One Day by David Nicholls: My Review

Having just finished reading this masterpiece, I can shamelessly reveal that I’ve been having an intense love affair with it for the past few days. I feel like it was made for me; destiny brought us together. Unlike many relationships, the timing was perfect but now I feel heartbroken that it’s over – yet happy it happened. Corny as it sounds, what I’m trying to tell you all, is that One Day is one of those few books that will move you and change your life in unexpected ways, and bloody hell it’s going to take me a joyously long time to forget it. This review will act as a sincere plea for anyone who has managed to escape this book’s captivating charm to stop doing whatever you are doing, to buy it, and to read it – immediately.

Now, I have recently come to realise that I neither have the time nor the money to read all the books on my ever-expanding ‘to read’ list, so when I picked up One Day during my lazy volunteer shift at Oxfam bookshop, I was planning on only dipping into it to pass the long hours spent working. However, I found it so utterly irresistible and absorbing from the very first page, that I couldn’t bring myself to leave the shop without it.

For those of you who don’t know, it tells the bittersweet love story of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley, beginning on July 15th 1988 – the morning after their graduation. It follows them on their journey through life, catching up with them on the same day every year, for twenty years. This structure enables us to see the twists and turns that their relationship takes; we see them change and grow as people, and we witness the pains and pleasures that life relentlessly throws at them. Most importantly however, we fall in love with them ourselves. Ostentatious Dexter and self-effacing Emma are brutally realistic characters, who share the same hopes and fears as anyone from any age and background – even David Nicholls himself. As a pair, Em and Dex perfectly reflect that uncertainty, fear and hopefulness that comes packaged alongside graduation, and that impending descent into what is too often called ‘the real world’.

On first glances, it would appear that such deep and earnest characters must come from personal experience, and a little research told me I was correct. David Nicholls himself admitted that he was late to enter adulthood, calling his twenties “a sea of worry.” He, like many others, found post-university time difficult, describing it as a “restless, anxious time.” He didn’t feel ready to follow his parents’ domestic footsteps and this uncertainty can be seen through the lives of the characters he has created. In this modern day, so many young, free minds are pressured into decisions they are unsure about, and told that they need to know what they want to do in life. For me, One Day is written confirmation that sometimes it takes a little while for you to realise what really makes you tick, and also what is good for you and your future.

As for the ending, I cried – and I rarely cry at books. It was heartbreaking to see Dexter descending back to into alcoholism, and yet strangely I feel like I would have been disappointed with a classic fairytale ending. [Spoiler Alert] Emma’s death fitted the overall message that the book gave me – life doesn’t always go as planned, but you have to make the most of it while it’s there. Do a lot, don’t deny yourself what you love, and of course, seize the day and all that, as Emma would say.

For me then, One Day and its author act as a comforting reminder that mistakes are vital for growth. It has the enchanting power to spark a reminiscence of youth for some, yet acts as guidance and comfort for youngsters feeling rushed into adulthood. It is a book which perfectly reflects that uncertainty and fear of the future which is inherent in human beings whatever age you are, and as a student going into my final year of University (yikes), I feel like One Day was welcomed into my life at just the right moment.

 

‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin – My review

I have never been remotely interested in self-help books, simply because I never believed I needed the help they had to offer; how wrong I was.

This book instantly caught my eye in a small book store at Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok. I was awaiting a long flight home after having spent the last three weeks in paradise, and its bright and cheerful cover instantly attracted my attention. The title and its vibrancy subconsciously convinced me that this was the book I needed to cheer me up and prepare me for my descent back to rainy England. I bought it in a hurry, without even reading the blurb (something completely unheard of for me!) and I didn’t even realise it was part of the self-help genre until I opened it on the plane. However, once I’d started reading, not even the insufferable turbulence could tear my attention away from its pages.

‘The Happiness Project’ tells the biographical story of Rubin’s year-long journey, where she aims to discover the true meaning of happiness for her and how to achieve it. In her introductory chapter we see her setting herself several resolutions and challenges for every month of the year, with this sequential chronology used for the structure of the book. Each chapter focuses around an individual goal that is crucial to achieving happiness such as ‘Aim[ing] Higher’ or ‘Lighten[ing] Up’ and accounts her efforts, the struggles she faces and the results she sees within each particular month.

She admits in her introductory chapter of the book that her project did not originate from necessarily unhappy feelings but actually derived from a fear of wasting her life and an undesired lack of gratitude for the life she was living. She wanted to change her life without changing her life, and saw the importance of preparing oneself for what she called the ‘phone call’; the inevitable forbearer of bad news. She merges and modernizes past theologies of happiness and introduces it as a spectrum; something that can be boosted to its full potential if the necessary steps are made. By recreating happiness as a universally achievable goal that can be obtained through such small manageable steps she draws in a wider target audience, with her belief that a Happiness Project will benefit everyone and anyone; young or old, happy or sad.

Rubin’s witty yet self-concious style of writing draws attention to potential criticism’s of the book and indeed of herself as an individual. She recognises her imperfections and shows awareness of the limitations of her Happiness Project, admitting how it may be a much harder project to carry out for those facing chronic depression and mental health problems. She expects and awaits criticism’s of egocentricity, but it is her self conciousness that makes the book so refreshing and engaging, making her an author whom many readers will find it easy to relate to.

Rubin counteracts such critiques of narcissism through her active encouragement for readers to start their own ‘Happiness Project’s, and she uses her blog and website to assist and inspire others in creating their own individual projects and resolutions. This is what I find uniquely remarkable about Rubin’s book. It has shown incredible growth since its publication and has helped build both online and offline communities — a very important factor in boosting book sales — and happiness! Her website exists as a medium for people to interact with each other and share their experiences and progress with their own Happiness Projects. In this way Rubin has created a way of reaching and engaging with her readers, and has given her readers a means of spreading ‘word of mouth’ sales; sales that are propelled through hearsay and recommendations.

Overall, I found ‘The Happiness Project’ a burst of fresh optimism from start to finish; an original blend of laugh-out-loud moments and touching sentiments. Packed with motivational quotes and lessons, it has the rare ability of bringing cheer from the very first page and will be a place to turn for many on rainy days. Having successfully blurred the lines between the self-help, biography and fiction genres, it’s a book in which those who are uninterested in seeking guidance from the self-help genre can still find pleasure and reassurance in reading.