"Whatever happens tomorrow, we have today...And I will always remember it..." - Emma Morley
"One Day". It was brilliant in every possible way. You can not believe how much I adored reading this one and writing a review for it is far more impossible than I thought. No amount of words can justify the beauty of it.
It is generally said, that the first book you fall in love with is what you spend your whole life rewriting. Well I think in my case this is it. I stumbled across this beautiful book by mistake but for a reason.
The character of Emma Morley resonates deep within me. She is possibly everything that I am or I fear about. Reading about her and the way she thinks was sort of assuring maybe. Maybe that No I am not the only idiot on the planet, who thinks like this.
If the idea of saying "We grew up together" in your wedding vows makes you happy. This is surely a book for you.
It made me happy, it made me laugh and it made me cry (but gladly not in a depressing way, the kind of way that just takes time). #Does that makes sense to you?
In particular things that I loved about this book were :-
1. It will be cruel not to say about the intimacy that Dexter and Emma share.
2. Dexter can be good at the times he wants to be. (though its rare, most of the times he is an asshole)
3. The Letters Emma wrote and that one particular letter Dexter writes when he is travelling in India(But fails to post, I told you he is an asshole.)
4. Emma and her ambitions and with that her confusions. The constant dilemma between the job she hates and the opportunities the job has to offer (graveyard of her dreams that what she calls it) and doing what she really believes in.
5. Her Patience, Insecurities and her constant struggle to make things right. (Because that what makes Emma, the Emma)
6. Ian Whitehead. Perfect example of a failed relationship.
7. Emma and Dexter finally talking to each other after 8 years at Tilly Killick's wedding.
8. The fact that Emma finally becomes a published author.
9. The way the book ends. Bit nostalgic but beautiful.
#The Soundtrack
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Here are my few absolute favorites from the book :
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“Don’t keep fighting battles that are already lost.”
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“Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…”
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“Can I say something?'
'Go on'
'I'm a little drunk'
'Me too. That's okay.'
'Just....I missed you, you know.'
'I missed you too.'
'But so, so much, Dexter. There were so many things I wanted to talk to you about, and you weren't there-'
'same here.'
'I tell you what it is. It's.....When I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean EVERY DAY in some way or another-'
'same here.'
'-Even if it was just "I wish Dexter could see this" or "Where's Dexter now?" or "Christ that Dexter, what an idiot", you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my BEST friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby- I'm so happy for you, Dex, but it feels like I've lost you again.'-
-'You know what happens you have a family, your responsibilities change, you lose touch with people'
'It won't be like that, I promise.'
'Do you?'
'Absolutely'
'You swear? No more disappearing?'
'I won't if you won't.'
Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.”
“Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.'
'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?'
She held his face in both hands, looked at it.
'You're getting married?-'
'Yes'
-'And you're going to be a father?'
'I know! Fuck me a father!'
'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?'
'Apparently'
'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute...!'
She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke.
'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really.”
-at Tilly Killick's wedding after 8 years of indifference
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“You know what i can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, i mean endlessly, i've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?” -Dexter to Emma
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“As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavored to harden herself to Dexter's indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head.”
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“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle” -Dexter to Emma
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“I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.” - Emma to Dexter
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“She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.”
-for Emma
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“Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life.”
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“you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four.”
-Dexter to Emma
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“This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first”
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“Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me? You were once, weren't you? In the beginning?”
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“He put one hand lightly on the back of her neck and simultaneously she placed one hand lightly on his hip, and they kissed in the street as all around them people hurried home in the summer light, and it was the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know. This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over.”
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“In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.”
-for Emma
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“Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.”
-for Emma
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“I love him, she thought. I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it.”
-for Ian Whitehead
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“If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?”
-Emma to Dexter
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“A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.”
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“You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.”
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“Sorry' he said. 'No, I'm sorry.' 'What are you sorry for?' 'Rattling on like a mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so...boring.' 'You're not that boring.' 'I am, Dex. God, I swear I bore myself.' 'Well, you don't bore me.' He took her hand in his. 'You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em.”
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“This isn't a letter, it's a gift.”
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“So they were pen pals now, Emma composing long, intense letters crammed with jokes and underlining, forced banter and barely concealed longing; two-thousand-word acts of love on air-mail paper. Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them. In return, Dexter sent her postcards with insufficient postage: ‘Amsterdam is MAD’, ‘Barcelona INSANE’, ‘Dublin ROCKS. Sick as DOG this morning.’ As a travel writer, he was no Bruce Chatwin, but still she would slip the postcards in the pocket of a heavy coat on long soulful walks on Ilkley Moor, searching for some hidden meaning in ‘VENICE COMPLETELY FLOODED!!!!”
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“She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.”
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“…and Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away.”
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“He could feel her laughter against his chest, and at that moment he thought that there was no better feeling than making Emma Morley laugh.”
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“She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.”
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“He has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him.”
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“but they had also settled into the maddening familiarity of friendship; maddening for her at least.”
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“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, is there? We either stop or we carry on.”
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“and not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him.”
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“He wonders if he still might tell her that he loves her or, more tentatively, that he 'thinks he might be in love with her', which is both more touching and easier to back out of.”
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“She made you decent. And in return you made her so, so happy.”
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“Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
‘We grew up together.”
#
And the soundtrack
