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One Day Tells a Beautiful, Bittersweet Love Story

The new TV series One Day (Netflix, February 8), an adaptation of the novel by David Nicholls (which was also turned into a movie in 2011), assures us that we are in good hands from the very start. Creator Nicole Taylor near-immediately establishes an enveloping mood of gently swooning romance, flecked with melancholy. We keenly feel the gears of time turning as recent University of Edinburgh graduates Dexter ( Leo Woodall ) and Emma ( Ambika Mod ) meet, flirt, hook up, and embark on what will prove to be a years-long relationship, both platonic and not. The show is courting us, just as Dexter is Emma, and it proves impossible to resist. 

First blushes are easy. What’s trickier is sustaining that sense of giddy elation and heartsickness, yearning and caution, as a story spreads out across decades. The 2011 film, adapted by Lone Scherfig , elegantly captures those sensations through Rachel Portman ’s invaluable score, but otherwise the film is frustratingly static and broad-strokes; it’s telling us about a great love without really showing it to us. (Do listen to that score, though.) Taylor, who wrote the winsome 2018 music drama Wild Rose , has more territory to develop in series format, and makes terrific use of that space. 

Following the book’s structure, each episode concerns the same day, July 15, across different years. We watch as Dexter, a posho who uses his good looks and charm to make his way in the London television world, and Emma, an aspiring writer from humbler beginnings, become complicated adults whose one constant is each other. Some episodes bring them together; others keep them apart. The elasticity of their bond—they fight, become estranged, reunite—is a neat representation of the undulations of all of life. There is never (or, there rarely is) some perfect narrative to follow, purpose and fate guiding people toward foregone conclusions. 

Instead there is wandering, there are mistakes, there are bold gambles on what the future might hold. One Day finely renders the sometimes aimless ramble of nascent adulthood, with both wonder and a rueful sigh. Taylor is careful to keep things subtle, human-sized. Not every July 15 is a seismic day, though some certainly are (this is, after all, a romantic drama, not a documentary). Conversation is credible, pitched in the language of real people that age. The heavier stuff—a romance gone sour, a long and grinding struggle with addiction—is deftly handled, with compassion and understatement. One Day is a graceful series, woozy and clear-eyed at once. 

That balance would be impossible to strike without the right actors, whom Taylor has luckily found. Mod, best known for the dark medical comedy This Is Going to Hurt , shrewdly calibrates Emma’s self-consciousness and her mettle. She’s a nerd from a different social station who is a bit flabbergasted that a handsome sophisticate like Dexter would be interested in her. But she’s also aware of her many assets, her intelligence and unassuming appeal. Emma is still very much in the process of discovering herself, a journey that Mod illustrates through nuanced evolutions in Emma’s bearing. She grows steadier, more forthright, while nonetheless hampered by a needling doubt. 

A sturdy adult life is more readily available to Dexter, given his family wealth and high-born comfort in the world. He seems to be coasting, though it gradually becomes clear that he is actually in free fall. Woodall, who broke out as a shifty hunk on the second season of The White Lotus , could play the obvious beats of Dexter’s haughtiness giving way to despair. Instead, he finds remarkable detail in the character, connecting to the lost and ailing person cowering behind the flash. One episode in particular, when Dexter returns home for a fraught visit with his parents, is a heartbreaking marvel. Woodall’s performance is among the most captivating that I’ve seen on television in some time. For all the difficult calculation of how sympathy must act as ballast to revulsion, Woodall never lets us see the work. He is present and reactive, natural yet vivid. It’s a real star turn, but not one that vainly upstages his screen partner. 

Watching Dexter and Emma fight and fall apart is as electric as watching them fall in love. The actors are in such fluid harmony with the writing and with one another that it’s hard not to get swept up in the idea that this is all really happening—or, rather, that it did happen in the twenty year span of the story, which begins in 1988. Mod and Woodall are aided tremendously by the summery aesthetics of the series, its gauzy photography (never too reliant on nostalgic kitsch) and lilting music. One Day is an expertly tailored show, one that makes quotidian matters seem grand and the big stuff feel tangible. 

The series is so good, in fact, that it accidentally reveals a flaw at the heart of book: its late-act melodrama is rendered wholly unnecessary. We have already felt such transporting pains and joys that we needn’t have the looming, declarative emotional instruction handed down by Nicholls. This plot point, which I won’t spoil here though it is plenty known, plays as garish over adornment on a show that is otherwise in such calm command of its scope, so effective at softly guiding us toward swells of bittersweet sentiment. That heavy hand, an unfortunately innate part of One Day , threatens to crush Taylor’s delicate and intimate interpretation. 

It doesn’t quite, though. One Day manages to survive this imposition and closes out on a staggeringly poignant note, a reveal of something from the past, from the beginning of all of this, previously withheld from the audience. Suddenly, the story is cast in a new hue, a different slant of happy-sad light. Ah, to be young. And then, to be everything else.

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Richard Lawson

Chief critic.

One Day, review: a bingeable, sentimental romance with all the depth of a puddle

One Day is a novel by David Nicholls that everyone seemed to own in the 2000s, sitting on the shelf between High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary. It was a romance with a neat concept: revisiting two people, Emma and Dexter, on the same date each year – St Swithin’s Day – from university through their 20s and 30s.

Whether you found the characters adorable or slappable depended on your psychological make-up and tolerance for them calling each other “Dex” and “Em” in every sentence while being self-consciously cool (him) and overly earnest (her). But the people who loved it really loved it, which means Netflix’s new adaptation has a high bar to clear. It is best for all concerned if we do not speak of the 2011 film in which Anne Hathaway attempted to play someone from Leeds.

Well, fans of the novel should be delighted with this series, which has been adapted by Three Girls writer Nicole Taylor. It’s the most bingeable Netflix offering since Emily in Paris – deep as a puddle in a drought, but sometimes isn’t that exactly what you want? It’s so easily digestible that some of the 14 episodes are barely 20 minutes long.

Dex and Em have their first encounter on graduation day at Edinburgh University in 1988. Over the years that follow they are mostly friends, occasionally estranged, sometimes in relationships with other people (Jonny Weldon is perfect as Emma’s boyfriend, a tragically unfunny stand-up comedian). You will find yourself yelling at the screen for them to just get it on and stop faffing about, but romcoms must put obstacles in the way of true love.

The series stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall, and they get it spot on. As with the book, you have to suspend your disbelief that handsome, charming, public school Dexter falls for awkward, cerebral, ordinary Emma, who is described in the novel as having greasy skin and a fat face. But that is one secret to the novel’s success: it’s a Cinderella story in which she eventually bags her prince – in fact, she rescues him. Fifteen-year-old girls will adore it.

Mod is of Indian heritage therefore her character is too, but this is only referenced in passing and has no bearing on the story. The actress, so good in This Is Going to Hurt , gets everything right except the generic Northern accent, which she appears to have based on Mrs Hall from All Creatures Great and Small with a dash of Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley.

Woodall, last seen playing a garrulous Essex boy in The White Lotus , makes Dexter vulnerable and likeable, even during the period when he’s presenter of a TV show called Largin’ It (think Johnny Vaughan-meets-Tim Lovejoy). When Dexter and Emma are together, they’re very watchable. Separately, though, there is an imbalance because all of Dexter’s scenes are so much more lively to watch than Emma’s drab existence.

The soundtrack is a nostalgic treat. The timeframe covers the Nineties and Noughties, and there are nice era-specific touches: men wearing Davidoff Cool Water, ladettes on late-night TV, Kettle Chips as a new and sophisticated snack. If you’re the sentimental type, you’ll watch One Day and ponder the gap between how you thought your life would turn out when you were young, and how it actually did. The rest of us can just enjoy being taken back to a time when arranging a date involved writing a letter, visiting a public call box or – for the real early adopters – owning a mobile phone with a pull-out antenna.

One Day is available on Netflix now

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Dex and Emma forever: how One Day became the literary phenomenon of the Noughties

The ending scarred readers, and so did the anne hathaway film adaptation. now it’s back for a netflix series. katie rosseinsky explores how david nicholls’s bestselling novel captured (and broke) millions of hearts.

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I can still remember my mum’s disclaimer as she put her copy of  One Day on my sun lounger, the paperback’s orange cover slightly wilted from the heat. “I should warn you,” she said, looking mildly shell-shocked. “There’s a sad bit at the end.” Talk about an understatement. The tens of thousands of fellow readers who picked up a copy that summer were probably similarly scarred by the experience. But this didn’t stop  One Day  from becoming one of the biggest, most enduring literary love stories of the ensuing decade. Now, 15 years on from its initial release, Netflix is going to put long-term devotees and a new generation of fans through the emotional wringer, with a 14-part adaptation starring Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall .

Before  One Day , author and screenwriter David Nicholls had published two novels,  Starter for 10 and  The Understudy . Both had earned good reviews – and his debut spawned a very enjoyable film adaptation starring James McAvoy – but the latter didn’t sell quite as well. When his third book was released in 2009, Nicholls was “quite prepared for [it] to be part of a downward trajectory”, he later said. He needn’t have worried.  The Times  hailed it as “a wonderful, wonderful book”, while  The Guardian  described it as “not only roaringly funny but also memorable, moving and … rather profound”. The reviews weren’t all raves:  The Observer  claimed it felt “dated, plodding through the same old plotlines of boy-meets-girl”. But that didn’t matter: the book had already become a phenomenon. For a while, it seemed like you couldn’t get on a bus or train without spotting that distinctive cover, with its two orange silhouettes facing off against each other.

One Day  is the  When Harry Met Sally  of romantic novels, and not just because it’s about two friends with bucketloads of chemistry: it’s the book that should be prescribed to anyone who loudly claims that love stories are naff, just as the Nora Ephron film is a good rejoinder to anyone who believes romcoms are trivial. It has now sold around 5 million copies in 40 languages and has amassed legions of loyal fans, for whom re-reading it is a near-annual ritual. The writer Dolly Alderton has hailed it as “the book I go back to time and time again”, while the Women’s Prize shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead says it “never gets old”. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve returned to  One Day  over the years. I even think I’ve re-watched the patchy 2011 film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and her allegedly Northern accent, which probably makes me something of an anomaly; Hathaway’s casting stoked serious controversy on this side of the Atlantic, as British readers kicked up the biggest fuss since they found out Renée Zellweger would be playing Bridget Jones.

So what made the book such a staggering success? Fundamentally it’s a love story, full of will-they won’t-they (should they even?) tension. At the heart of the story are Emma and Dexter, a pair of platonic-ish best friends who first meet on 15 July 1988, just after they’ve both graduated from the University of Edinburgh. Dexter is privileged, self-assured and good-looking, with “the knack of looking perpetually posed for a photograph”. Emma is more diffident and hails from an ordinary family in Leeds; she’s fiercely idealistic, but cynical enough to cut through most of Dexter’s more annoying pretentions. In the hands of another author, they might have ended up as crude caricatures – the posh boy and the chippy Northern girl – but Nicholls, always a deeply empathetic writer, sketches both with compassion; he subtly makes fun of their foibles but also takes their feelings seriously.

The book picks up the pair’s tale every year on the same July day ,  also known as St Swithin’s Day, as Dexter tells Emma during their initial encounter. Not everyone is a fan of this conceit: the 2009  Observer  review claimed “the structure proves limiting” and that Nicholls “is a far better writer than this format allows him to be”. They don’t always spend this day together (re-reading, it’s striking how rarely the two of them are actually in close proximity), but we see how much their feelings for one another colour their existence and shape the choices they make. Nicholls doesn’t try to shoehorn too many milestones into each of those 15 Julys. More obviously significant events – difficult conversations, ill-advised kisses – often take place off stage, so their romance doesn’t follow a conventional shape.

One Day  doesn’t bother with the “enemies to lovers” trope that has become so popular with today’s romance readers. It’s clear from the off that they fancy each other, and that they might even be a good match, but over the next 20 years, we see them circling around the obvious, and being held apart by geographical and emotional obstacles, like Dexter’s seemingly endless Indian gap year, his cruel arrogance when he eventually finds minor fame as a coke-sniffing Nineties TV presenter and Emma’s chronic self-deprecation. “Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it,” Dexter writes to her in a drunken but perceptive letter from India; of course, he forgets to send it, setting up one of the book’s many “what ifs”. Nicholls wrote  One Day  just after he had adapted  Tess of the d’Urbervilles  for the BBC, and has said he borrowed this idea of a missed message – one that might have changed the protagonists’ lives – from Thomas Hardy’s story.

Despite the “sad bit at the end”, as my mum put it,  One Day  is (unlike  Tess ) an excellent comfort read. Emma and Dexter are such great characters that returning to them feels a bit like getting back in touch with old pals. Even so, it can be frustrating to watch the pair’s bad decisions and foot-in-mouth moments play out (the scene in which Dexter tells Emma, fresh from her PGCE course, that “those who can do, and those who can’t, teach” will always make me convulse with second-hand embarrassment). But the book also affirms just how significant one 24-hour period can be. It shows how those ordinary days (and ordinary mistakes) might, over the course of a lifetime, add up to create some bigger narrative, which, when you’re feeling a bit lost, can be a very consoling thought.

I’ve found that every time I’ve picked up  One Day  again, a different period of the protagonists’ lives has jumped out. I first read it just before starting university, when Dexter and Emma’s dramas seemed wonderfully adult but still distant. In my twenties, it was the passages pinpointing the confusion of trying to decide what you might want to do with your life, and the crushing disappointment when things don’t quite go according to plan. Currently, it’s Nicholls’s brilliant description of what he calls “the third wave” of weddings, when “every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter bomb, containing a complex invitation”. I wonder which scenes will resonate when I return to  One Day  in five or 10 years’ time?

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One Day review: justice for fans of the David Nicholls novel

Netflix's take on the blockbuster book hits you like a 'Tyson Fury left hook'

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Netflix's new production of the bestselling novel "One Day" by David Nicholls is "exquisite". 

That's the view of Carol Midgley in The Times and thankfully so, as the 2011 film version was "a dud", mainly because of "Anne Hathaway’s systematic massacre of the Yorkshire accent", which was not too dissimilar to Dick van Dyke’s attempt at Cockney in "Mary Poppins". 

'Will-they-won't-they friendship'

In the new 14-part drama, Ambika Mod, who played junior doctor Shruti in "This Is Going to Hurt", is "fabulous" as Em, with excellent deadpan comic timing. And Leo Woodall as Dexter is "glorious" too, building on his uncompromising turn in "The White Lotus".

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In "One Day", Em and Dexter meet on St Swithin's Day – 15 July – 1998 on their graduation day at the University of Edinburgh. The story revisits their will-they-won't-they friendship on the same day every year and this series is "like a charming flipbook with the highest production value you've ever seen", said Rebecca Cook in Digital Spy .

There are some failings that even Netflix couldn't fix, though. Dexter only seems to fall in love with Em once she's "taken off her glasses, straightened her hair and he's exhausted all other options", said Cook.

'A lovely nostalgia trip'

But it captures some beautiful seminal British moments: "a boozy graduation ball; a hazy summer evening spent drinking wine on London's Primrose Hill; a midnight heart-to-heart in the middle of a lamplit maze", said Neil Armstrong on the BBC . The soundtrack, including Massive Attack, Suede and Jeff Buckley, is a "lovely nostalgia trip", said Midgley, and it's a "delight to linger in this pre-social media, pre-2008, pre-Brexit world of eternal summer", said Cook. 

And in the London Evening Standard , Alexandra Jones concluded that the book probably isn't as good as we remember it. Still, she said, this "gorgeous, cleverer than most, rom-com" is the "perfect, sunny watch for gloomy February".

Get ready for the ending, which Midgley said will "put you through the wringer" like a "Tyson Fury left hook".

David Nicholls is appearing at the Stratford Literary Festival, which runs from 1 to 5 May at stratlitfest.co.uk . Readers of The Week will receive a special discount on festival tickets, simply use the code WKSLF24 when booking.

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“God, I love it when you guys fight. Ooh, trouble in paradise… I do! I mean, it just means you have a normal ordinary relationship.” The best friend Tilly (a delightful Amber Grappy ) says these lines in the penultimate episode of Netflix’s “ One Day .” She’s speaking to our heroine Emma Morley, played winningly by Ambika Mod . The sentiment reverberates because Emma and her love interest Dexter Mayhew (a perfectly cast Leo Woodall ) do not have a normal relationship. They have a storybook type of love, the thing of legend and weepy romances.

Based on the book by David Nicholls , Netflix’s serialized version of this hit follows our star-crossed lovers as they meet, collide, repel, and repeat through the years on the single day of July 15. It starts as they graduate college and ends, well, comparisons to “The Notebook” are apt.

But before they get together, Emma and Dex spend a lot of time growing up, becoming best friends who inspire each other to be better, as their mutual attraction simmers underneath. Here, the series format does an excellent job of making both our leads lived-in people, something the 2011 film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess didn’t quite succeed in doing. Woodall’s “Sexy Dexy” is genuinely charming as the golden boy whose life is indeed too easy until it isn’t. It’s clear why some (including Emma) are so drawn to him while others are repelled.

Meanwhile, casting a woman of color as Emma further underlines the differences in the two’s social stations. She may graduate with the grades, but tough economic times are ahead for the aspiring writer looking for her voice. Mod inhabits her various transformations and compromises, lighting up when Dexter’s in the frame but not letting him define her either (until, perhaps, the very end).

Starting in 1988 and continuing for decades, “One Day” resists some of the pitfalls of pieces set in its period with costumes that feel true to the era but not distracting. The production also does a good job of aging its characters gently, taking them past their early twenties with subtle changes in their faces, styles, and mannerisms.

But where it really excels is telling this intense love story of improbable equals. Emma and Dexter are of different races, genders, social classes, and temperaments. But they find a way to meet each other on equal footing, despite society valuing one more than the other depending on the season. And the story construction mirrors that for most of the first 13 episodes, giving their interiority, their sexual adventures, and their relationships outside of each other, all equal weight. The result is a compelling portrayal of two people’s rocky pathway as they go from strangers to best friends to partners.

Fated as they are to get together, the episodic structure works well in plot development too, each installment a sort of sonnet to their phase of life. Yes, it can drag a bit in the middle when convention and personal development dictate that they must be apart. And yes, the musical cues can be overwrought, practically shouting what to feel at any given moment.

Overall, it works. They earn their eventual couplehood, having found their way to a beautiful and exceptional pairing.

Unfortunately—for lovers of love, happy endings, and dynamic female characters—that’s not where the story ends. Not in the 2009 book, the 2011 movie, or the 2024 series. This is a weeper and its tragedy feels clichéd after the characters have already been through so much. Indeed, the ending undermines so much of the charm and goodwill earned in its previous episodes, effectively turning Emma’s whole existence into a lesson in humility for Dexter. And that feels cheap and simple-minded, especially after spending so much time getting to know this pair through the years.

In the end, the lesson of “One Day” appears to be that love conquers all, except casual misogyny.

Whole series screened for review. On Netflix now.

Cristina Escobar

Cristina Escobar is the co-founder of LatinaMedia.Co, a digital publication uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media.

• Leo Woodall as Dexter
• Ambika Mod as Emma
• Amber Grappy as Tilly
• Brendan Quinn as Callum
• Jonny Weldon as Ian
• Essie Davis as Alison
• Nicole Taylor

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Ready Player One: A Novel Paperback – June 5, 2012

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• Book 1 of 2 Ready Player One
• Print length 384 pages
• Language English
• Publication date June 5, 2012
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• ISBN-10 0307887448
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“The science-fiction writer John Scalzi has aptly referred to Ready Player One as a ‘nerdgasm’ [and] there can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture. . . . But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative.” —Janet Maslin,  The New York Times   “A fun, funny and fabulously entertaining first novel . . . This novel's large dose of 1980s trivia is a delight . . . [but] even readers who need Google to identify Commodore 64 or Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, will enjoy this memorabilian feast.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer “Incredibly entertaining . . . Drawing on everything from Back to the Future to Roald Dahl to Neal Stephenson's groundbreaking Snow Crash , Cline has made  Ready Player One  a geek fantasia, '80s culture memoir and commentary on the future of online behavior all at once.” — Austin American-Statesman   “ Ready Player One  is the ultimate lottery ticket.” — New York Daily News “This non-gamer loved every page of Ready Player One .” —Charlaine Harris, #1  New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series “A treasure for anyone already nostalgic for the late twentieth century. . . But it’s also a great read for anyone who likes a good book.” — Wired “Gorgeously geeky, superbly entertaining, this really is a spectacularly successful debut.” — Daily Mail  (UK) “A gunshot of fun with a wicked sense of timing and a cast of characters that you're pumping your fist in the air with whenever they succeed. I haven't been this much on the edge of my seat for an ending in years.” — Chicago Reader "A 'frakking' good read [featuring] incredible creative detail . . . I grinned at the sheer audacity of Cline's imagination.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Fascinating and imaginative . . . It’s non-stop action when gamers must navigate clever puzzles and outwit determined enemies in a virtual world in order to save a real one. Readers are in for a wild ride.” —Terry Brooks, #1  New York Times  bestselling author of the Shannara series “I was blown away by this book. . . . A book of ideas, a potboiler, a game-within-a-novel, a serious science-fiction epic, a comic pop culture mash-up–call this novel what you will, but Ready Player One will defy every label you try to put on it. Here, finally, is this generation’s Neuromancer.” —Will Lavender,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Dominance “I really, really loved Ready Player One . . . . Cline expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future.” —Daniel H. Wilson,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Robopocalypse  “A nerdgasm . . . imagine Dungeons and Dragons and an 80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth.” —John Scalzi,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Old Man’s War “Completely fricking awesome . . . This book pleased every geeky bone in my geeky body.  I felt like it was written just for me.” —Patrick Rothfuss, #1  New York Times  bestselling author of  The Wise Man’s Fear 

About the Author

Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; 32089th edition (June 5, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307887448
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307887443
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 970L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.17 x 0.83 x 8 inches
• #17 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
• #62 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
• #136 in Science Fiction Adventures

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About the author

Ernest cline.

ERNEST CLINE is an internationally best-selling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.

Customer reviews

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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 73% 20% 5% 1% 1% 20%
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• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 73% 20% 5% 1% 1% 1%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 73% 20% 5% 1% 1% 1%

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Customers say

Customers find the book entertaining and engaging. They describe it as suspenseful, captivating, and full of adventure and excitement. Readers praise the writing quality as carefully and tastefully explained. They also mention the 80s references are fun and the book is a love letter to 80s pop culture. Additionally, they say the characters are great and the pacing is fast.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book delightful, entertaining, and engaging. They describe it as an exceptional thriller with interesting characters and a compelling plot. Readers also mention that the main character has excellent development as the story progresses.

"...Some of the plot points were good as well. I would’ve never thought to have Wade become an indentured servant to penetrate IOI from the inside...." Read more

"...feedback, coupled to a powerful interface console, a highly faithful experience was possible ...." Read more

"...Following the thread of the main riddle is entertaining and highly driving...." Read more

"...Ready Player One is one heck of a great book. Freakishly great . My initial reaction after finishing it was that it is a Hall of Fame inductee...." Read more

Customers find the book captivating, full of adventure and excitement. They describe it as a thrilling adventure filled with science fiction, geeky references, and creative writing. Readers say the book keeps them amused and emotional. They also mention the plot is fairly simple and reads like a quest for a video game.

"...Ready Player One was a thrilling adventure filled with science fiction , geeky references, and a creative outlook on the future...." Read more

"...The conclusion is particularly satisfying : there may be a bigger world than even the OASIS." Read more

"...seems to flip flop between self loathing, overly confident, childish , meticulous, immature, mastermind whenever necessary for the plot to progress...." Read more

"...The final battle is a perfect example ... ideally you would want ships from all three flying around blowing stuff up...." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book to be carefully and tastefully explained. They say it's a deceptively easy read that has layers upon layers of complexity. Readers also mention the description is amazing and the concept seems simple.

"...The level of detail is just staggering : this may be the geekiest nerdfest ever published...." Read more

"...to flip flop between self loathing, overly confident, childish, meticulous , immature, mastermind whenever necessary for the plot to progress...." Read more

"...It is well written , and most importantly kept me turning pages, often past bedtime, which everyone knows is the mark of a good book...." Read more

"...All in all, this movie was 5 out of 5 stars. It was well written . Wouldrecommend to anyone even if you hate books...." Read more

Customers find the book delightful and fun. They describe it as a perfect homage to 1980s pop culture. Readers mention the book brings back many great memories.

"I love this book and couldn't put it down. So many nostalgic memories were placed in this book, a literal monument to the 80s." Read more

"...the gap between me and the book Ready Player One, a deep sense of nostalgia surges over me , such as the one that has powerfully embodied me after..." Read more

"...into this book. It was the perfect homage to such a great decade . The book kept me amused and emotional. It is a fantastic read!" Read more

"...There's also a lot of 80's pop culture references , as the OASIS creator grew up in the 80's and everyone knew that being very familair with it would..." Read more

Customers find the characters great and excellent. They say they feel as if they know them.

"...Some his lines and sayings were funny, and this made him a likeable protagonist . Some of the plot points were good as well...." Read more

"First, the positive. This book has interesting characters , a compelling plot, and some occasional poignant insights about the world we live in, and..." Read more

"...shows the seriousness of the evil of man. The Characters fitted perfectly . Wade was thedesperate gamer who loved the Oasis and Halliday...." Read more

"... Side characters are flat as pancakes ...." Read more

Customers find the pacing of the book good and exciting. They also say it provides a change of pace when needed. Readers also mention the story progresses quickly.

"...The adventure is fun, the action rolls along at a fast clip and the characters work well together...." Read more

"...Player One' struck just the right balance because it provided a change of pace when needed , as well as motivation for parts of Wade's character..." Read more

"...Billy Idol? Anvil of Crom has a particular appeal, but it starts slow and was already used in Conan...." Read more

"..."Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," it's funny and reasonably fast-paced and it became a little disturbing to me how many of the really..." Read more

Customers find the world well-imagined, original, and captivating. They say the book is a visual feast filled with descriptive imagery that enhances the theme. Readers also mention the world is unique and lifelike.

"...I loved how the characters changed a lot throughout the book and enhanced the theme ...." Read more

"...is. His style was very modern and smooth . He included tons of humor while being serious at thesame time...." Read more

"...The world is well-imagined overall and I can honestly say, I was never quite sure the ending would be the happiest one possible for Wade Watts...." Read more

"... So many possibilities to explore . I recommend this book to anyone. I am no gamer at all and yet I found it very captivating...." Read more

Customers find the book thought-provoking, inciteful, and fantastic. They say it reflects modern-day sensibilities and has a creative outlook on the future. Readers also appreciate the depth of cultural references and the morals it shows.

"...filled with science fiction, geeky references, and a creative outlook on the future . This book takes place in 2045...." Read more

"...book has interesting characters, a compelling plot, and some occasional poignant insights about the world we live in, and why people often trade it..." Read more

"...filled with mind puzzles waiting to be discovered. It shows us many morals and teaches us aboutevil and good of man...." Read more

"...Quick read. Part adventure, love story, social and humanitarian commentary on society and how technology effects our everyday lives...." Read more

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A Schizophrenia Diagnosis Sets Off a Reckoning With Mental Illness

In “No One Gets to Fall Apart,” the TV writer Sarah LaBrie follows the breadcrumbs of her mother’s disorder back to her childhood, and beyond.

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By Linda Villarosa

Linda Villarosa is a contributing writer for The Times Magazine.

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NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART: A Memoir , by Sarah LaBrie

In March 2017, Sarah LaBrie, a TV writer living in Los Angeles, received a phone call from her grandmother, who unspooled an alarming thread of calamities suggesting that LaBrie’s mother was suffering from severe mental illness. She had been found parked on the side of the freeway in Houston, the author’s hometown, “honking her horn, her car filled with notes in which she outlined federal agents’ plans to kill her.” These fears had been dogging her for a month, during which she sometimes “slept in her car, not going inside to shower or change,” the number of her imagined pursuers ballooning to the hundreds. After submerging her work computer in the bathtub, LaBrie’s mother had been fired from her job as a registered nurse.

By the time of the phone call, her mother had returned home from the psychiatric hospital outside Houston where she’d been drugged to sleep for 48 hours. She didn’t remember any of it, LaBrie’s grandmother explained; her mother was “back to normal,” looking for a new nursing job and blaming the diagnosis she received — severe depression — on “Houston traffic and the onset of menopause.”

In her affecting debut memoir, LaBrie chronicles her mother’s descent into what would eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenia, while also exploring the through-line of mental illness that snakes through her family history. Her great-grandmother Alma, whose own grandmother was enslaved, “spent most of her time in bed and was likely depressed before anyone used the word” — especially to describe a Black woman. LaBrie’s violent and erratic grandfather, may have been an undiagnosed schizophrenic. And, in an inner monologue that reveals snippets of bizarre behavior, LaBrie also worries about her own tenuous grasp on emotional stability, imagining mental illness “spreading its way through my mother and turning her into someone I don’t recognize, and then … making its way through her into me.”

If she compares her mother’s disorder to drought in California — “it could come and go and come and go and come back worse every time” — the sudden fits of rage she remembers from her childhood are like Houston thunderstorms, which “emerge fully formed out of what moments before appeared to be a cloudless sky.”

As her mother combs her hair one evening in their home — on the same upscale street in Houston’s Third Ward where Beyoncé and Solange Knowles are also being raised — a childish joke sends her mother into a spiral of violence: She hits LaBrie and locks her in a closet, where the girl sits in a blanket of darkness, rolling two turquoise marbles between her fingers. An argument about dog food results in their three dogs’ abandonment outside a strip mall; “I watch the dogs through the side mirrors chasing the car, trying to catch up, pink tongues lolling,” LaBrie writes. “Back home, she tells me to take off my pants, bends me over the bathtub and beats me with a belt until I finally start to cry.”

LaBrie escapes Texas to go to Brown, where she spends years desperately code-switching her way through predominantly white spaces that include a boozy college party where she is sexually assaulted, a creative writing fellowship at N.Y.U. and an internship at The New Yorker. She struggles to write a novel about time travel called “The Anatomy Book,” which she describes as a tumor. “But if I try to cut it out,” she tells a friend, “I’ll die.”

Her mother’s illness intrudes on her life throughout; her text messages “fill up my phone like dark poems.” Her mother hears the voice of the former Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon telling her she doesn’t have to open the door to her social worker or take her meds. Despite the ever-mounting pile of evidence to the contrary, LaBrie and her loved ones continue to support one another’s denial that her mother is sick. “Black people don’t go to therapy,” her grandmother insists, buying her daughter “some books on personal improvement” instead. LaBrie’s boyfriend, Ethan, blames her family’s issues on “bad luck,” and suggests she stop trying to “predict the future” (and his words become the title of this book). Her Aunt Tina tells her mental illness “didn’t happen to people you knew.”

In LaBrie’s hands this grim and messy story feels both urgent and imaginative. Though she sometimes writes with the flattened tone of someone trying desperately to sound OK while beating back demons, this effect is overshadowed by her sharp observations of worlds she feels excluded from. In college she and a Black friend find a “common enemy in the other girls studying literature, with their shiny hair, and eating disorders that make them look frail and breakable, like little, brittle Joan Didions in training.” In adulthood she thinks that “following the literary world feels more and more like watching the fragile children of aristocrats gingerly explore their talents while their friends applaud and the world around them burns.”

“No One Gets to Fall Apart” makes for an engrossing read, its hectic scenes held together by a psychically unmoored narrator whose wit and honesty make us trust her anyway.

NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART : A Memoir | By Sarah LaBrie | Harper | 213 pp. | $27.99

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