ONE DAY by David Nicholls

I really love Twitter. I respect the way publishers have really taken to it, using it to create buzz about their books, actively engage with readers, and create an actual relatable persona behind a huge brand. I particularly love the contests and giveaways that are conducted through Twitter – especially when I win (if only it would happen more often). Through one of these Twitter giveaways, I won a copy of David Nicholls’ One Day, a book I had been excited to read for a long time. When my hip friend in London told me how much she loved the book a few months back, I went to a bookstore in search of it, only to discover its release date in the US hadn’t yet come. Apparently it was already a huge success in the UK – I believe I remember posters for it in Tube stations when I visited London; the book’s publisher (Hachette in the UK, Random House in the US) obviously had a lot of confidence in it and put a lot behind the book. Long story short, after hearing so many good things, loving Nicholls’ other book, and winning a free ARC, I was very excited to read it.

One Day is the story of Emma and Dexter, who first truly connect on July 15, 1988, the day of their graduation. The book consists of all the following July 15ths (incidentally, the day I received One Day in the mail and started reading it) for the next twenty years; snapshots of where they are in their lives and what their relationship to each other is at that moment. Emma, the idealistic working class girl, is the absolute opposite of the rich, entitled Dexter. But from that first July 15th, the enduring importance of their relationship – as best friends, lovers and/or everything in between – is clear. As they try to navigate their twenties and thirties through all kinds of failures and successes, they become more and more vital to each other’s existence. Dexter especially – selfish, self-destructive Dexter – is only worthwhile when he is with Emma. And yet, their timing is so often very off, and their successes so often directly mirror the other one’s failures. You get a sense each year of a continuing cycle in which Dexter’s happiness is correlated to Emma’s misery, and vice versa; like their lives are two lines weaving, with the two of them (and us) waiting to meet in the middle.

Like Starter for Ten, One Day is often laugh-out-loud funny, but also impossibly heartbreaking. The kind of book that you finish and you need to just sit with for a while and catch your breath (and sob, if you’re me). Also like Starter for Ten, I became so completely invested in the characters that my moods were contingent on the state of their lives. Like only the best fiction does, it is the kind of book that’s biggest effect is in what it makes you think about your own life. Apart from being purely relatable (like in Starter for Ten, I was amazed by Nicholls’ ability to write exactly how it feels to be in your early twenties), it makes you (aka made me) think about all kinds of past relationships, and how you never know how things can and will end up, or what direction your life will go in. At the risk of overstating how good a book it is (though I think I passed that point a while back), all I can say is that I loved loved loved One Day.

(Image via)

STARTER FOR TEN by David Nicholls

Naturally, I have yet to finish any of the books I brought/ started on my trip to London (which was wonderful, thanks Hay!). But, of course, as I passed the time in a bookstore in Heathrow waiting for my flight to depart for home, I decided to add another book to my heavy backpack – Starter for Ten. I saw the movie when it first came out, though I remember almost nothing of it, and I have friends who loved the book (which is also, oddly, sometimes called A Question of Attraction). Because of all this, and because I had vaguely been meaning to read it for a while and had recently been talking about it, I gave it a try.

I read the majority of this book in public places – the plane from London and on the subway coming to and from work each day this past week. Not a good idea. I got so invested in the main character, the supremely awkward Kate Bush-fanatic Brian Jackson, that I would catch myself scowling at what he was about to do or, more often than not, laughing out loud at his awkwardness (often to the curious looks of my fellow commuters). It is a hilarious book. Brian, a young man from a working class English town in the mid 1980s, enters college with dreams of finding a great girl, becoming cool and aloof, and starring on his college’s University Challenge (a TV quiz show) team. As an avid collector of useless facts and general knowledge, Brian has always believed that being on a University Challenge team would somehow bring everything together: he would find the beautiful smart girl, make his mother proud, honor his dead father, and succeed beyond his humble upbringing. Of course, all does not go according to plan. As he becomes distracted by his blind love for the beautiful but selfish and mean Alice, he neglects his studies and slowly isolates himself from everything and everyone that is important to him. It becomes a story that would be sad if it weren’t so funny.

As a recent college student and English major to boot, I have encountered very few characters in books that have been as recognizable as Brian Jackson. Time period, class warfare, and general ridiculousness aside, his thoughts and insecurities are the kind that most kids in their late teens and early twenties are plagued by. Brian desperately tries to fit in and find his place at his university, but continually fails at his attempts to be cool and aloof while overanalyzing every conversation he has with people he is trying to impress. It is the perfect picture of freshman year of college: insecurities about new friends, academic qualifications, leaving home, and the opposite sex. So often when reading Brian’s thoughts I wanted to yell, Yes! That’s exactly how I felt! So much of what Brian does, from the way he makes up conversations and encounters in his head, to the way he applies literature and song lyrics to his life, to the way that no matter how hard he tries he is unable to avoid superb awkwardness, are things that I (and many of my friends) have definitely been known to do. It’s amazing how Nicholls so often knew what was going on in my head as a young and impressionable college student. But Nicholls knows how to make Brian not too recognizable – some of his situations are just so absurd and painfully awkward that he always remains a comfortably safe work of fiction. The recognizability that remains, however, is what makes the book so funny and still so poignant.

Each chapter of Starter for Ten is preceded by a University Challenge-esque question that shows itself to be pertinent to the chapter. Likewise, each of the four parts of the book (or ‘Rounds’) begins with a quote that becomes relevant. The epilogue begins with this quote from a Kate Bush song I love, ‘Cloudbusting’:

I know that something good is going to happen.

And I don’t know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.

And so, in honor of Brian and his love for Kate Bush, here is the wonderful (/ridiculous) video for Kate Bush’s wonderful song 'Cloudbusting.' Enjoy!

(Cover via)