"What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?" - Philip Larkin, 'Days,' epigraph of One Day by David Nicholls
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?" - Philip Larkin, 'Days,' epigraph of One Day by David Nicholls
Do you ever find yourself reading a book that you can't really put down and it begins to take over your life and you are putting off your social engagements because you just HAVE to know what the hell is going on with your favourite characters?
If not, alight here for your nearest library.
If so, might I suggest this book?
If not, alight here for your nearest library.
If so, might I suggest this book?
One Day is a tale of two lives that keep colliding with each other over the course of twenty something years, beginning in the summer of July 1988 at a graduation ceremony. Sometimes Dex and Emma meet in harmony, while at other times their encounters are violently tumultuous - but at each intersection, there is emotion. And more often than not, pain. This book paints what I think is the very realistic way in which humans try to cling to past relationships, whether they be amiable, familial, or of the romantic sort.
The narrative passes between our two main characters, jumping around London's boroughs from the late 80s through to the 2000s. Camden Town, Primrose Hill, Soho, Walthamstow, and Leytonstone (where I live!) are mentioned, amongst others, and I must say, it's really interesting to match particular times in Emma and Dex's lives to certain areas of Greater London. If you've ever had the distinct pleasure of visiting London, or if you're lucky enough to live here, you too would be able to look at the highs and lows of our star-cross'd pair and match each to a borough. Dex is a TV star playboy, the love of late-night-telly-watching yuppies and their younger skater boy counterparts. Emma is his foil: a girl with ambitions to be a writer, to discuss government and politics; she protests against causes that rile her up and, well, Dex is sometimes (read: regularly) the subject and object of her protestations.
Throughout the book, you're wondering... will they or won't they? I'm not going to lie, the sexual tension - and emotional torture - is so thick, you could probably ice a cake with it. (So much nicer than the knife analogy, no?) But the writing is superb: Nicholls deftly weaves each character's personal joy and heartache into their own plot line, and then just when you've (almost) forgotten about the rest of the book, he winds the two lives together again, just enough to see the previous strings unravel a tiny bit. What we're left with as readers is a fantastic piece of fiction that is raw and real and sometimes all too true as we follow Dex and Emma through work and play and marriage and kids - though not all with each other. I don't want to say too much more about the plot as you really should read this book for yourself... but the ending had me in a state. That's all I'm giving you.
As for Mom, I think she would really have enjoyed this book, and yet depending on when she would have read it, it may have been met with a dose of cynicism (I'm talking if she read this right after she and my dad split). Still, it would have been exciting for her to "travel" London this way, through the eyes of two very different people with whom I think we all share some qualities.
I didn't particularly identify with Dex until about a third of the way into the novel, when he goes home to the Chilterns to visit his mother, ill with cancer: "[H]e can tell by the slender arms and the way her hand lolls on the padded arm of the chair that she has changed a great deal in the three weeks since he last came to see her. He has a sudden urge to cry." No matter how brave a face you put on, nothing can prepare you for seeing someone you love in such a fragile, frail state, and the thought of knowing you are helpless is equally terrifying and frustrating and depressing. Much like Dexter, sometimes when visiting my mom I also wanted to "curl up like a child and feel her put her arms around [me], and [I] also want[ed] to run from [t]here as fast as [I could], but neither [were] possible". It's a terribly thing to say, and even worse to live with guilt-wise, but it's the harsh truth. Especially towards the end, when Mom's condition deteriorated so rapidly... if she would have read this while sick (which, let's be real, was for the last few years of her life and she made The List during this period), I wonder if she would have seen herself in Dex's mother and in Dex in equal measure. You see, Mom had to deal with losing both of her parents in hospital as well, and I think she was present at the moment of passing of each. I can't imagine what kind of emotional and mental stress that puts on a person, seeing someone you have known for so long, a person who was with you every step of your life from birth to adolescence to adulthood, slowly slip away. Even in typing this, I am tearing up. I can't possibly begin to comprehend what that would feel like.
And - do I dare to go further - if Mom did see herself as one half of this parent-child relationship (that wasn't the greatest, book-wise. but that's because, as in real life, there are misunderstandings and old bringings-up and conflicts with the new world etc.), would she have been interested in re-evaluating the relationships she had with her children before she died, so as not to end up like Dex and his mother, sour and passive-aggressive?
As always, who knows?
I saw a lot of myself in Emma Morley. Emma ends up becoming a teacher (shocking, I know, but welcome to Arts degrees), and as an English teacher, she inevitably has a few "projects" (aka favourite children) that spice things up a little for her. I know, I know. We're not supposed to have them, but we do. Any teacher who tells you they don't is lying. ;) And believe me when I say that being an English teacher in a secondary school over here in the UK can be really difficult, especially if you're someone as passionate about language and literature as I am. I came to London just a few months after graduating Teacher's College, ready to get stuck into the supplying world with French and English qualifications. I suppose it was a mixture of supply teaching combined with my unawareness of the system and the sheer behavioural needs of these British children, but I switched into primary teaching exclusively within months. I couldn't express my passion to these kids; I couldn't get through. Now that I have my own class, I am able to impart my fervour for words onto them, and I'm happy to say that a few of them are really reciprocating.
When not teaching, and when she can find the time, Emma writes:
"She [...] writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell. Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm."
I'll admit, I'm the same. While my notebooks and pens may not be expensive or fountain, I have lots of them. LOTS. In fact, I have been given five different notebooks over the last year and a half, and have purchased a few for myself. Why? I don't know. Each has their own set of jottings and poems - no storylines here - and I have no clue why I can't seem to just write without one of them. Alas, I cannot. (Also the same? That I write on the side of my chosen profession, teaching. Which means I barely write at all. Oy.)
I'm not sure that Mom ever wrote - though now, I wish she would have. I would love nothing more than to read through her notebooks and pore over her words in that cursive script I came to know so well, and maybe learn a bit about who she really was. Later in the novel, Emma has a spat with her boyfriend Ian, who admits to having read her notebooks: "The little bits of poetry, those magical ten days in Greece, all that yearning, all that desire" - which reminds me that maybe it's better that I haven't seen any of my mother's innermost thoughts. When I read that page in the book (229, for those of you keeping track at home), I could have fainted. I knew exactly what Emma was feeling: imagine writing for years and years about someone you loved, someone who was your past, present and future, and keeping those emotions locked away in the safety and sanctity of those inked pages, only to have them burst open. While I haven't had a boyfriend expose my feelings towards another man as such, I tend to write very raw passages and poems about particular people who have come and gone in my life, and I prefer that these words stay hidden (until I gather the courage to publish them under a pseudonym or something).
The narrative passes between our two main characters, jumping around London's boroughs from the late 80s through to the 2000s. Camden Town, Primrose Hill, Soho, Walthamstow, and Leytonstone (where I live!) are mentioned, amongst others, and I must say, it's really interesting to match particular times in Emma and Dex's lives to certain areas of Greater London. If you've ever had the distinct pleasure of visiting London, or if you're lucky enough to live here, you too would be able to look at the highs and lows of our star-cross'd pair and match each to a borough. Dex is a TV star playboy, the love of late-night-telly-watching yuppies and their younger skater boy counterparts. Emma is his foil: a girl with ambitions to be a writer, to discuss government and politics; she protests against causes that rile her up and, well, Dex is sometimes (read: regularly) the subject and object of her protestations.
Throughout the book, you're wondering... will they or won't they? I'm not going to lie, the sexual tension - and emotional torture - is so thick, you could probably ice a cake with it. (So much nicer than the knife analogy, no?) But the writing is superb: Nicholls deftly weaves each character's personal joy and heartache into their own plot line, and then just when you've (almost) forgotten about the rest of the book, he winds the two lives together again, just enough to see the previous strings unravel a tiny bit. What we're left with as readers is a fantastic piece of fiction that is raw and real and sometimes all too true as we follow Dex and Emma through work and play and marriage and kids - though not all with each other. I don't want to say too much more about the plot as you really should read this book for yourself... but the ending had me in a state. That's all I'm giving you.
As for Mom, I think she would really have enjoyed this book, and yet depending on when she would have read it, it may have been met with a dose of cynicism (I'm talking if she read this right after she and my dad split). Still, it would have been exciting for her to "travel" London this way, through the eyes of two very different people with whom I think we all share some qualities.
I didn't particularly identify with Dex until about a third of the way into the novel, when he goes home to the Chilterns to visit his mother, ill with cancer: "[H]e can tell by the slender arms and the way her hand lolls on the padded arm of the chair that she has changed a great deal in the three weeks since he last came to see her. He has a sudden urge to cry." No matter how brave a face you put on, nothing can prepare you for seeing someone you love in such a fragile, frail state, and the thought of knowing you are helpless is equally terrifying and frustrating and depressing. Much like Dexter, sometimes when visiting my mom I also wanted to "curl up like a child and feel her put her arms around [me], and [I] also want[ed] to run from [t]here as fast as [I could], but neither [were] possible". It's a terribly thing to say, and even worse to live with guilt-wise, but it's the harsh truth. Especially towards the end, when Mom's condition deteriorated so rapidly... if she would have read this while sick (which, let's be real, was for the last few years of her life and she made The List during this period), I wonder if she would have seen herself in Dex's mother and in Dex in equal measure. You see, Mom had to deal with losing both of her parents in hospital as well, and I think she was present at the moment of passing of each. I can't imagine what kind of emotional and mental stress that puts on a person, seeing someone you have known for so long, a person who was with you every step of your life from birth to adolescence to adulthood, slowly slip away. Even in typing this, I am tearing up. I can't possibly begin to comprehend what that would feel like.
And - do I dare to go further - if Mom did see herself as one half of this parent-child relationship (that wasn't the greatest, book-wise. but that's because, as in real life, there are misunderstandings and old bringings-up and conflicts with the new world etc.), would she have been interested in re-evaluating the relationships she had with her children before she died, so as not to end up like Dex and his mother, sour and passive-aggressive?
As always, who knows?
I saw a lot of myself in Emma Morley. Emma ends up becoming a teacher (shocking, I know, but welcome to Arts degrees), and as an English teacher, she inevitably has a few "projects" (aka favourite children) that spice things up a little for her. I know, I know. We're not supposed to have them, but we do. Any teacher who tells you they don't is lying. ;) And believe me when I say that being an English teacher in a secondary school over here in the UK can be really difficult, especially if you're someone as passionate about language and literature as I am. I came to London just a few months after graduating Teacher's College, ready to get stuck into the supplying world with French and English qualifications. I suppose it was a mixture of supply teaching combined with my unawareness of the system and the sheer behavioural needs of these British children, but I switched into primary teaching exclusively within months. I couldn't express my passion to these kids; I couldn't get through. Now that I have my own class, I am able to impart my fervour for words onto them, and I'm happy to say that a few of them are really reciprocating.
When not teaching, and when she can find the time, Emma writes:
"She [...] writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on the wall of a cell. Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm."
I'll admit, I'm the same. While my notebooks and pens may not be expensive or fountain, I have lots of them. LOTS. In fact, I have been given five different notebooks over the last year and a half, and have purchased a few for myself. Why? I don't know. Each has their own set of jottings and poems - no storylines here - and I have no clue why I can't seem to just write without one of them. Alas, I cannot. (Also the same? That I write on the side of my chosen profession, teaching. Which means I barely write at all. Oy.)
I'm not sure that Mom ever wrote - though now, I wish she would have. I would love nothing more than to read through her notebooks and pore over her words in that cursive script I came to know so well, and maybe learn a bit about who she really was. Later in the novel, Emma has a spat with her boyfriend Ian, who admits to having read her notebooks: "The little bits of poetry, those magical ten days in Greece, all that yearning, all that desire" - which reminds me that maybe it's better that I haven't seen any of my mother's innermost thoughts. When I read that page in the book (229, for those of you keeping track at home), I could have fainted. I knew exactly what Emma was feeling: imagine writing for years and years about someone you loved, someone who was your past, present and future, and keeping those emotions locked away in the safety and sanctity of those inked pages, only to have them burst open. While I haven't had a boyfriend expose my feelings towards another man as such, I tend to write very raw passages and poems about particular people who have come and gone in my life, and I prefer that these words stay hidden (until I gather the courage to publish them under a pseudonym or something).
And here we return to courage. The above photo was taken by a friend of mine when he was in Paris with his fiancée a few months ago, and it floored me. I was dealing with my own sort of Emma-Dex situation at the time and I wasn't sure what to do. I was at an impasse. But this picture is something I wish Mom had. Something I wish Emma and Dex saw. Because it might have given them the push they all needed to move forward in life and in love, and without wasting time wishing and hoping and wondering. Now, readers, my own situation is my business, but hey, sometimes you jump and hope that you'll be caught. Sometimes you're swung up to the heavens, and sometimes you're let down easy. Other times you fall. But isn't that freedom worth it?
So, will Dex and Emma find the courage to come out with their own feelings? Will Emma keep her words to herself, in her books, while Dex continues to drown his in liquor and his own familial obligations? Will they ever get together? Can they make it last? I'm not going to tell you, of course. Read the book for yourself. But let this book be a lesson to you - if you love someone, tell them. You may only have one day.
To finish, there is a fantastic quote on the book's back cover: "You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you." Maybe you interpret that as a romantic relationship with your best friend. Perhaps it speaks to you in a measure of realizing that your happiness isn't tied up in things, but rather in those intangibles you already have. I like to think it can mean whatever you'd like it to mean - and for me, in the context of this blog's purpose, it makes me sad to think about the way Mom seemed to be searching for happiness in the last years of her life through pursuit of material objects rather than celebrating what she had accomplished and amassed through her sheer will and prior perseverance. The quote also helps me to feel grateful for what is in front of me at this present moment: the perfect opportunity to carry on my mother's memory, three-and-a-half years after she died.
I'll leave you with the opening quote to Part Three of the novel, written by James Salter from his book Burning the Days:
So, will Dex and Emma find the courage to come out with their own feelings? Will Emma keep her words to herself, in her books, while Dex continues to drown his in liquor and his own familial obligations? Will they ever get together? Can they make it last? I'm not going to tell you, of course. Read the book for yourself. But let this book be a lesson to you - if you love someone, tell them. You may only have one day.
To finish, there is a fantastic quote on the book's back cover: "You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you." Maybe you interpret that as a romantic relationship with your best friend. Perhaps it speaks to you in a measure of realizing that your happiness isn't tied up in things, but rather in those intangibles you already have. I like to think it can mean whatever you'd like it to mean - and for me, in the context of this blog's purpose, it makes me sad to think about the way Mom seemed to be searching for happiness in the last years of her life through pursuit of material objects rather than celebrating what she had accomplished and amassed through her sheer will and prior perseverance. The quote also helps me to feel grateful for what is in front of me at this present moment: the perfect opportunity to carry on my mother's memory, three-and-a-half years after she died.
I'll leave you with the opening quote to Part Three of the novel, written by James Salter from his book Burning the Days:
Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.
Ain't that just the way.