One Day David Nicholls

One Day – David Nicholls
One Day by David Nicholls is a wonderful story full of chance, circumstance and communication. Emma and Dexter meet in 1998 as they graduate from Edinburgh University. The story covers the following 20 years, the events and changes in their lives. At times they are tightly intertwined, at other times only lightly touching.
The novel is full of ‘what if’ scenarios and how even the seemingly small decisions we make influence every aspect of our lives. It demonstrates in an incredible human way how people change as they mature and also how they remain the same. Emma and Dexter are very real characters with self doubt, flaws and total truth.
One Day is also a love story. This is a love which shifts and transforms over time but is strong and resolute throughout.
Very rarely do you discover a story you never want to end. I was engrossed with One Day from the beginning and could not put it aside. The writing is so skilful and the characters so well developed as to be perfect this novel definitely gets a 5 star rating.

The Host Stephenie Meyer

The Host - Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer is the woman responsible for the resurgence of interest in Vampires and Werewolves and consolidating Robert Pattison’s place as a romantic teen icon. In The Host she offers a book for adults. Unfortunately this novel is not quite grown up enough. There is not the distance between this book and the Twilight series to offer satisfaction beyond the teen/young adult audience.
The Host is not bad it just doesn’t deliver on good writing or full exploration of the theme. This is a science fiction tale of a soul (Wanderer) who has been implanted into a host body, a young woman (Melanie). There is so much potential in the premise of the addition of an alien soul into a human which is not explored.
Melanie was travelling with her boyfriend and brother when she was taken by a Seeker and her body used as a host for Wanderer’s soul. Somehow Melanie fights against this invasion and we are given a soul having to cope with her host responding to her thoughts and actions. They decide it is better for survival to work together. They end up searching and finding both boyfriend and brother within a group of humans in hiding who are free of souls. Confusion and angst ensue as Wanderer joins the humans. Melanie and Melanie’s body react to being close to her boyfriend. Wanderer has her own feelings to contend with. These are all strong emotions the soul has never experienced before. At the same time the humans distrust her. How do we resolve all this? Stephenie resolves in a way which suits the teen genre but does not work as well as adult fiction.
The exploration of Wanderer’s character is very straightforward. Souls apparently are straightforward. They use ‘No Pain’ as their analgesic and ‘Heal’ to ... well ... heal. Although Wanderer is torn, as she develops an understanding of the humans, she never really fully appreciates how she is perceived. Tentative relationships are made however these are categorised as ‘friend’ and even a fledgling romance never extends further than a kiss.
There is so much promise in the concept of an alien soul taking over a physical body. The questions it raises are fascinating. Consciousness. Morals. Responsibility for one’s actions. On top of this there is a whole fantasy world of alien souls to create. Stephenie does not take this further than a few stories Wanderer tells of planets of ‘See-Weeds’ and ‘Claw-Bears’ and the capsules the souls use to transport themselves to colonise a new planet.
The pace of the first half of the hefty 600+ pages is incredibly slow. The story does pick up once Wanderer reaches the group of humans living in the caves. At times the style of writing annoyed me. Too many sentences had words in italics as if we were too stupid to understand the emphasis ourselves and needed to be told. Angry dialogue is followed by ‘he said angrily’ just to reiterate the point.
Overall Twilight fans will enjoy The Host but their parents may need to accept there’s not enough substance for them. Fantastic opportunity unfortunately not realised in full.