Product Description

A magnificent novel about war by one of the finest living British writers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31914 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

A blemished tour de force
With "Day" Miss Kennedy joins the distinguished group of women writers who describe actual combat in war. Brilliantly written, the underlying obsession is not war as such, but Miss Kennedy's own inner demons. An over-elaborate plot spoils the narrative.

"Day" is well researched, and wears its erudition lightly. The central character is realised in the round, and is attended by a large number of subsidiary characters. These are 2-dimensional, giving the book an empty, surreal quality. Miss K is good on wartime RAF slang and wartime RAF jokes, memorably so. Unfortunately this type of humour drives out her own personal brand of excoriating wit, which is less in evidence in "Day" than in any of her books so far. The focus on war-time horror slips far too frequently onto more gratuitous acts of violence.

As an anti-War book "Day" does not quite cut the mustard. Miss Kennedy's moral eye is squinting. The bombing of Hamburg is equated with the extermination of Jewish villagers by their Ukranian neighbours. Random acts of violence, including grievous bodily harm and parricide, are treated as adventitious. Miss Kennedy's moral indignation leads nowhere. The constant shifting of focus between place and time gives the story depth but is wearisome. The love interest is unconvincing, its emphasis on physicality leaving a vacuum at its heart.

Altogether "Day" reinforces the impression that Miss Kennedy is a wayward genius who is always worth reading but who never quite manages to get her act together, a short story writer rather than a novelist. Maddening.

Moving, enjoyable but also slow
Unlike one of the other reviewers, I devour books. Like him I found this book very impressive. I did enjoy it and found it very moving indeed - in no way did I regret buying it and reading it. However, unlike him I found it quite slow, not a page turner. Indeed it took me longer to read than any other book I can remember for a long time.

The hero is a complex character and we see his personality develop through the book as he emerges from an abusive childhood and finds a capacity to love. There are two, perhaps three objects of his love. Joyce, his crewmates with whom he fully expects - and wants to - die, and perhaps the Lancaster bomber in which he occupies the rear turret.

I have to say I missed the 'insanity' of which some of the other reviewers write. What I saw was a person reclaiming his memory and his life after shattering experiences during the war which come to life as he participates as an extra in a film about life in a PoW camp similar to the one in which he had been incarcerated.

The dialect he spoke was quite unfamiliar to me and I couldn't place it at all easily. This got in the way a bit at the beginning, but only for a few pages. It only reappears from time to time.

I do recommend this book.

A hypnotic read
One of the most innovative and compelling novels I have read in a long time. An original voice at last, and unputdownable. The reviewer who took the mickey out of the writing style was admittedly quite clever and funny, but I would argue that this novel is far more interesting in its style and content than so much of the dross out there. (You can satirise Dickens, Faulkner, or any of the other greats, too.)