One Day

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you’re looking for is right in front of you.

That’s what the blurb says. Nick Hornby also says it’s ‘big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable’. I’m a big Nick Hornby fan. I have three of his books and have read three others.

How can I ever resist? I had to buy it the minute I saw it in Fully Booked.

One Day is the story of Em and Dex, who meet on the night of their college graduation. The book takes you thru what happens to them exactly one year after that. And then the next year. And another. For a grand total of twenty years. Such narrative style is so ingenious. But that’s actually the least of its charms.

The most of its charms consists of its two characters, who are both so funny and crazy and passionate and loyal and endearing. They’re the kind of characters you wish were alive and you could be friends with bcoz you know they will so enrich your dull, colorless life. They argue and fight to no end but you also know they are immensely in love with each other, and not just as friends, too, and that great, big love is simmering just right below the surface and all good to burst any given moment.

The chapters set in Greece and Paris and the one where they get lost in a maze are some of the most kilig moments I’ve ever read. To begin with, I’m a big sucker for stories where friends fall passionately albeit secretly in love with each other. I like to pretend art imitates life and these are the stories of Ches and me, since our own love story started with a friendship. Hahaha.

The story is at turns laugh out loud hilarious and also unbearably sad. I finished all 400+ pages of it in two nights. I couldn't wait to see whether and how they would end up together. It’s perfect in every way. Which is why I’m majorly disturbed about one review which says the feel-good movie must be just around the corner. It breaks my heart when movies mess with books and turn them into something so … commercial.

With a story as perfect as this one, I wanna say: back off, Hollywood.

(So this is my first book of 2013. And my first movie is The Station Agent, this indie about a lonely midget who is obsessed with trains. It’s perfect in the way only indies can ever be truly perfect. I’m so off to a good start =)