Day: A novel

Day: A novel
by A.L. Kennedy

Day: A novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: A.L. Kennedy
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-08
ISBN: 0307266834
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Knopf

Book Reviews of Day: A novel

Book Review: Walking Wounded
Summary: 4 Stars

Alfie Day has been an RAF tail gunner and a starved and beaten POW. The sole survivor of his bomber crew, five years have passed, but he remains one of the millions of walking wounded, living in the scarcity and devastation of post-war Britain. A fishmonger's battered son, he'd half hoped the war would end a life he'd been taught was worthless. Now he struggles with survivors' guilt and a swarm of stabbing memories, bright with the hyper reality of childhood abuse and twenty-nine night bombing missions. The author's elegant prose carries the reader past the near dumb shows of Day's conversation, deep into the clear, always swirling eddies of his thought. This is a man who knows far more than he shows, who processes the violence he's endured. Hoping to find his way out of a paralyzing numbness, he travels to Germany to take part in a movie set in a POW camp. Here the Past, both in memory and in the form of an escaped SS man, confront him. He remembers, hopelessly, the few moments of tenderness in his life, a war time affair with a married woman. Occasionally Day's stream of consciousness left me behind, but the exquisite precision of the writing brought an emotional punch to each and every scene. DAY gives the reader World War ll warts and all, without pieties or flag-waving. Ms. Kennedy, who has won prestigious awards for earlier works, again demonstrates a humbling mastery of her art.

Summary of Day: A novel

The New York Times has called her "a world-class fiction writer." One of Britain's most iconoclastic and highly acclaimed young writers ("If you are at all interested in contemporary fiction, this is work you must not miss"-Richard Ford)-twice selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award-A. L. Kennedy now gives us a brilliant new novel about war for which she is receiving the strongest reviews of her career.

Alfie Day, RAF airman and former World War II POW, never expected to survive the war. He may not have even wanted to-choosing to be a tail gunner-exposed, alone and watchful for his skipper and his crew through night after night of bombing missions. Now, five years after the end of the war and more alone than ever, Alfie finds himself drawn to unearth those intense, strangely passionate days by working as an extra on a POW film. What he will discover on the set about himself, his loves and the world around him will make the war itself look simple.

Day
is a superbly realized, emotionally charged, deeply affecting drama about the violence of modern life, and the intensity and courage to be found in the closeness of death. Blazing with Kennedy's characteristic virtuosity, wit and narrative invention, Day is funny and moving, wise and sad, a dazzlingly original performance from one of the most gifted writers of our time.

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