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.
This disorienting prose style is the true strength of Day; in fact, it's the key that makes the entire story work. Without the constant shift of perspective and non-linear story line, we would never stand in Alfie's shoes, and that's the whole point. We must follow Alfie, be Alfie to the end, because learning what Alfie learns is the ultimate lesson of life, a lesson that that may ultimately save us from war. (Reviewed by Sarah Sacha Dollacker).
Boston Globe - Margot Livesey
This is not to say that there are not moments of clarity in the novel, indeed many moments. What is less clear is how they fit together in a way that allows readers to both remember and look forward.
San Francisco Chronicle - Martin Rubin
Here is the authentic voice of postwar British disillusionment. What an imagination in one born so long afterward to render it so perfectly. What stops "Day" from being merely the depressing story of a crack-up is Alfred's abiding humaneness. Even as he mourns dead comrades and the devastation wrought on a loved one by the enemy, even as he suffers at the hands of the Nazis, still he finds it in himself to pity the nation and its people whom it is his job to help bomb. This novel does not flinch from war's complexities and realities, and as a result, is an insightful and moving testament, public as well as private.
Kirkus Reviews
Living within Day's consciousness can be a claustrophobic reading experience.
Publishers Weekly
Alfred's interior thoughts (offset in italics) as well as ingenious forays into the second person (where he's presumably talking to himself). It takes getting used to, but adds texture and intimacy to this timely story about the detrimental effects of war on a good man.
The Guardian - Ursula K Le Guin
A woman born in 1965 who writes a novel about an RAF bomber crew in the second world war needs a gift for bringing history alive, as well as guts and true bravado. AL Kennedy has them all. Her picture of what war does to people burns with wisely unstated saeva indignatio. The young gunner who is the central figure of the book is drawn with profound sympathy. Her narrative gift is great. Yet the book never quite worked for me.
Times (London) - Helen Dunmore
Crew is everything, and the rest of life falls away. After the war, when the crew is finished and the retellings and recriminations begin, there is nowhere left for the man Alfred has become. His lost, angry, passionate conversation with himself is the best and most sustained thing in the book.
The Daily Telegraph - Jane Shilling
Day is a remarkable performance: an eerily convincing act of ventriloquism in which the internal monologue of a deeply troubled and inarticulate young man is transmuted into language that conveys the blunt, painful, sometimes beautiful and often comic flashing of his thoughts.
Scotland on Sunday - Stuart Kelly Day confirms, if confirmation were needed, that Kennedy is a singular, superlative author. I hope that the judges of this year's Man Booker prize pay particular attention to it.
The Independent - Catherine Taylor
Once again, Kennedy brilliantly interweaves overwrought internal dialogue with external outrageous acts. The unfolding tenderness of nature and of amity blend superbly with the casualness of daily horror.
The Independent - Katy Guest
We will probably never know whether Kennedy was thinking of Iraqi civilians when she wrote this, and she may say that it is irrelevant. But in a rare moment of openness, she did once speak up for the importance of fiction. "It is the form that proves most deeply that other human beings are as human as we are," she says.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Cody G. Disappointing... Kennedy, learn from this mistake. Too much vulgarity and vanity. Kennedy has disappointed many readers who don't appreciate a lot of vulgarity. Kennedy should stop writing books if this behavior continues in other titles written by her....
Alfred Day's attempt to face
the disillusionment of war on a
film set is similar to what
society at the time was doing at
the movie theaters. The massive
movie hits of the 40s and
50s, like To Hell and Back,
allowed moviegoers on both sides of the Atlantic to relive moments of the war, if they had been directly involved, or to
understand the nature of war, if
they were not.
Since war broke out in 1939,
World War II has been a favorite
topic with movie studios in the
USA and UK, and no doubt in
other allied nations, but the
vision of the war has changed
over the decades. In the 40s and
50s, while Europe and America
were rebuilding, the movies were
patriotic and laudatory of each
nation's triumphs (while...
Set in 1943, April In Paris, by first time German novelist Wallner, is the dramatic story of an impossible love between a German soldier and a French Resistance fighter in occupied Paris.
Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class. At its center this is a profound–and profoundly moving–exploration of shame, forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.
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Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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Boston Globe - Margot Livesey
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by Cody G.
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