David Nicholls brings us a story that spans over the course of twenty years, but everything happens during just one day. The fifteenth of july, the day Emma and Dexter met and also the day Emma dies.
Dexter and Emma have had to take a long road to become who they needed to be in order to be happy with each other. In their late twenties, Dexter is the successful one. He's rich, handsome, famous, the star of his very own TV show. Emma is stuck in a dead end job, still wears glasses (even though this is nothing to be ashamed of), can't get herself together to start fulfilling some of her dreams and potentials.
Our destines are weird that way, because as time goes by their positions and roles are about to change. Emma starts writing, reaches certain fame and success. Dexter is left as a star whose time is gone.
One of the best traits of this novel is that Emma and Dexter are real people. Neither one of them are too perfect, they have real flaws, both physical and psychological, they mess up, they try to redeem themselves. They're two people everyone can identify with and yet have their very own personalities.
The insight into their friendship was quite interesting. As we all know, the theme of male-female friendships is a never ending one. Could they have been just friends? Or are friendships that start of with lust doomed from the very beginning? In the case of Dexter and Emma, I think that they would be the happiest had they been in their twenties the people who they became in their late thirties and as a couple. Of course, such a thing is impossible, so they had to do the next best thing: they became friends. To me it seemed that their friendship worked. I think they cared so much about the other one that the most important thing for them was to be involved in each other's life, either as a friend, either as a lover. But it can't be denied that they spent almost half of their lives dancing around their feelings. They're people whose lives keep intertwining, but never enough to let them stay together.
I'm wondering about chances and what we were supposed to do. When I finished the book, I felt very, very angry. If they had just done some things a bit differently the day they met, they would have had almost a life time of happiness together. But, then, when I thought more about it. They probably would have ended hating one another. The bookish, nerdy Emma never would have put up with the Dexter who does drugs, who is always out drinking. Not as a lover or a companion. It worked for a while as friendship, but even that ended. But if he had been with her, maybe he never would have gone down that path.
I hate thinking about missed chances. I hate going down the road of what could have been. It makes me sad, makes me anxious about my own future and people in my life. Nothing could have been different, because it isn't. This is all we get. It doesn't do well to think about all the could have beens. Maybe the thing that makes us human is that we can't just stop doing that? They had a pretty decent friendship and a happy marriage. Maybe we should be happy for them that they got to experience some happiness together. But I still think they were almost happy just as friends.
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