One Day by Ardashir Vakil
Published in Hardback (6 Feb 2003)
By Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN 0 241 14132X
292 pages
Guide Price: £14.99
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"From somewhere above them, as if he were a bird on a branch, Ben observed this comfortable wedlock embrace; white brother, brown sister, like a swivel of layered chocolate, dark and white. He hated white chocolate, so he imagined a pudding, one layer meringue, or even nougat, the other chocolate, not slices, not a gateau, but in the shape of a voluptuous swirl, a multiracial lolly, with some sort of roasted nuts, Hazelnuts perhaps. That should be his next recipe, number 32. He tried to find some way of remembering it before he fell asleep"

Ardashir Vakil's first novel 'Beach Boy' won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. His keenly anticipated second novel 'One Day' is a twenty-four hour journey into the troubled marriage of Ben Tennyson and his Indian wife, Priya. At a quarter past midnight, on the 15th March 1999, Ben lies in bed in their North London home reading 'The Inner Game of Tennis', while Priya masturbates. Their little boy, nicknamed, Whacka, sleeps in the room next door. He will be three tomorrow, and, as the couple discuss plans for his birthday party, each contemplates the rifts which have split their marriage over the last year, trying to summon the energy to gloss over their problems and put on a show for family and friends the next day.

Ben is a school teacher and failed cookery writer. Hopelessly blocked in his attempt to write a follow-up to his first successful book, his frustrations find an outlet in his weekly games of tennis, and a half-hearted flirtation with Helen, a colleague from school. His infidelity is in bitter response to his wife's. The spontaneity and passion that Ben finds himself powerless to resist in her, have led her to betray him again and again. As the day of the party dawns, Ardashir Vakil takes us, with compassion and devastating precision, on a journey into the heart of this marriage in crisis, examining why two people who love each other can succeed in hurting each other so much. In twenty-four hours of this couple's life, he brings to light many factors which have stretched this marriage to breaking point: the instinctive racism of Ben's parents, Priya's domestic ineptitude, money worries, Ben's career standstill, and, finally the stark fact, which haunts them both, that Priya has undermined her husband in the most fundamental way a woman can.

Ardashir Vakil's new novel is a restrained and beautiful dual character study of two immensely sympathetic, though flawed, people. It is a fin de siècle story of true depth and confirms the author's status as one of the country's brightest young writers.

ABOUT ARDASHIR VAKIL

Ardashir Vakil was born in Bombay, India. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters and teaches English at Hornsey School for Girls.

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