One Day: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by David Nicholls
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One Day: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

by

David Nicholls

(Author)

4.3

-

15,747 ratings


NOW A NETFLIX SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TWO PEOPLE. ONE DAY. TWENTY YEARS. • What starts as a fleeting connection between two strangers soon becomes a deep bond that spans decades. • "[An] instant classic. . . . One of the most ...emotionally riveting love stories you’ll ever encounter." —People

It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. They face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Dex and Em must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself. As the years go by, the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed.

"[A] surprisingly deep romance...so thoroughly satisfying." —Entertainment Weekly

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ISBN-10

0307474712

ISBN-13

978-0307474711

Print length

437 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Vintage

Publication date

June 14, 2010

Dimensions

5 x 1 x 8 inches

Item weight

11.5 ounces


Popular Highlights in this book

  • Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.

    Highlighted by 1,460 Kindle readers

  • He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

    Highlighted by 773 Kindle readers


Product details

ASIN :

B0036S4CTS

File size :

2901 KB

Text-to-speech :

Enabled

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Supported

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Editorial Reviews

"[An] instant classic. . . . One of the most hilarious and emotionally riveting love stories you’ll ever encounter." —People

“Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable." —Nick Hornby, from his blog

"[Nicholls] has a gift for zeitgeist description and emotional empathy that's wholly his own. . . . [A] light but surprisingly deep romance so thoroughly satisfying." —Entertainment Weekly

“Nicholls offers sharp dialogue and wry insight that sounds like Nick Hornby at his best.” —The Daily Beast (A Best Book of the Summer)

"Fluid, expertly paced, highly observed, and at times, both funny and moving." —Boston Globe

"Those of us susceptible to nostalgic reveries of youthful heartache and self-invention (which is to say, all of us) longed to get our hands on Nicholls’s new novel. . . . And if you do, you may want to take care where you lay this book down. You may not be the only one who wants in on the answers." —New York Times Book Review

"Who doesn’t relish a love story with the right amount of heart-melting romance, disappointment, regret, and huge doses of disenchantment about growing up and growing old between quarreling meant-to-be lovers?" —Elle, Top 10 Summer Books for 2010

“A great, funny, and heart-breaking read.” —The Early Show [CBS]

"Funny, sweet and completely engrossing . . . The friendship at the heart of this novel is best expressed within the pitch-perfect dialogue/banter between the two." —Very Short List

“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 (London)

“Just as Nicholls has made full use of his central concept, so he has drawn on all his comic and literary gifts to produce a novel that is not only roaringly funny but also memorable, moving and, in its own unassuming, unpretentious way, rather profound.” —The Guardian (London)

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Sample

CHAPTER ONE

'THE FUTURE'

Friday 15TH July 1988

Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh

'I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference,' she said. 'You know, actually change something.'

'What, like "change the world", you mean?'

'Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.'

They lay in silence for a moment, bodies curled around each other in the single bed, then both began to laugh in low, pre-dawn voices. 'Can't believe I just said that,' she groaned. 'Sounds a bit corny, doesn't it?'

'A bit corny.'

'I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you.' She turned to face him. 'Not that you need it. I expect you've got your future nicely mapped out, ta very much. Probably got a little flow-chart somewhere or something.'

'Hardly.'

'So what're you going to do then? What's the great plan?'

'Well, my parents are going to pick up my stuff, dump it at theirs, then I'll spend a couple of days in their flat in London, see some friends. Then France-'

'Very nice-'

'Then China maybe, see what that's all about, then maybe onto India, travel around there for a bit-'

'Traveling,' she sighed. 'So predictable.'

'What's wrong with travelling?'

'Avoiding reality more like.'

'I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic.

She sniffed. 'S'alright, I suppose, for those who can afford it. Why not just say "I'm going on holiday for two years"? It's the same thing.'

'Because travel broadens the mind,' he said, rising onto one elbow and kissing her.

'Oh I think you're probably a bit too broad-minded as it is,' she said, turning her face away, for the moment at least. They settled again on the pillow. 'Anyway, I didn't mean what are you doing next month, I meant the future-future, when you're, I don't know...' She paused, as if conjuring up some fantastical idea, like a fifth dimension. '...Forty or something. What do you want to be when you're forty?'

'Forty?' He too seemed to be struggling with the concept. 'Don't know. Am I allowed to say "rich"?'

'Just so, so shallow.'

'Alright then, "famous".' He began to nuzzle at her neck. 'Bit morbid, this, isn't it?'

'It's not morbid, it's...exciting.'

' 'Exciting!' ' He was imitating her voice now, her soft Yorkshire accent, trying to make her sound daft. She got this a lot, posh boys doing funny voices, as if there was something unusual and quaint about an accent, and not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him. She shrugged herself away until her back was pressed against the cool of the wall.

'Yes, exciting. We're meant to be excited, aren't we? All those possibilities. It's like the Vice-Chancellor said, "the doors of opportunity flung wide..."'

'"Yours are the names in tomorrow's newspapers..."'

'Not very likely.'

'So, what, are you excited then?'

'Me? God no, I'm crapping myself.'

'Me too. Christ...' He turned suddenly and reached for the cigarettes on the floor by the side of the bed, as if to steady his nerves. 'Forty years old. Forty. Fucking hell.'

Smiling at his anxiety, she decided to make it worse. 'So what'll you be doing when you're forty?'

He lit his cigarette thoughtfully. 'Well the thing is, Em-'

'"Em"? Who's "Em"?'

'People call you Em. I've heard them.'

'Yeah, friends call me Em.'

'So can I call you Em?'

'Go on then, Dex.'

'So I've given this whole "growing old" thing some thought and I've come to the decision that I'd like to stay exactly as I am right now.'

Dexter Mayhew. She peered up at him through her fringe as he leant against the cheap buttoned vinyl headboard and even without her spectacles on it was clear why he might want to stay exactly this way. Eyes closed, the cigarette glued languidly to his lower lip, the dawn light warming the side of his face through the red filter of the curtains, he had the knack of looking perpetually posed for a photograph. Emma Morley thought 'handsome' a silly, nineteenth-century word, but there really was no other word for it, except perhaps 'beautiful'. He had one of those faces where you were aware of the bones beneath the skin, as if even his bare skull would be attractive. A fine nose, slightly shiny with grease, and dark skin beneath the eyes that looked almost bruised, a badge of honour from all the smoking and late nights spent deliberately losing at strip poker with girls from Bedales. There was something feline about him: eyebrows fine, mouth pouty in a self-conscious way, lips a shade too dark and full, but dry and chapped now, and rouged with Bulgarian red wine. Gratifyingly his hair was terrible, short at the back and sides, but with an awful little quiff at the front. Whatever gel he used had worn off, and now the quiff looked pert and fluffy, like a silly little hat.

Still with his eyes closed, he exhaled smoke through his nose. Clearly he knew he was being looked at because he tucked one hand beneath his armpit, bunching up his pectorals and biceps. Where did the muscles come from? Certainly not sporting activity, unless you counted skinny- dipping and playing pool. Probably it was just the kind of good health that was passed down in the family, along with the stocks and shares and the good furniture. Handsome then, or beautiful even, with his paisley boxer shorts pulled down to his hip bones and somehow here in her single bed in her tiny rented room at the end of four years of college. 'Handsome'! Who do you think you are, Jane Eyre? Grow up. Be sensible. Don't get carried away.

She plucked the cigarette from his mouth. 'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.'

He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.'

'Alright-' She shuffled up the bed, the duvet tucked beneath her armpits. 'You're in this sports car with the roof down in Kensington or Chelsea or one of those places and the amazing thing about this car is it's silent, 'cause all the cars'll be silent in, I don't know, what - 2006?'

He scrunched his eyes to do the sum. '2004-'

'And this car is hovering six inches off the ground down the King's Road and you've got this little paunch tucked under the leather steering wheel like a little pillow and those backless gloves on, thinning hair and no chin. You're a big man in a small car with a tan like a basted turkey-'

'So shall we change the subject then?'

'And there's this woman next to you in sunglasses, your third, no, fourth wife, very beautiful, a model, no, an ex-model, twenty-three, you met her while she was draped on the bonnet of a car at a motor- show in Nice or something, and she's stunning and thick as shit-'

'Well that's nice. Any kids?'

'No kids, just three divorces, and it's a Friday in July and you're heading off to some house in the country and in the tiny boot of your hover car are tennis racquets and croquet mallets and a hamper full of fine wines and South African grapes and poor little quails and asparagus and the wind's in your widow's peak and you're feeling very, very pleased with yourself and wife number three, four, whatever, smiles at you with about two hundred shiny white teeth and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.'

She came to an abrupt halt. You sound insane, she told herself. Do try not to sound insane. 'Course if it's any consolation we'll all be dead in a nuclear war long before then!' she said brightly, but still he was frowning at her.

'Maybe I should go then. If I'm so shallow and corrupt-'

'No, don't go,' she said, a little too quickly. 'It's four in the morning.'

He shuffled up the bed until his face was a few inches from hers. 'I don't know where you get this idea of me, you barely know me.'

'I know the type.'

'The type?'

'I've seen you, hanging round Modern Languages, braying at each other, throwing black-tie dinner parties-'

'I don't even own black-tie. And I certainly don't bray-'

'Yachting your way round the Med in the long hols, ra ra ra-'

'So if I'm so awful-' His hand was on her hip now.

'-which you are.'

'-then why are you sleeping with me?' His hand was on the warm soft flesh of her thigh.

'Actually I don't think I have slept with you, have I?'

'Well that depends.' He leant in and kissed her. 'Define your terms.' His hand was on the base of her spine, his leg slipping between hers.

'By the way,' she mumbled, her mouth pressed against his.

'What?' He felt her leg snake around his, pulling him closer.

'You need to brush your teeth.'

'I don't mind if you don't.'

'S'really horrible,' she laughed. 'You taste of wine and fags.'

'Well that's alright then. So do you.'

Her head snapped away, breaking off the kiss. 'Do I?'

'I don't mind. I like wine and fags.'

'Won't be a sec.' She flung the duvet back, clambering over him.

'Where are you going now?' He placed his hand on her bare back.

'Just the bog,' she said, retrieving her spectacles from the pile of books by the bed: large, black NHS frames, standard issue.

'The "bog", the "bog"...sorry I'm not familiar...'

She stood, one arm across her chest, careful to keep her back to him. 'Don't go away,' she said, padding out of the room, hooking two fingers into the elastic of her underpants to pull the material down at the top of her thighs. 'And no playing with yourself while I'm gone.'

He exhaled through his nose and shuffled up the bed, taking in the shabby rented room, knowing with absolute confidence that somewhere in amongst the art postcards and photocopied posters for angry plays there would be a photograph of Nelson Mandela, like some dreamy ideal boyfriend. In his last four years he had seen any number of bedrooms like this, dotted round the city like crime scenes, rooms where you were never more than six feet from a Nina Simone album, and though he'd rarely seen the same bedroom twice, it was all too familiar. The burnt out nightlights and desolate pot plants, the smell of washing powder on cheap, ill-fitting sheets. She had that arty girl's passion for photomontage too; flash-lit snaps of college friends and family jumbled in amongst the Chagalls and Vermeers and Kandinskys, the Che Guevaras and Woody Allens and Samuel Becketts. Nothing here was neutral, everything displayed an allegiance or a point of view. The room was a manifesto, and with a sigh Dexter recognised her as one of those girls who used 'bourgeois' as a term of abuse. He could understand why 'fascist' might have negative connotations, but he liked the word 'bourgeois' and all that it implied. Security, travel, nice food, good manners, ambition; what was he meant to be apologising for?

He watched the smoke curl from his mouth. Feeling for an ashtray, he found a book at the side of the bed. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, spine creased at the 'erotic' bits. The problem with these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same. Another book: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Silly bloody fool, he thought, confident that it was not a mistake he would ever make.

At twenty-three, Dexter Mayhew's vision of his future was no clearer than Emma Morley's. He hoped to be successful, to make his parents proud and to sleep with more than one woman at the same time, but how to make these all compatible? He wanted to feature in magazine articles, and hoped one day for a retrospective of his work, without having any clear notion of what that work might be. He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

It wasn't much of a plan, and already there had been mistakes. Tonight, for instance, was bound to have repercussions: tears and awkward phone-calls and accusations. He should probably get out of here as soon as possible, and he glanced at his discarded clothes in preparation for his escape. From the bathroom came the warning rattle and bang of an ancient toilet cistern, and he hurriedly replaced the book, finding beneath the bed a small yellow Colman's mustard tin that he flipped open to confirm that, yes, it did contain condoms, along with the small grey remains of a joint, like a mouse dropping. With the possibility of sex and drugs in a small yellow tin he felt hopeful again, and decided that he might stay a little longer at least.

In the bathroom, Emma Morley wiped the crescents of toothpaste from the corner of her mouth and wondered if this was all a terrible mistake. Here she was, after four romantically barren years, finally, finally in bed with someone she really liked, had liked since she'd first seen him at a party in 1984, and in just a few hours he'd be gone. Forever probably. He was hardly likely to ask her to go to China with him, and besides she was boycotting China. And he was alright, wasn't he? Dexter Mayhew. In truth she suspected he wasn't all that bright, and a little too pleased with himself, but he was popular and funny and - no point fighting it - very handsome. So why was she being so stroppy and sarcastic? Why couldn't she just be self-confident and fun, like those scrubbed, bouncy girls he usually hung around with? She saw the dawn light at the tiny bathroom window. Sobriety. Scratching at her awful hair with her fingertips, she pulled a face, then yanked the chain of the ancient toilet cistern and headed back into the room.

From the bed, Dexter watched her appear in the doorway, wearing the gown and mortar board that they'd been obliged to hire for the graduation ceremony, her leg hooked mock-seductively around the doorframe, her rolled degree certificate in one hand. She peered over her spectacles and pulled the mortar board down low over one eye. 'What d'you think?'

'Suits you. I like the jaunty angle. Now take it off and come back to bed.'

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About the authors

David Nicholls

David Nicholls

David Nicholls is the bestselling author of Starter for Ten, The Understudy, One Day, Us, Sweet Sorrow and now You Are Here. One Day was published in 2009 to extraordinary critical acclaim: translated into 40 languages, it became a global bestseller, selling millions of copies worldwide. His fourth novel, Us, was longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

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.

He is also the Executive Producer and a contributing screenwriter on a new Netflix adaptation of One Day. His latest novel, You Are Here, will be published in spring 2024.

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Reviews

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

15,747 global ratings

David Dekker

David Dekker

5

What a great story.

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2024

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I love this author ever since reading 'Here You Are.' This one is a little different and about two people who meet at a young age, about 20, and follows them for 20 years. The story is amazing and will resonate with anyone over 30. Read it,you will not regret it.

C

C

5

Humor and heart

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2024

Verified Purchase

Great character development. Funny and heartfelt. Characters seemed real and flawed and endearing and relatable. A story I'll come back to.

ayman

ayman

5

It was my first time reading a romance novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2024

Verified Purchase

Just finished reading “one day” a novel written by David Nicholls.

The novel is a great (and also short 🙄) read. I liked how the author skipped a year in each chapter, giving the opportunity to fill the gaps with imagination. Furthermore, the novel makes you want to stop and think about all the people you have met, and find the person who has stepped up and treated you right. And then when you do, you'd better hold tight to that person because people like that are rare, as one of the main characters put it, 'one in a million'.

It's definitely a book worth reading 👏🏻

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5 people found this helpful

warbler

warbler

5

One of the Best Romance Novels Ever

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2024

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There is nothing shallow in this story--The Principals--Emma and Dex--have depth, depth, and more depth, and this is a book I didn't want to finish--it was that good. A sad tale--why did it take so long for them to get together--but a tale with lots and lots of humor as well. The letters they exchange. Emma describing the dishes she has to serve in a Mexican restaurant where she unhappily works. A very human story, and a very human tragedy.

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2 people found this helpful

cesar.hinojosa91

cesar.hinojosa91

5

Great read!

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2024

Verified Purchase

I re-read this book after watching the Netflix remake, and I am glad I did. I had totally forgotten about this amazingly heartbreaking story. Emma and Dex are both flawed individuals that you cannot help but root for, making the book an emotional and compelling read.

3 people found this helpful

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