From Publishers Weekly
The Hollywood-ready latest from Nicholls (
The Understudy) makes a brief pit stop in book form before its inevitable film adaptation. (It's already in development.) The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public school boy, and Emma, the brainy Yorkshire lass, meet the day they graduate from university in 1988 and run circles around one another for the next 20 years. Dex becomes a TV presenter whose life of sex, booze, and drugs spins out of control, while Em dully slogs her way through awful jobs before becoming the author of young adult books. They each take other lovers and spouses, but they cannot really live without each other. Nicholls is a glib, clever writer, and while the formulaic feel and maudlin ending aren't ideal for a book, they'll play in the multiplex.
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Review
It's rare to find a novel which ranges over the recent past with such authority, and even rarer to find one in which the two leading characters are drawn with such solidity, such painful fidelity, to real life that you really do put the book down with the hallucinatory feeling that they've become as well known to you as your closest friends. Hard to imagine anyone encountering characters as well drawn as this and not recognizing the extraordinary talent of the writer who has created them. -- Jonathan Coe, Guardian Books of the Year 2009 Incredibly moving -- Marian Keyes, writing in the Irish Independent A totally brilliant book about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are...the best weird love story since THE TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE. Every reader will fall in love with it. And every writer will wish they had written it. -- Tony Parsons Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable ... brilliant on the details of the last couple of decades of British cultural and political life ... the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads -- Nick Hornby The funniest, loveliest book I've read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life: I lived every page. -- Jenny Colgan The ultimate zeitgeist love story for anyone who ever wanted someone they couldn't have -- Adele Parks I really loved it ... it's absolutely wonderful ... just so moving and engaging -- Kate Mosse A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad ... the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe's WHAT A CARVE UP! ... Nicholls's witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you don't notice all the hard work that it's doing -- The Times You'd be hard pressed to find a sharper, sweeter romantic comedy this year than the story of Dex and Em -- Independent We may have found the novel of the year - a brilliantly funny and moving will-they, won't-they romance tracing a relationship on the same day each day for two decades -- Heat With its beautifully rounded, real characters and deeply poignant storytelling, this is one of the year's best novels. -- Heat With a nod to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, this funny, emotionally engaging third novel from David Nicholls traces the unlikely relationship between Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew ... Told with toe-curlingly accurate insight and touching observation ... If you left college sometime in the Eighties with no clear idea of what was going to happen next, or who your lifelong friends might turn out to be, this one's a definite for your holiday suitcase. If you didn't, it still is ... The feelgood film must surely be just around the corner. I can't wait. -- Daily Mail Nicholls has a gimlet eye for period detail ... A beguiling read -- Observer [Nicholls] has both a very deft prose style and a great understanding of human emotion. His characterisation is utterly convincing ... ONE DAY is destined to be a modern classic. -- Daily Mirror A moving and feel-good read. Nicholls is an expert at capturing that essence of young adulthood, first love, heartbreak, and the tangled, complicated course of romance ... Deserves to be the must-read hit of the summer. -- News of the World I couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book -- Simon Mayo Books Panel, BBC Radio Five Live Nicholls captures superbly the ennui of post graduation ... The writing is almost faultless, there's a great feeling for the period and it's eminently readable. -- Herald Nicholls has written a warm, witty, smart and sad novel, and maybe one of the best books of the year -- Sunday Tribune David Nicholls' third novel captivates love in a way that's real and unassuming ... Relaying the essence of friendship and unrequited love with fall-off-your-seat humour, this is an unputdownable romance for the 21st century -- SHE You're gripped from the opening pages ... Nicholls, author of STARTER FOR TEN, writes faultless, engaging dialogue and keeps up a cracking pace. You will find this hard to put down -- Psychologies As a study of what we once were and what we can become, it's masterfully realised -- Esquire Perfect for the beach or summer in the city -- In Style An off-kilter romantic comedy with charm to spare -- Harpers Bazaar A delicious love story -- Sunday Herald funny and moving -- Scotsman David STARTER FOR TEN Nicholls is back with this smart comedy, packed with the mistakes, mismatches and meandering conversations that make up real life -- Marie Claire, Book of the Month A modern fairy tale, slickly put together. A gifted story-teller with lots of technical savvy. -- Scottish Review of Books An edgy romantic tale -- Woman & Home I loved this book ... moved me profoundly -- Amanda Ross Snort-out-loud stuff ... it deserves to be a huge hit -- thelondonpaper A wonderful evocation of a modern love affair -- Glamour Lightly done, but saved from schmaltz by rueful wit and lashings of cringe-inducing nostalgia -- Guardian Review Clever, funny and poignant -- Daily Express A total treat ... by turns bittersweet, funny, touching and sad, but always Nicholls's wonderfully observant and wry touch shines through. A way-we-live-now parable about relationships, disappointments, friendship and expectations; a novel utterly comfortable in its own skin -- Kate Mosse, writing in The Times Fabulous ... I couldn't put it down ... It's brilliant -- Fay Ripley