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. 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY. From the author of the massive bestseller STARTER FOR TEN.
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. (June)
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Review
"[An] instant classic. . . . One of the most hilarious and emotionally riveting love stories youll 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
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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 Nichollss 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 doesnt 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
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A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad . . . the best British social novel since Jonathan Coes What a Carve Up!. . . . Nichollss witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you dont notice all the hard work that its 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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