Jenny Stanton's Blog

OK, so John Mullan started discussing this for book groups in yesterday’s Guardian review, but I was honestly intending to post my own review because it’s much in the news, so here goes. This is based on notes from the start of 2010, when I was looking at books that dealt with characters over a longish time scale, an issue I was grappling with in the novel I was then writing.

Nicholls trained as an actor, writes for TV, and has one previous novel to his credit. Accolades for One Day come from Nick Hornby, Marian Keyes, Tony Parsons and Jonathan Coe – I like Coe. The ‘one day’ is 15th June, starting with 1988 when two new graduates in Edinburgh chat in bed, wondering about their futures. The book follows their lives by taking the same date each successive year for nearly twenty years, a neat conceit.

Emma Morley, earnest in her outlook on the world but bright and funny, is more attracted to handsome but shallow Dexter Mayhew than vice versa. They follow different, almost incompatible trajectories: she tries acting, playwriting, becomes a very good drama teacher in an inner-London comprehensive, then settles to writing novels for teenagers; he meanders through TEFL before a rapid rise in TV as a presenter. Whether they meet up on 15th July or communicate in other ways, each is often in the other’s thoughts – as friends. Eventually, inevitably, they get together.

It’s funny, laugh-aloud in places, a little obvious in others, but with more depth of characterization than I imagine you get in Nick Hornby. Emma I liked. Dexter becomes dreary at times with his drug and drink addictions (and sex addiction I guess although we don’t see much of that, directly). I didn’t appreciate the schlocky ending even though it was quite well done.

PS: I just found a bit of paper marking my one particular gripe (p374): It’s 15 July 2004, the Butler Enquiry into the origins of the Iraq war is in the headlines and Emma is complaining about the lack of protest. Dexter wants to read about the latest on Wimbledon but she persists: ‘I mean you’d think there’s be something like the anti-Vietnam movement or something, but nothing. Just that one march, then everyone shrugged and went home…’ Surely Emma would know there wasn’t just that one march?

China Mieville’s only book for kids is a complex, inventive adventure set in London and – mainly – its alternative ‘abcity’, UnLondon or Un Lun Dun. Crucially, UnLondon is made up of the rubbbish and rejects of London, with plenty of completely impossible creations thrown in, like Obaday Fing, the couturier who uses his own head as a pincushion and crafts clothes from the pages of books. Of many marvellous coinages I specially loved ‘moil’ (mostly obsolete in London),  frequently used as building material.

In a clever introductory ploy, Mieville makes it appear that the heroine is Zanna, the ‘Schwazzy’ (from ‘choisi’, French for chosen), who Propheseers and the talking book have predicted will save UnLondon. She’s a tall blonde girl who everyone notices while her sidekick, Deeba, is short, dark and overlooked.The talking book confirms Zanna’s role just before she is knocked unconscious. This leaves the book grumpy and remorseful, and Deeba to carry on alone to save UnLondon.

To save it from what? From the Smog, a growing and versatile cloud of intelligent smoke which can animate dead bodies, the Smombies, and control its addicts, the Stink-Junkies. Its abilities become more terrifying as Deena discovers double-dealing among apparent allies, and risks losing her real friends, including the half-ghost boy Hemi, and the conductor (of flying bus and electricity) Joe Jones. Her quest for the UnGun leads through many stomach-churning cliffhangers. Deeba is a great heroine, determined and funny.

Fantastic in every way.