Just One Day

I did not think I was going to enjoy this novel as much as I did. It starts off sounding like a cliche YA novel about a boy and a girl but turns into so much more than that.

I loved that Allyson grew so much as a character throughout the novel and that Forman showed that sometimes friendships grow as well. I also really loved the idea that just one day can change your life. I didn't know too much about the story going into it but I really want to start Just One Year and find out Williems side of things.

It was just a charming story about finding yourself that is usually so formulaic and Forman found a way to make it refreshing and lovely. It was a trip I loved being on and was very sad when it came to an end.

Reseña Publicada en: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

(Actualizado: 18-10-2013)

Me tomó mucho tiempo pensar en las palabras adecuadas para empezarles a hablar de este maravilloso libro, aún no las encuentro.

Les puedo hablar de los suspiros que mi gato daba cada vez que lo dejaba caer o lo empujaba cuando terminaba de leer un párrafo y simplemente tenía que pararme a sacar toda la emoción que cada palabra me daba. O como esas mismas emociones me alentaban a leer a mi velocidad máxima y a la vez me pedían disminuir para disfrutarlas más tiempo.

Just One Day, es un libro para vivir, un libro para mancharse. Uno en el cual no debes detenerte a pensar en el tiempo, porque en este momento, mientras leemos, el tiempo no nos pertenece, no show more existe. Un libro que te llevará a una resaca literaria de las fuertes. Es de los que, al menos a mí, me hizo preguntarme que infiernos he hecho con mi vida, por qué la he dejado estancada, y como hasta ahora sigo esperando el después.

Los pesonajes, Allyson, Dee, Mel... Willem, las mismas situaciones, los paisajes que nunca he visto, absolutamente todo calza a la perfección. Y como mencioné: las emociones. Hay tantas, tan variadas, un gesto, una acción, todo me hizo sentirme parte del libro.

Allyson "Lulu" es grandiosa, no tiene superpoderes, no salvará al mundo, pero se salva a ella misma de algo que ni siquiera sabía. Personalmente me inspira mucho. En los momentos en que quizá en cualquier otro libro un personaje como el de ella podría parecer débil, Gayle (Oh, grandiosa Gayle, ¿Por qué no nos habíamos conocido todavía?) te cuenta su historia de una manera tan "fácil" y con eso me refiero a que conectas con el personaje inmediatamente. Y logra ver a estas maravillosas personas a su alrededor, aquellas de las cuales tenía tanto miedo ver, Dee, amo a Dee, un personaje complejo, demasiado querible.

Y por supuesto Willem. ¿Quién eres? ¿Dónde estás? Y sobre todo ¿Por qué? ¿Qué está mal? ¿Qué escondes? Déjala cuidarte. Es todo lo que puedo decir de él, es lo que sentí en el libro, todo el dolor, la emoción y la incertidumbre.

Si no quedó claro, Just One Day se ha vuelto uno de mis libros favoritos. Un libro que nos enseña como bien lo dice Dee, a no suponer las cosas y saber esperar una respuesta, y sobre todo dejarse llevar por los accidentes. Una completa joya literaria, si no lo has leído, no sé que esperas, este libro te enseñará a amar para luego romperte el corazón.

Reseña Completa: : El Extraño Gato del Cuento

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Primeros pensamientos (18 - 09 - 2013)

Demasiadas emociones, no dormí por leer, me perdí todo un día por leer. Tuve que parar casi en cada párrafo porque simplemente: show less

GUH.

GUH.

GUH.





How do I even begin? I am madly in love with Gayle Foreman and have been since all of Mia's ride in If I Stay/Where She Went.

This book was entirely new and entirely different and I still ate the whole thing in less than six hours, stayed up reading until one or two in the morning because I literally could not put it down and walk away from this book. This book is gorgeous and it handles so much about learning to grow up and be more than a child. How to reach out into the world and start tasting things. People. Life. Choices. Food. Countries. Travel. And, of course, love.

Allyson and Willem's "one day" is a gorgeous, faulted, but very learning filled day. But it is still One Day. One Day to change your life, your self, your show more heart, and how you see the world. Even if that means it might break all of those things into pieces you can no longer recognize when you wake up the morning after it.

My heart went so many different directions in this book. Allyson is compelling. Her learning to break out, her falling under the tide, and her fighting back. Especially her great epiphany at the end, when she realizes everything might not be little girl dreams of rainbows and ponies, but that this entire miracle-and-mistake trial has made her into an amazing human being, capable of so much walking, flying and stumbling. That she's a better person for all of it.



I can't wait to see how Willem's "One Year" went, but I have my grand theory already.

As Dee warned everyone from the reader to Allyson very, very early on, "Stop jumping to conclusions!" show less

Read this in - what else - just one day. It lived up to my expectations (I loved If I Stay and Where She Went), and then some. (Why don't more authors write pairs of books instead of trilogies?) Part One covers the "one day" that Allyson spends with Willem in Paris; Part Two (from p. 143) covers the following year, Allyson's first at college in Cambridge, MA (unstated, but...Harvard?).

Just One Day is a perfect example of a "new adult" book, covering the transition period from high school to college. Allyson is a "good girl" who lets her mother run every detail of her life; her one impulsive day in Paris throws her off course. She enters a downward spiral, getting bad grades in her first semester classes (pre-med classes her mother show more picked out for her), failing to make friends with her roommates, and growing apart from her childhood best friend, Melanie, who is undergoing changes of her own while at college in New York (NYU-Gallatin).

It is thanks to the gentle intervention of a guidance counselor who helps her sign up for some different classes her second semester that Allyson begins to come out of her depression. In a Shakespeare class, she makes her first real friend, the multifaceted Dee. Once she tells him about Paris and Willem - who she has been trying to forget - he convinces her to find him. They get her roommates on board, and that summer Allyson stands up to her parents, refusing internships and working in a local restaurant to earn the money to return to Paris and track Willem down.

In her quest to find Willem, Allyson encounters, and opens up to, a whole crowd of Europeans and travelers, including a helpful bunch of Aussies and the sweet, memorable Wren. She is independent, persistent, flexible, and spontaneous in a way she has never been, which makes it a different kind of travel than the Teen Tours! trip with Melanie the previous summer.

Needless to say, I can't wait for Willem's parallel story in Just One Year.

Quotes:

And again, I hear myself and can hardly believe it. When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that's how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be meek and polite....I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. (24)

...maybe once you open the trapdoor of honesty, there's no going back. (41)

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things....It never occurred to me that by pretending...I might slip into that other column, even for just a day. (41)

But right now, I have a feeling that this train is not just delivering me to Paris, but to someplace entirely new. (41)

"I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it. When you travel, you put yourself out there. (Willem, 49)

Willem laughs again. The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness. (83)

"Sometimes you can't know until you know," he says. (Willem, 83)

Down the expanse of [the Seine], I can see a series of arched bridges, draped like expensive bracelets over an elegant wrist. (88)

Is it his nearness that makes the city so intoxicating or the city that makes his nearness so irresistible? (89)

...but his expression has only hardened, fear having been joined by its twin brother, anger. (110)

Part of me knows one more day won't do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day. (130)

Orlando: "For ever and a day."
Rosalind: "Say 'a day' without the 'ever.'" (224)

"Ain't such a line between faking and being." (Dee to Allyson, 225)

"That just makes me a liar."
"No it doesn't. You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place." (Allyson and Dee, 237)

"Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." (Melanie to Allyson, 283)

It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found - and then lost - so many things in Paris. (283)

[Wren] believes in saints. I believe in accidents. I think we basically believe in the same thing. (350)

He just stands there...looking at me like I am a ghost, which I suppose I am. But if he knows anything at all about Shakespeare, it's that the ghosts always come haunting. (369) show less

Allyson has always been "the good girl" -- a good student, responsible, not prone to going wild or taking chances. She's just finished high school, and her parents have sent her on a tour of Europe before heading off to college in the fall. At the end of the tour, Allyson and her best friend break away from the group in Stratford-upon-Avon to see an experimental, outdoor production of Twelfth Night. Ally feels an instant connection with Willem, one of the actors, but expects that she will never see him again. When she meets him again the next day on the train to London, they discuss her recent travels, including the fact that the tour group didn't get to see Paris because of a baggage handlers' strike. Allyson has one more day in London show more before going back to the USA, which she is supposed to spend with friends of friends. When Willem offers to take her to Paris instead, Allyson decides to step out of her comfort zone and take a chance -- to be "Lulu," the persona she associates with the quirky nickname Willem gives her. And, despite some moments of worry and doubt, it is a magical day. But then, after spending the night with Willem in an artists' squat, Allyson wakes up alone. Willem is gone, without explanation, and Allyson is alone in an unfamiliar part of an unfamiliar city, where she does not speak the language, without money (she spent the last of it the previous day) or a working cell phone. She feels like she's been played. She manages to get in touch with the guide from her tour company, who negotiates transportation back to her friends in London, but it's a harsh return to reality for Allyson. Over the following year, Allyson struggles with questions and doubts. She's back to being the repressed, almost robotic "good girl," doing what her parents expect, but it's making her miserable. Is there any of "Lulu" left, or did Allyson leave her behind after that one day in Paris? And what happened to Willem? Will Allyson ever get the chance to return to Paris and find out?

I thought this book was all right, but not fantastic. I didn't get a real sense of Willem's character (though I'm sure the sequel will clear that up, as it's the story from his point of view, basically), so I couldn't really appreciate Allyson's fixation on him. Also, I thought their day in Paris was pretty lame, honestly. I mean, I can understand not wanting to do touristy things after being on a long guided tour, but if I ever go to Paris, I want to see more than a nightclub, a cafe, an artists' squat, and a random park. I liked the Shakespearean bits, of course, but any book with scenes set in a college class has to be careful it doesn't come across as overly didactic. This book teeters on the edge of that line, for sure. I also got a little impatient with Allyson's angst. But not to be too critical, I did enjoy the book as a whole, and I liked the ambiguity of the ending (though I note that many reviewers did not). I will probably read the sequel when it comes out. show less

I was very nervous coming into this book, because I didn't want to be disappointed. I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed at all. Gayle Forman is definitely one of my favorite authors now.

There's something about the writing that I love. It's very unusual for me to love this kind of writing, because I usually get bored pretty quickly with it, but the way Forman writes, it's enough to be very beautiful, but also enough to keep me invested in the story.

I absolutely loved the traveling part of the story. I loved Allyson's adventures in Paris with and without Willem. It was fun to read about what they did, because I know I would never have to guts to do that in a foreign country.

Allyson is such a relatable character. At some points I was show more thinking to myself "I completely understand what she means". It was refreshing to read. I also really loved the college aspect of the story. Not too many stories revolve around college, and this one covers the first year, and Allyson's self discovery, as she tries to figure out what will make her happy.

I also loved the Shakespeare aspect. Shakespeare is written throughout the novel, and I really enjoyed reading about Allyson's Shakespeare class.

I can go on and on, but I think you can see that I loved this story, and I can't wait for Just One Year, because the ending kind of leaves you hanging. show less

After loving (and perhaps because of loving) Forman’s previous books, If I Stay and Where She Went, I felt great disappointment over this one.

It’s a story about Allyson Healey, 18, who has lived her whole life closely managed by her caring but uber-helicopter mom. She never really experiences any freedom. For just one day, however, she happens to “escape” by impulsively leaving a “teen tour” of Europe and then spending the time in Paris with a handsome Dutch Shakespearean actor named Willem.

Thereafter, Allyson is never the same. And now it is we, the readers, who are never free: of the expressions of angst, the obsession with Willem (who everyone says is a womanizing cad anyway), the identity crises, the endless permutations show more of “who am I really?”, and the inevitable journey to Oz to get back her courage.

Discussion: There is a great deal of heavy-handedness in this novel. With the help of a character who is a college Shakespeare teacher, Forman goes for didacticism and repetition to anvil onto our heads – over and over - the themes of confused identity in Shakespeare’s plays, and the correspondences to Allyson’s life. [Here is just one of the many, many examples, as Professor Glenny talks about “As You Like It”]: "The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love.”

When Allyson, endlessly ruminating on her one day with Willem, has one of her many “epiphanies” late in the book, saying “Maybe it was just pretend. But at some point, it stopped being pretend,” I wanted to yell to her, “at some point”: get over it!!!!!!!”

Evaluation: The main character in this “coming of age” novel takes “only” a year to grow, but to this reader, it felt like eons. (I would call it "A Coming of Jurassic Age" novel.)

Note: There is to be a sequel, presenting the story from Willem’s point of view. Let’s hope he’s more interesting. show less