Title: One Day
Author: David Nicholls
Genre: Contemporary
ISBN: 978-1399740890
Publisher: Sceptre
Publication Date: 11 June 2009
Publisher Description: TWENTY YEARS, TWO PEOPLE, ONE DAY
15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?
And every year that follows?
On screen, David has written adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, When Did You Last See Your Father? and Great Expectations, as well as of his own novels, Starter for Ten, One Day and Us. His adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was nominated for an Emmy and won him a BAFTA for best writer. The Netflix adaptation of One Day was executive-produced by David.
Literary Atelier Review: As a reader who believes passionately that the book is always much better than the film or television show, David Nicholls is rare for me in that he is an author where I have often watched his book to film adaptations before reading his novels. First I watched Stater for 10 (2006), starring a charmingly young James McAvoy and an acerbic Rebecca Hall. It delighted me so much and made me nostalgic for my own university days (one of our good friends was also on our University Challenge team and appeared on the television show!). I read the book immediately after the film and predictably loved it even more.
After that I watched the Anne Hathaway Jim Sturgess 2011 film adaptation of One Day, mainly because I was so keen to get my Yorkshireman husband's verdict on Hathaway's much discussed attempt at the region's lovely accent (his verdict "It's not that bad." - this from a man who has almost no discernible Yorkshire accent anyway!). In the end I found the film entertaining and although I had always planned to read the book it took until last year before I finally did.
It was in my local Foyles book store on a visit back home to London that I came across a signed copy of the newly released hardcover anniversary edition of this very loved novel. Naturally I had to buy it as I collect signed first editions of books by authors I love. This discovery also came on the back of one of my closest friends telling me he cried buckets while watching the finale of the 2024 Netflix adaptation. Clearly it was time to come back to this story.
As expected, the book was superior to the film. There is so much depth to the trials and tribulations of Emma and Dextor in the novel which of course a two hour film or even six hour series could never replicate. This novel is also incredibly entertaining in the way it takes the reader on a very nostalgic cultural journey through Britain in the late eighties through to the early noughties. While this book is often marketed as a romance, in reality it is more a story about Dextor and his growth into manhood. The way the novel caught the cultural zeitgeist when it was first released is entirely understandable. David Nicholls is a very entertaining writer who paints vivid characters on each page. One Day depicts the difficulties and the confusion of post-university life so well and it is perhaps this, which made the novel so incredibly loved since its release.