The book covers their “will they, won’t they?” relationship over the next 20 years by focusing on each anniversary of that day to provide a snapshot of their lives over this time. The plot is an old chestnut: two Edinburgh undergraduates, one rich (Dexter) and one poor (Emma), don’t quite get it together on their final day before leaving university but recognise that they have a connection. The movies make life easier for us by usually stopping in the middle.I am not the target demographic of this piece of light fiction by most counts, but even so it passes the time amiably enough. Every single joyous love story ends in death if you follow it long enough. But it unfolds as it must: A film cannot begin with two such attractive people and follow them for years into unhappiness and misery. The film is carefully crafted to make even its sad moments seem not all that bad, and it modulates its progress toward happiness without unseemly haste. Such characters never live in forlorn places. The movie tells their story in a palatable rom-com manner, much enriched by its locations in Edinburgh, London, Paris and elsewhere. But it is important for us, and Emma, to realize that he is fundamentally a good person at heart - potentially. Her persistence and success are like a rebuke to Dexter. Dexter is a superficial fool who descends through ever-lowering levels of humiliation on TV, cable and the Internet, until he has been reduced to a punchline. The film depends on a reliable fictional element, the redeeming power of the love of a good woman. Since Emma and Dexter are both beautiful people, there is no imbalance there. The thread is never broken, not even after Dexter marries, and Emma takes up with Ian ( Rafe Spall, son of Timothy).

Some of these meetings are intentional, some accidental.

Life has its way of bringing them together for periodic updates. Emma becomes obscure quickly and only gradually becomes successful because she persists in believing in herself and her gift for writing. Dexter becomes famous quickly and fades inexorably because there is really nothing there.

Emma gets a job as a waitress in a Tex-Mex restaurant in London I believe I have actually dined at. Emma ( Anne Hathaway) is an earnest, hard-working girl. In the 1970s, he might have been known as a Hooray Henry.

One day nicholls