A Case for Re-Reading: One Day

The first time I read One Day by David Nicholls, I was a bored 17-year-old desperate to fall in love. The novel, recently adapted into a Netflix series, tracks the same day each year in the lives of Dex and Em – two friends who meet on the night of graduation and go on to spend a lifetime together and apart.

It’s the ultimate lovers-to-friends-to-lovers-again story and had me swooning as a teenager. The writing is funny, frank, and clever. I laughed aloud the first time I read it and again recently, more than ten years later. I cried both times too. 

Few writers are as talented as Nicholls is at capturing the tender ways in which we love and hurt each other. My strongest memory from reading the book the first time is of a drunken letter Dex writes to Em (but never sends) and how real it all felt, even if it was meant to be fiction. It’s impossible not to get attached to these characters.

When I returned to them, it was like seeing old friends again. I was delighted to find their story even better than I remembered and moved by how much more I could relate to now that I had done some of my own living. Em’s struggle to make it as a writer after finishing her degree and Dex’s frantic chase for success, even when it means self-abandonment, hits differently as an adult. The complicated romance also read differently. Instead of swooning after them, I ached in recognition. I’m no longer a teenager dreaming of love, but a (semi) grown-up trying to mend a broken heart. 

In both phases of life, this book offers the very best bit of advice: “Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.” It is the joy of rereading to go back with new eyes and fresh worries, but for the writing to take care of you just as it always has.