Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #249156 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

The Economist
`well deserved to win the 2007 Costa book of the year award...sophisticated texture...Kennedy manages to make every battle truism fresh'

Scotland on Sun
` 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.'

Sunday Times Ecosse, Gillian Bowditch
'bleak...undershot with redeeming humour"

Customer Reviews

Imaginative but not engrossing
A L Kennedy's brilliance and creative use of language are not in doubt; but for once, they fall a little short for me this time. The story of Alfie Day, his relationships with the rest of his bomber crew and with others such as his lover, apear in fragments to be pieced together, as they come to his mind. Much of the narrative is almost stream-of-consciousness in style, and we learn only as Alfie comes to it in his own time, that he is a darker character than we suspect at first. There is murder, there is war, there is a tortured love affair; and yet somehow the book left me feeling that nothing had really happened at the end of it.

Heartrending, beautiful WW2 novel
If you've read anything by AL Kennedy before you'll recognise her singular combination of human insight, masterly plotting and structure and inventive, almost hypnotic language. Here it all comes together to create one of the best war stories I've ever read. But you don't have to be a WW2 buff to enjoy this - it's much more than just a war story. Meticulously researched, there's dark humour, understated tragedy and one of the most successful fictional attempts I can recall to get right inside the skin of another human being; and given that human being - Alfie, a young tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber - is so different from the author in so many ways, it's an incredible feat. I can't recommend this book highly enough, and will be passing it on to friends and family - and strangers in the street, probably!

Magnificent!

I read in another review once, don't waste your time reading this review, go out and buy the book. You should do that now, this book is awesome.

Still here?

Oh well...

The Day of the title is Alfie Day, former RAF sergeant and gunner in a Lancashire bomber. The year is 1949 and Day is back in Germany in an ersatz prison camp as an extra in a prisoner of war film. Probably not a good idea as Day previously was a prisoner of war in a German prisoner of war camp.

Alfie could be said to be suffering from post-traumatic stress, although such terms didn't exist then. Then, you just got on with it. Or not. Alfie feels like he is floating, not connected to the world. Sometimes he tries to solve this by sitting very quietly, or lying flat on the ground on his back, or by howling. Day loves a good old howl.

There is something of Catch 22 about the camp. Some of the extras are digging a tunnel, escapes, ruses are being plotted. And factions are building up - there are the Good Germans, the Ukrainians, people with pasts they are trying to hide.

Unfortunately for Alfie his past is right there in his head and this past is the story of the novel; the first meetings with his crew, flying bombing raids, going out to London, meeting and falling in love with Joyce, his brutal father and the mother he loves. His life in the bookshop where he worked before going to the film camp.

Kennedy is a short story writer and that perhaps shows. This book is made up of many episodes, a drunken train journey, a night in a shelter, a particular raid. The writing is fabulous, Day a brilliant, confused and mixed up character.

And this is a book about war, about bombing people and being bombed, about what that does to you and them whoever `them' may be.

One of the Costa book judges said that this is a masterpiece. It is. Kennedy said her writing is like anal sex. It's much, much better than that.