Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too. Before Hitler and the bombs he was a boy in Staffordshire, helpless to defend his mother, to resist his abusive father. The RAF gave him order, skills, another family and a way to be a man. It taught him how to burn through lifetimes on night ops and brief, sweet leaves, surviving the unsurvivable. But it didn't prepare him for capture, for the prison camp and the chaos as the war wound down. It didn't prepare him for an empty peace. Now it's 1949 and Alfred is doing the impossible again, winding back time to see where he lost himself. He has taken the role of an extra in a Pow film. Shipped out to Germany and an ersatz camp, he picks his way through the cliches that will become all that's left of his war and begins to do what he's never dared - to remember. He is looking for some semblance of hope: trying to move forward by going back. A superbly realised novel about the brutal simplicities of war - of horror, and the camaraderie found in the closeness to death - and a moving exploration of the complexities of human emotion, "Day" is a wonderful piece of storytelling: the freight of history and humanity carried effortlessly by the beauty of the writing. For previous readers of A.L. Kennedy's books the dark humour, close observation and thrillingly original language will come as no surprise; for new readers, this novel will be a revelation.
Day
and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more. |
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
'bleak...undershot with redeeming humour"
-- Sunday Times Ecosse, Gillian Bowditch
` 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.' -- Scotland on Sun
`well deserved to win the 2007 Costa book of the year award...sophisticated texture...Kennedy manages to make every battle truism fresh' -- The Economist
"A stunning read" -- Daily Mail
"Day is a remarkable performance" -- Sunday Telegraph
"The freight of history and humanity is carried effortlessly by
Kennedy in this exquisite novel" -- So London Magazine
"a forceful, wholly achieved piece of work by a writer of enormous power... ought to win all the prizes going." -- Daily Telegraph, April 16, 2007
"what Kennedy sets out to accomplish, she achieves" -- Sunday Herald, April 22, 2007
'An utterly engrossing read' -- Metro
'Kennedy writes with a finely calculated poetic freedom' -- The Herald
-- Sunday Times Ecosse, Gillian Bowditch
` 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.' -- Scotland on Sun
`well deserved to win the 2007 Costa book of the year award...sophisticated texture...Kennedy manages to make every battle truism fresh' -- The Economist
"A stunning read" -- Daily Mail
"Day is a remarkable performance" -- Sunday Telegraph
"The freight of history and humanity is carried effortlessly by
Kennedy in this exquisite novel" -- So London Magazine
"a forceful, wholly achieved piece of work by a writer of enormous power... ought to win all the prizes going." -- Daily Telegraph, April 16, 2007
"what Kennedy sets out to accomplish, she achieves" -- Sunday Herald, April 22, 2007
'An utterly engrossing read' -- Metro
'Kennedy writes with a finely calculated poetic freedom' -- The Herald
Book Description
Winner of the 2007 Costa Book Award
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By Waterbaby
Format:Hardcover
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.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By SussexBeemer
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
It is easy to see why views differ so widely. This book takes on big issues - morality, the human condition, trauma, love, friendship - seen through the eyes of a fallible character. Although the second world war setting is strictly naturalistic (and well-researched) there are elements of symbolism and the narrative structure is, as others have pointed out, complex, involving multiple layers of flashback. But the novel repays in full the effort it demands of the reader. A L Kennedy's ability to imagine the life of an airman and PoW in a war which ended 20 years before she was born is astonishing. Her treatment of the moral aspects of war is questioning but largely avoids anachronistic standpoints. The positive ending, holding out at least the possibility of redemption, was unexpected, at least for this reader, but on reflection put the bleakness of what had gone before in perspective.
Not an easy read, either literally or metaphorically. Kennedy makes few concessions to the reader unfamiliar with the period or the paraphenalia of warfare. There is much vulgarity and some horror. But both the principal character and the ideas gradually gripped me and I was eagerly turning the pages by the end, sorry not to be able to follow Alfred Day's story further. There are some parallels with William Golding's 'Pincher Martin', another novel set during the second world war and narrated through many flashbacks. Both are about the human potential for good and evil and the difficulty in defining those concepts in some circumstances. I found 'Day' a convincing and satisfying work on several levels.
Not an easy read, either literally or metaphorically. Kennedy makes few concessions to the reader unfamiliar with the period or the paraphenalia of warfare. There is much vulgarity and some horror. But both the principal character and the ideas gradually gripped me and I was eagerly turning the pages by the end, sorry not to be able to follow Alfred Day's story further. There are some parallels with William Golding's 'Pincher Martin', another novel set during the second world war and narrated through many flashbacks. Both are about the human potential for good and evil and the difficulty in defining those concepts in some circumstances. I found 'Day' a convincing and satisfying work on several levels.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
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.
"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.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 9 reviews
3.9 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading
I'll hold my hands up: with Day it was a case of third time lucky. I tried to read it twice and gave up twice before finally making it all the way through from the beginning to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by What Cathy Read
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Odd ex-POWs
A very strong and convincing central character and a decent ending. There was however one section which was spoiling it for me in which some ex-POWs were behaving very oddly, in... Read more
Published 11 months ago by P. J. Dunn
3.0 out of 5 stars
Intelligent writing, well researched.
Day is an attempt to tell one man's experience of World War Two told through a series of flashbacks from the vantage point of 1949. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Supportyourlocallibrary
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inside the mind of a rear-gunner
This accomplished novel - almost stream of consciousness, explores the life of Albert Day, 19 year old rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber during World War II. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Clive A. H. Still
1.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle edition has less content than paperback.
Book clubbers beware - if you're hoping to compare notes with fellow readers, you're completely out of luck. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2011 by Sean Sollé
4.0 out of 5 stars
dont know why theres negative reviews
i dont know why there are so many bad reviews on this book.yes i understand that the narrative at the begining can throw you a little but al kennedys way of conveying the chracter... Read more
Published on 3 Jan 2011 by Ms. Salma Ali
3.0 out of 5 stars
Insipid war story that doesn't quite work
This story has the potential to be a tear jerker, with its subject matter, but it doesn't quite meet the mark. Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2010 by BookWorm
1.0 out of 5 stars
Can't get into this book at all
I have tried twice to read this book. Due to the publicity it received when it won the Costa prize, there has been lots of interviews with the author and she seems a really... Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2010 by Janie U
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully Clever
Kennedy uses Mrs. Dalloway stream of consciousness in this novel about Alfie Day, a man who was a gunner in the RAF in WWII trying to pick up the pieces of his fragmented life... Read more
Published on 17 July 2009 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hugely disappointing!
I thought I would love this as I am fascinated by the whole subject of Bomber Command - my dad was a navigator in a Halifax bomber in WW2. Read more
Published on 28 Jun 2009 by The Linguaphile
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
