ONE DAY
By David Nicholls
Hodder & Stoughton. 436 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978-0-340-89696-9
Dexter and Emma had a one-night stand on the last day of their university careers, July 15 1989. Emma is a working-class girl: earnest, hard-working and not a little chippy. Dexter is a public-school educated charmer who changes his girlfriends almost as often as he changes his sheets.
Together they banter and argue affectionately. This novel revisits them on the anniversary of that day every year for 20 years, charting their friendship as it waxes and wanes through success and failure in career and romance. This is an ambitious structure for a novel, I think; it is hard to create a depth to characters and convey details of the past year in what is inevitably an (often comic) set piece.
Misogyny, rights & Rowling
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