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One dayShelf life: Looking at secular booksONE DAY 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. Sometimes the focus is on Emma, who languishes as a waitress before training as a teacher, and ends up with a stand-up comic for a boyfriend. Sometimes it is on Dexter, who rapidly finds success as a laddish TV presenter, but then falls from favour and into drug taking. Occasionally they are together, on holiday, at a wedding, out for a meal. But, whatever the scenario, David Nicholls doesn’t let the reader forget the affection that binds the two together and so the reader is kept hungry waiting for the moment when the two will realise that they are, of course, made for each other. So we have a rom-com (he is writing the screenplay already — think ‘When Harry Met Sally’ or ‘About a Boy’). And Nicholls does do the repartee, period observation, irony and moving moments quite well. If you had your formative years in the late 80s and through the 90s, as I did, you will smile recognising the rise of Estuary English, gastro pubs and opulent weddings. But, when the wit is stripped away, what is left is a rather sickly and unbelievable plot, despite a shock in the final section. Yet more saddening is the way this book reflects the way we are now. The promiscuity of Dexter, the loveless adultery of Emma, drug taking and repeated drunkenness are not seen as regrettable lapses, but just a stage of life to go through, on the way to scrabble-playing, healthy-walks middle class existence. Scary gender stereotypes are played out too; women are sensible and cautious and will wait patiently for the always attractive, but infantile male to sow his wild oats. Yet the humour is not a satire of that foolish existence, just a smiling acknowledgement of it. I can’t tell you how the book ends, only to let you know that it reinforces the desperately sad message. One Day reveals how shallow and selfish our lives are now and begs the question: how are we Christians to reach these lost generations? Sarah Allen© Evangelicals Now - February 2010 |