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One Day

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One Day

By: David Nicholls
Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
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About this listen

 He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?©2009 David Nicholls (P)2009 WF Howes Ltd Contemporary Fiction Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV Genre Fiction Fiction Entertainment Funny Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Witty Feel-Good Tear-jerking
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I read reviews of this on Amazon and they were all glowing so thought I've got to give it a try. I was instantly hooked, perhaps due to the amazing skill of the narrator in giving life to the key characters, male/female and young/old alike.

This book made me laugh out loud whilst cycling to work. It also made me stop what I was doing as I was welling up. Quite like Time Travellers Wife, which I loved, but in my mind better...as it's truly British, and what that meant to me was it felt so real. Not over romanticised, the characters are humanely flawed, their actions sometimes awkward, fumbled and frustrating. And many cringeworthy moments that I could personally relate to.

I became so ingratiated into the characters lives that when it ended, and with that ending so perfect, I immediately started all over again. That's no hyperbole, I finished a few days ago and am now about 5 hours back through it.

Don't even hesitate to download this title, and when you finish, see if you can resist starting all over again....

Seriously, my favourite download to date

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Several reviewers have stated the impossibility of liking either of the two main characters, Emma and Dexter, denying others who have called them friends. I, too, wanted to slap Dexter, as I cringed at his failures and shuffled in my seat at his shameful antics. Many times throughout this book I wanted to turn away from him, show him my disgust with the view of my back every time he hurt his friends, girlfriends and family. And Emma. Oh how he treated Emma! But that she put up with it for so long also left me with hands shaking from want of shaking her. Hard. So much lack of self-confidence is annoying, such self-deprecation sickening, that I really didn't like her at times. I especially didn't like her when she offered trite humour instead of deserved support, like a good friend should. And I really hated her rebuttal of all reality when it justly mocked her stunted vision of the ideal.

So, did the characters' flaws make me dislike the book? No. And that's a resounding No, at that. That I could have such depth and detailed opinions about either of these characters is, for me, the mark of a good -- nay, excellent, writer. David Nicholls drew these people into 3-D representative versions of very real people, and their life together as friends, and sometime-lovers, made listening to this audio book seem as though I had stood by their sides, sighing and tutting, and smiling and laughing, too, just as I do with the closest, most loved of my friends. In that, this book has just joined their ranks.

Slap Dexter? Oh, yes!

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Like Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, this audiobook has the two most perfect readers which, good as the book must be on the page, brought the book alive in the most engaging and satisfying way. I can honestly say I laughed out loud so often in public I had to stop listening, and the end of the book literally stopped me in my tracks as I was walking home. The story begins in the 1980's when I was the age of the two main characters, and so it had a personal interest for me. I liked the fact that the background of their stories is quietly political. It is a deceptively easy listen. The structure is complex and yet seems light and simple. Human emotions are examined with great tenderness and truth. Despite all the humour, the writer shows the quiet tragedies of the lives of ordinary people. David Nicholls says he is inspired by Thomas Hardy and although that may seem pretentious for such a 'light' book, in fact Nicholls has written something both profound and quite beautiful.

Hilarious, heartbreaking and painfully truthful.

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Having read mixed reviews I decided to listen to One Day as I normally quite like romantic novels. It was well narrated and I liked the idea of following the couple's relationship from one year to the next, which gave the book a good structure. I also liked the love theme running throughout (right person, wrong time and the idea that the way you love another person can change as you get older). Unfortunately though I found it did go on a bit and was disappointingly predictable. I thought Emma as a character was quite weak for a leading lady and found Dexter sometimes quite irritating.

I wasn't blown away by it...

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Life is sweet and cruel in unequal measure and this book captures a little of this. It's the kind of book that brings us closer together through shared experience and dispels a little of the existential loneliness that creeps in when we don't talk. It helps that I'm from the same generation and background as the main characters. I feel as if I've found and lost two new friends.

My generation

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