One Day by David Nicholls

One Day is a very readable modern novel spanning twenty years of an on-off relationship between two kindred spirits, albeit opposites, who met at university in Edinburgh on graduation day. We witness their lives spiralling both up and down, portrayed movingly in a recent film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess.
I’m interested that David Nicholls was inspired by Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Emma and Dexter are a contemporary Tess and Angel Clare: soul mates, though poles apart in background and experience. I find myself thinking what if Angel had pursued Tess on meeting her by chance at that summer evening dance; their happiness would not have been so fleeting nor ended so tragically. And so it is with Emma and Dexter, but that is the stuff of which novels are made and why we love reading them. There are parallels: Dexter’s unsent letter from India (cut from the film) reminds me of Tess’s unread letter, pushed under Angel’s door the night before their wedding. Angel’s middle-class family and comfortable background mirror Dexter’s privileged upbringing. Both heroines are strong, yet fated by circumstance.
I loved reading their witty conversations and letters, made all the more poignant by the hands fate deals them, as it does all of us as we grow older in the game we glibly call life.

You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.