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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Relationships and Time
Social Class
Coming of Age and the Search for Meaning
Addiction and Recovery
Summary
Analysis
Monday, July 15, 2002. Dexter and Emma’s alarm goes off in the morning at Dexter’s flat. Dexter has actually been awake for a while thinking. He asks Emma if she wants to move in. Emma is excited but has some reservations, including what that would mean for Jasmine. Dexter says they can work something out for when Jasmine stays over. Dexter’s place is still a bachelor pad and relatively small, so Emma suggests perhaps they buy a new place together. Dexter likes the idea.
In some stories, the reunion of Dexter and Emma would be a happy ending, but while One Day is a novel about romance, it doesn’t follow the most conventional structure of many romance novels, which typically feature a happy ending. Despite the seemingly fated nature of Dexter and Emma’s relationship, they still face challenges like how their moving in could affect Dexter’s relationship with his daughter.
Themes
Dexter goes to work at his new job running a coffee shop. Emma suggested it to him since he has an interest in food and knows what to import. Dexter and Emma lived together in Paris for a while before coming back to London. No one was surprised by their relationship, particularly not Dexter’s father, who still remembers Emma’s first visit where she called him a fascist. He gave Dexter money that Dexter’s mother left behind to start his café—privately, he expects Dexter to lose the money on the new business, but he's just grateful Dexter is getting out of TV. Dexter’s Paris-inspired café opened in April. Though initially it had few customers, eventually word about it spread. He feels successful again, albeit in a smaller way, and he hasn’t had any alcohol in a long time.
Just as Emma’s work as a teacher helped her to find her current career as a children’s author, Dexter’s wild partying life in London helps lead him to a more mature job as the owner of a café, where he applies his interest in food to a different, potentially more positive task. Emma provides Dexter with the encouragement that he needs to believe in himself—as Dexter pursues a goal that even Dexter’s father doesn’t really believe he’ll succeed in. Dexter’s success, while modest, shows how his goals in life have changed, and his lack of drinking shows how his current life lacks the anxieties that his old life did.
Themes
Meanwhile, Emma is at her own flat working on scripts for the Julie Criscoll television series and writing the third book. She gets distracted, however, thinking of Dexter’s offer to move in. Back in Paris, when they first started dating, they planned on never living together or falling into conventional married life. At the time, the arrangement felt modern and sophisticated, but now Emma thinks she might want a child. Dexter has seemed potentially open to the idea, but she is now 36, and if Dexter isn’t interested, she might have to find someone else.
Dexter faced disappointments in his first marriage, and perhaps due to her ideals, Emma herself has always seemed skeptical of mainstream milestones like marriage and having children. But this passage shows how age can change people and cause them to reevaluate the things that they want in a romantic relationship, perhaps reversing how they felt when they were younger.
Themes
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Emma goes for a swim, then rides her bicycle to Dexter’s flat. There, Callum and Sylvie arrive to drop off Jasmine. Emma doesn’t speak to Callum much after Dexter’s divorce, even though she’s known Callum for almost 20 years. They talk briefly about how Callum and Sylvie are headed to Mexico, then leave Jasmine with Emma. Emma asks Jasmine if she wants to go to the zoo while they wait for Dexter to finish work.
Emma’s need to interact with Callum and Sylvie shows again how her relationship with Dexter comes with challenges that she will have to learn to overcome. Her ability to be cordial with the two of them, in spite of how they treated Dexter in the past, showing how she has matured and learned to put aside differences, in this case for the sake of Jasmine.
Themes
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In her car, Sylvie regrets getting together with Callum, who comes home late, possibly having affairs, and is harsh with Jasmine. Her family also hates Callum more than they hated Dexter. Still, Sylvie also resents Dexter, who seems to her to be boasting about his happiness. She thinks Emma was always lurking in their lives, ready to make her move and become Jasmine’s step-mother. She remembers that it was she who left Dexter and regrets it.
Sylvie’s life always seemed to ideal to Dexter from the outside, but this passage shows how she faces her own problems as she has to live with the consequences of her actions. Just as Dexter got drawn in by Sylvie’s beauty and class, Sylvie got taken in by Callum’s business success, which hid his negative personality traits.
Themes
