July 15

One Day - David Nicholls (Vintage Books, 2009)

One day a year.... on one day a year, starting in 1988, we check in on Dexter & Emma. That first time, they have just hooked up, right as they're graduating from college. It looks an awful lot like a one-night stand. But it's the beginning of a really powerful connection.

I'm a girl, and I've loved unrequitedly, so maybe I'm especially sensitive to how much work Emma puts into the relationship in its first years. (They actually reminded me a lot of Carley & Hunter in this book, which worried me.)

But I love the way it works. I love the development, how seeing them just once a year makes it so clear how much (and how little) they change - and how we never really end up where we think we are going.

I also starting thinking about the choice of dates. Mid-July... I can start in college, and realize that give-or-take a little, you would see a lot of me if you checked in on me then: getting on a plane for a solo trip to Italy, starting a long-term relationship that would shape me considerably, sitting on a beach wondering what on earth I was going to do now that I had a degree, feeling miserable in a job that didn't challenge me, signing the lease on my DC apartment (1999-2003). So my own life was in strange ways very close to the surface as I read, because it all felt so tangible.

You can't really talk about the plot without spoiling the whole thing. You just can't. Which is frustrating, because I really have a lot to say. I need to find someone else who has read it - hello anyone? this is a popular book based on circulation at my library, so I know you're out there - so I can vent and work through the difficult emotions. And the ways that I was prepared for a whole variety of plot twists, but unprepared perhaps precisely when I needed to be. I had troubled dreams last night because of you, David Nicholls. I just thought you should know.