bothered by was how Emma suddenly wanted a baby. Nicholls tries to give us all the answers of what happened in between the years to facilitate logical flow to our reading experiences, but he ends up tackling too much. Readers can for sure make their own answers, but there are times like this where I can't seem to arrive at an answer because it doesn't add up with what you know about the characters. The maternal instincts are just one example, but a lot of their growth happened in between the years that sometimes the chapters felt jagged to me.

 "I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour to hate your job, hate where you live, not have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend (and a quick discersion here - the whole self-depricating thing about being unattractive is getting pretty boring I can tell you). In fact I'll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out it." - Dexter Mayhem to Emma Morley 

Dexter Mayhem. Early Dexter was nice. That quote was from early Dexter. I chose it because not only did I resonate with it, but because early Dexter was nice in the way Alison Mayhem loved him. He was a bit spoiled, yes, but he was sweet and kind and the Dexter that Emma Morley fell in love with. That's why I think he's so reliant on Emma. His mother once says he doesn't seem very nice anymore and dotes on Emma. He thinks Emma can bring back the nice person he was when he was with her. But I believe there's always something you can takeaway from characters that go into self-destruction on their self-discovery pathway and from Dexter, I learned a lot about leaving my comfort zone. Dexter's character is interesting because his internal dialgoue is constantly validating that he is right, he is doing well and something valid, and it's the rest of the world's problem. That dialgoue sort of goes dormant as more traumatic things take place in his life, but it was an interesting shade of character that David Nicholls instills into the book. Dexter is unlikable and is just so dysfunctional, all for good life lessons, I suppose. If not, it's good to see how adulting may happen and learn to mitigate the mistake these foolish fictional characters have made.

(Also remember the days when people had deep conversation and spilled their heart out on letters, instead of "wyd" on text messages? Fun times.)

 "But she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again." - Emma Morley 

If I try to list out all of Emma Morley's real flaws, I can really only think of two: infidelity (what were you thinking Emma Morley!!) and invalidating others. The infidently can be chalked up to a midlife crisis, but invalidating others—specifically Dexter—is the only other flaw of hers, which she grew from. That's why there are times Dexter dislikes Emma. One of her flaws include invalidating Dexter when he's spent so much time convincing himself that he's in such a good place. But she grows from that. She grows her writer's rut and makes herself a name. She recognizes that she's having an affair and ends it. She ends it with Ian. Though she struggles, she recognizes when her life needs to be sorted and sorts it, somehow. Emma and Dexter are two examples of how life can go, in complete opposite ways. And it's the fixer upper who meets such a terrible. Life surely is a cruel thing, and David Nicholls wanted me to know.

See. From all of these takeaways, do you see any romance? No. Because One Day feels like a contemporary, self-discovery-esque novel I would sit down to read to know what to expect in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. All these takeaways are merely life lessons I should keep in mind from two of the most dysfunctional people I've ever read about. And of course, I did get an entertaining kick here and there from Emma Morley's awkward humor or Dexter Mayhem's sweet letters. But for me this book is always an inspiration peoples story, than a romantic comedy.

Or perhaps One Day that might change. Who knows?

reedlemethis's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

phelosophical's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

romy_elizabeth13's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.25

I recently picked this book up as per a recommendation from an incredible librarian who sadly isn’t working as a librarian or in my life anymore (but I will remember her forever). Just like all her recommendations, it was incredible. I absolutely loved the writing style and the characters, it was super sad but also hopeful and sweet and overall just great. I can’t wait to watch the show and honestly would really recommend this book, especially if you liked Sally Rooney’s Normal People or just books about life and people and love and friends and things. Also easy to read so a good place to start if you want to get into reading good, well written books but aren’t up for one of those super long classics. Enjoy ❤️

molluski's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny inspiring sad medium-paced

3.75

sophiewham's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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