Il 15 luglio. Questo è il giorno a cui fa riferimento il libro. Inizia il 15 luglio del 1988, quando Emma e Dexter, i due protagonisti, si sono appena laureati. Compagni di università, finiscono a letto, per poi abbandonarsi dopo una notte di divertimento e una giornata passata insieme. Ma non si dimenticano. Li incontriamo a distanza di un anno, sempre il 15 luglio, e li vediamo crescere, da quando erano ventiduenni, per 20 anni.

Emma fa la cameriera in un ristorante messicano, si innamora di un collega, comico nel tempo perso, abbandona tutto per diventare insegnante. Dexter viaggia, trova la sua strada nel mondo della televisione, veloce come una meteora, improvvisamente famoso, improvvisamente dimenticato, si consola nell’alcol e nelle droghe, mette la testa a posto, diventa un uomo, un marito, un padre.

E poi…

Un giorno, David Nicholls, pubblicato in Italia da Neri Pozza (io l’ho letto nell’edizione in lingua originale).

She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today’s Emma. […] No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionat as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intesity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived againist a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer nor poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not over happy.

Temevo fosse banale, o sdolcinato. Invece no. Fa ridere, fa un po’ piangere, fa immedesimare, fa credere in alcuni punti che stia parlando di te. Bello.

*giuliaduepuntozero