Slowly, as time goes on, the two protagonists shift positions, Dexter becoming more mature and Emma more confident, almost despite themselves. One or two gems kept me reading, though – Emma’s hilarious attempt at writing a crime novel (and her other sporadic spurts of creativity) and Dexter’s fractious relationship with his parents, for example. We see how feckless Dexter, who barely scraped a 2.2, falls straight into presenting a highly remunerative if shallow TV show immediately upon returning to England from an extended gap year, but becomes a total mess with partying, drugs etc and we see how the politically correct and upright Emma, a first-class honours student, is reduced to waitressing in a chain Mexican restaurant, renting a box room with no windows from another college friend, while attempting to write.Īfter a few years (chapters), I almost lost it with the book because Dexter is so appallingly shallow that one could not be in the least interested in him, and Emma is just too much the downtrodden victim of life. The author writes engagingly and is witty, which is just as well, because I don’t find the doings of 20-somethings in 1980s and 1990s London (mainly) that thrilling – having “been there, done that, got the T-shirt”.

The book covers their “will they, won’t they?” relationship over the next 20 years by focusing on each anniversary of that day to provide a snapshot of their lives over this time. The plot is an old chestnut: two Edinburgh undergraduates, one rich (Dexter) and one poor (Emma), don’t quite get it together on their final day before leaving university but recognise that they have a connection.

I am not the target demographic of this piece of light fiction by most counts, but even so it passes the time amiably enough.

2009 novel by david nicholls