The Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ book One Day had 5.3 million views in the first four days, was one of ten most-watched shows globally during that first week, and scored 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. The twist ending is emotionally intense, and viewers shared film of themselves in floods of tears. The 2011 film had nowhere near the same response. There is also the original bestselling novel (2009). One Day follows decades of the ambivalent relationship of Emma and Dexter, who meet every year on the 15th of July, St Swithin’s Day, the day they graduated and first got together. It’s a long tale of intense mutual attraction and friendship, but much of the time there are tensions and conflicts that keep them apart.
So all of this got me thinking about what the secret is of shows, films, books, that have this galvanising effect on their viewers and readers. And I thought about what the reader, or the viewer, actually experiences, in a lengthy immersion in two characters’ lives over a long period of fictional time.
You can fall in love with a book
You’re attracted to it, it seems to call out to you, you start reading, you get absorbed, it makes you feel things, you feel it’s a perfect match for you, but then it surprises you, lets you down, but you keep reading to see if it does what you think it will – you hope it knows you well enough to give you what you want from it, but you fear it might disappoint you. When you finish it, you may want to never look at it again, it’s been so disappointing – or you may want to re-read it, go over the whole thing with hindsight, read it again and again.
And maybe – maybe – the book feels the same way about you. Are you the book’s ideal reader? How well does it know you?
Does all that sound like a slow-burn romance? Maybe it does.
It’s all about desire
Reader and book (or viewer and mini-series) spend a long period of time getting to know each other. Slow-burn romances have that element of time in them, and memory, and they make the reader (or viewer) think. How do we experience time passing? How do we experience memory? And if we remember something, something that happened a while ago, we’re experiencing loss, because it’s something we no longer have. So that brings in a tinge of sadness, but also a sense of what’s valuable, what we want to keep, even if time is always trying to take it away from us.
Then it is, of course, about a mutual attraction and repulsion, where there is a certain amount of irony, so the reader, or even other characters, can see the attraction, but the couple themselves can’t see it, or they feel it’s a mistake. And this makes the reader think about romantic love, what it is, and whether or not it’s something completely individual to two people, and no one else will do. The main tension comes from this dynamic, and the emotional intensity comes from all those feelings about time, memory, loss, intimacy. We want this on-off, will-they won’t-they saga to have a conclusion. So in a sense, the reader longs for fulfilment, and has their doubts about whether the book will deliver, just as the characters do. No wonder this relationship between reader and book is referred to as ‘desire’ in literary theory.
The reader, it seems, enjoys the drawn-out suspense and withholding of the ending, so that the ending is at the same time satisfying and leaves you with a sense of loss – because you’ve come to the end of the book (or the mini-series) – and that’s something you’ve lost, even though you were waiting for an ending to the story of the lovers.
And that makes me wonder whether a slow-burn ending is better as a happy or as a tragic one – to go with that sense of loss when you come to the end of the tale. Because maybe if the characters also experience loss at the same time as the reader, a sad ending is more satisfying, in a strange kind of way. So the reader mourns the loss of the mounting tensions and the love story at the same time as the characters mourn the loss of their potential happiness, and regret their lost opportunities.
The slow burn of reading
So reading (or viewing) a slow-burn romance is a slow-burn romance in itself. For the reader of novels, or the viewer of a mini-series, the aim is to have some sort of dynamic relationship with the text or screen, so our experience is constantly changing, as we evaluate, reassess, rejoice, are shocked, are saddened, and above all we know what the ending “ought to be”, but at the same time we don’t want the experience to end. So our desire is always at play in the reading process. And slow-burn romance seems especially to embody that relationship of the reader with a book, or viewer’s relationship with a mini-series, as our own desire mirrors that of the characters.
We are always at the same time more knowing than the characters, but also unable to intervene: we can’t make the Princess Formosanta and Prince Amazan notice each other from the decks of their passing ships (The Princess of Babylon), we can’t make Mr Darcy tell Lizzy Bennet he loves her for herself (Pride and Prejudice), we can’t get Sadie and Sam to see into each other’s minds and realise they aren’t betraying each other (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow).
So we’re continually playing a game with the book, as we read it for the first time, and when we read it again, or if we read another book in the same genre. A character in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow talks about “[t]he idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent ever…” Which is a way of thinking about the genre of the slow-burn romance – we know the game, the goal, and the rules, and so we confidently pick up another slow-burn romance and immerse ourselves in it.
Look out for my next post, where I’ll be delving deeper into five slow-burn romances.