The novel “One Day” centers on two characters, Dexter and Emma, over the course of a 20 year span of July 15ths starting in 1988. I believe that “One Day” was conceived as a “star-crossed” love story—with the intent for the reader possibly to murmur “seize the day” as they close the book with a sniffle and a sigh. Sure, Dexter drinks like a fish as he pursues a reality show host career and sleeps around, while Emma wrestles with her self-esteem issues and tacky restaurants for far more years than seems humanly tolerable… but we are still supposed to feel their connection as they write notes and miss each other in weirdly passive ways for modern day folk, a la Jane Austen.
The book club I belong to had a split decision on the only question, for me, worth asking about this book. Did this couple really have a deep spiritual connection that transcended time and place, or were they just each others default “fall” position for frequent stumbles in lives that neither of them seemed to want? The ladies on the “deep spiritual connection” side of the split decision voiced the belief that the couple would have certainly lost touch if there wasn’t something spectacular about their relationship to each other. They said that to maintain the thread of a relationship over that length of time, to seek each other out, something transcendent must have occurred between them. The evidence of this level of depth is implied rather than shown, as their correspondence and contact with each other doesn’t seem to consist of more than reporting news of the past year. This led us to a discussion of how some of us had become swept up in dramas with deeply narcissistic persons (like Dexter) that had lasted for years, resulting in broken engagements and hearts, but seemed “karmic” and major and necessary on some level. The rest of us (OK I was on this side) felt that Dexter and Emma were exceptionally skilled at skimming the surface of their experiences and lazily relied on the other as an excuse not to turn up the flame on whatever they were cooking in their present day life. By page 158, I was cursing at the book and hopelessly haunted with images of Ryan Seacrest from American Idol and Renee Zellwigger as Bridget Jones, cast in a Shakespearean tragedy. Of course I have no idea what Ryan Seacrest is really like, but if he is like Dexter, he gets very annoying by page 158 and for me, Bridget really is more fun when she’s wearing a Christmas sweater at her mother’s in a film. I did have to disqualify my opinion a bit, as I had done the unthinkable for serious book clubbers, I had read ahead, and so noted the plot twists that either a.) made the story more real, or b.) were cheap dramas to save us from the insufferable natures of the two main characters. Regardless… I think I mostly lost the argument about deep personal relationships, but as someone who has kept threads of relationships over long periods of time for no apparent reason, I think I can speak from experience on the compelling quality of laziness….
Anyhow, the book is fairly well written and generated some good discussion and juicy personal storytelling from book club members. Carpe diem, sigh.
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