This is the first time I am reading David Nicholls and probably would never have if not for the Book Club that I have recently joined. So that’s one of the aims of joining a book club fulfilled! (The idea is to join a book club so I would be ‘forced’ to read books that I would otherwise never have thought to read or never even picked up or noticed.)

The first thing that strike me as very unique is the concept behind the book, the one day in a year over a span of 20 years or so is a really amazing idea. The story is woven tightly at the beginning and one doesn’t feel as if one is losing out over what went on in the character’s lives the rest of the year but I feel that it starts to come apart a little at the end, I began to wonder over certain things that weren’t mentioned again a year later or ever again.

Since the story started two decades ago, it gave a good perspective on a London and Edinburgh (and the British life) that I never knew and would never have if not for books and stories. He chronicled the changes in society when he chronicled the changes in Emma and Dexter’s lives, going from protesting young adults to adults wondering why the university students don’t form picket lines and protest anymore.

Interestingly, I found Emma a bit of a paradox, seemingly rebellious yet lacking in self-confidence. I find that I cannot agree with the author’s rendering of her personality as it just feels as if it doesn’t fit. Unless of course, the protesting and grand ideas were just words that was never going to be put into action, then yes, Emma seems like… well, Emma.

Dexter, on the other hand, is such a classic entertainment industry party animal, good looking kid. The partying in England is admittedly, way more out of hand than any I could’ve imagined (probably the same in LA or NYC though) and the drugs and alcohol bit, oh-so-London! The one thing I wished was that he be written as showing just that bit more spine and realisation (with remission) of his own faults in bits earlier in the story instead of miraculously being cured in 3 months in Paris.

As for their lives together, I think that it was way too short and I disliked the way the author ended their time together. I would much rather, as I have said earlier, Dex had some other events that was slowly nudging him towards pulling his life together earlier and have the story end on a note that doesn’t include that ‘ending’.

Chance, and so many missed chances make up the bulk of the story. The ‘what-ifs’ and ‘if-only’ caused me so much heartache and if we really think about it, how many of these same instances happened in our own lives? Could there have been one more great romance? A better career? A friendship we would never have?

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I have a rule, a personal rule so to speak, that I will never regret any of the choices that I have made and in so doing, brought me to where I am today. To do so would be akin to saying that I do not wish to have known all the people I have met, the friendships I have made and the relationships I have formed because of that decision. Rather than wishing for the unknown, I want to be grateful for the known but even so, one does wonder sometimes…

Do I have a moment that I have missed that changed the course of my life forever?