It's 1988, Emma and Dexter spend the night together after their graduation party. Both know that it's only going to be a one-night-stand. Nothing more, nothing less. Then suddenly we meet them again, year after year, that same day for twenty years. We meet them every year and we witness them growing up, apart but somehow always together. We fight the urge to slap Dexter in the face for being so selfish and narcissist and Emma for being so resigned to a shabby and anonymous life. Then they're slightly older and while Dexter seems to have hit the mark, being successful and famous, Emma is stuck in her dull life being beautiful and smart without knowing it. As Dexter's fall from grace begins, so starts Emma's awakening: Love seems to have found her; Dexter, on the other hand, is still changing sheets as quickly as he's changing his (nonexistent) underwear. The story goes on, I will not spoil the book for you, and the we, the readers, feel restless, almost begging for the timing to be right, year after year. We get angry, frustrated, sorry, happy and sad again. It's like watching painfully two people, who really want to see each other, getting off two separate trains on the same platform just a few minutes apart, enough not to meet each other. The author is describing life as it really is: unpredictable; Love as it really is: irrational and insecure; Fear as it really is: pulling us away from the only thing that could really make us happy. And then like in this Shakespear's Sisters song it dawns on you: 'Life is a strange thing. Just when you think you learned how to use it, it's gone'. Brilliant book, really.
