Fabio Volo

O Dia que Faltava

One More Day

Angela Guilherme

*I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Fabio Volo has three books published in Portugal (including this one) and I was curious to read something by him so, when I saw this book available at NetGalley, I just had to request it...

I have no idea if the fact of having read an english translation made any difference, but the truth is, up until more than half of the book I was finding the story a somewhat boring and the protagonist even more boring... Luckily this does get better, perhaps in the last third of story, and I ended up liking One More Day. I do believe it was after the title made sense that the story became more pleasurable to read.

At first sight, Giacomo has everything he could possibly want: life is going pretty well professionally, he has a comfortable financial situation and he has plenty of success with women. But there is something missing from his life, something not even he can identify.

Giacomo catches the tram to work and everyday he sees on it a young woman to whom he has never spoken to, but with whom he spends the whole trip fantasising about. One day the woman passes by him as she's leaving the tram and invites him to go get a coffee with her and Giacomo accepts. And that is when she confesses to having noticed him too, and to having noticed him noticing her, and announces that this was her last tram journey since she's accepted a job in New York.

And that's when Giacomo's obsession with Michela (the woman from the tram) reaches its peak because, on the one hand his day has lost the one thing that gave it any heart (seeing her and fantasising about her) and on the other hand because he regrets never approaching her when he had the chance. Influenced by his friend Silvia, Giacomo ends up travelling to New York with nothing more than her work address.

And it is when they meet again that Michela reveals she was hoping he would try to find her. They decide to spend together the next nine days, until Giacomo has to return to Italy, and to pretend to be engaged, an engagement with an end date, to be terminated on the ninth day, which will allow them to avoid all the constraints of new relationships between people who are still getting to know each other.

And that is basically what they do, they get to know each other during the course of their fake engagement. They don't just engage in intimacy, they also have profound conversations, reveal each other secrets, exchange confidences and are absolutely honest with each other. It was very refreshing to see the beginning and the evolution of their relationship, especially because I'm also a firm believer in the necessity to have complete honesty for a relationship to work. But this is a relationship with an expiration date and what will happen when Giacomo realizes the days he's had with Michela are not enough?

My biggest problem with this book is the fact that the story is told in first person, by the protagonist Giacomo, and I only started liking him when he begins his relationship with Michela in New York. Until then, I found him to be a whiner, spoiled and a coward and, even though I could understand the circumstances that determined the way he was, I just could never care enough for him. I liked Michela much more, even though I thought she relied on fate too much...

It was mostly after their separation that the story really pulled me, especially because that is when the change that has been occurring in Giacomo is really visible.

In short, I liked this contemporary romance, with something of a modern time fairy tale, but I didn't identify with the protagonist and I couldn't really cheer for him. Oh, and the big revelation at the end? I saw it coming a mile away. Which doesn't mean it wasn't a nice final touch...

The book's teaching? If we spend our lives fantasising, but never do anything to try and achieve those fantasies, we'll never know what could have been, and we may lose the best thing that would ever happen to us.

O Dia que Faltava

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