Day for Night [Paperback]

Frederick Reiken's novel is one of those expansive works with multiple narrators whose stories (and stories within stories) interconnect in the style of David Mitchell (Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas) or Paul Auster, or, if you like to consider it in cinematic terms, like the work of Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel). Depending on your perspective this can produce fascinating and dazzling results, but all too often it can also be considered as little more than technical exercises or even an empty self-reflexive experiment on the nature of storytelling itself. Although it varies from character to character according to each chapter, sometimes with only a seemingly tenuous link between them, there is however a consistent theme and deeper purpose to Day For Night that perhaps justifies the use of the technique here.

Certainly its theme is very much that of storytelling, but it's not storytelling simply for the sake of it and more than just a demonstration that everything is connected. It's also about families, the damage that families can do and the healing that they can bring at the same time. But underlying it all lies the memory of the Shoah or the Holocaust. Now, that's a very big subject which simply cannot be related in the terms of one person's experience, or even in terms of several different people's experiences, and Day For Night consequently takes in a much wider perspective, approaching the subject directly and indirectly across a number of generations, pushing it further beyond normal reality as it is experienced into areas of mysticism and mythology.

It's a necessary approach that shows the influence of Jorge Luis Borges more than Mitchell, Auster or Murakami, something that is acknowledged in one chapter where a reference is made to a Borges story about the secrets of Creation being contained in the spots of a jaguar - that the truth can be found in the details and in the most unexpected of places, but that knowledge cannot and perhaps should never be attempted to be expressed or reduced to simple human terms. In Day For Night, through individual stories that cover ordinary love stories, young love and old love, chance encounters, thrilling anarchist activity, ancient beliefs and myths, the recounting of dreams and the suffering through nightmares, child abuse and experiences of death in suspended animation, Reiken attempts to get beyond the mere relating of the facts of the stories of the Jewish experience at the hands of the Nazis that lies beneath the surface of them all. It's not an event to be tied to a specific place and time, the impact goes beyond, becomes a collective subconscious that can be tapped into and experienced by later generations, or is perhaps a stain that simply cannot ever be washed away.

That will sound rather ambitious, and not everyone will be convinced that the technique works or that it is the right approach to take here. When a subject of such barbarism defies comprehension on any kind of rational level, how can it be approached or related to on a human level other than through pure expression and in relation to ordinary human stories of family relationships? It would appear that Reiken has compiled a series of stories that attempt to cover these angles, and, yes, much of it relates to storytelling, but without necessarily expecting it all to fit together and make sense. Whether it adds up to more than the sum of its parts, Day For Night is however unquestionably a strong work, well constructed, with individually entertaining, gripping and well-written stories that have a strong purpose, but which has room also for ambiguity and individual interpretation on many other levels. There's more than one centre and there's more than one way to put the pieces together around it. It's a novel that certainly has all the hallmarks of being a cult classic.

This is the last time I'll read a book based on a review in the metro (a free London morning paper).

After reading the book, I still don't know what the point of it was. As mentioned in the other reviews, it is a series of stories, broken up into chapters, told from the point of view of different people. The characters are all linked (à la six degrees of separation).

It has to do with a secret society (who does bad things), other underground groups (not sure why the kid in the coma was helped by that mysterious woman), the holocaust and some stories that might be true.

In the end, there is some sort of closure.

I can't give it more than two stars. I just found it boring and the characters did not seem real to me. I ended up skimming the last chapter just to finish the book.

One of my childhood toys was a kaleidoscope: holding it towards the light I watched with wonder the multitude of differently shaped colourful glass splinters, sparkling and forming intriguing patterns. Slowly turning it, the pattern would disintegrate only to reform in a different way again. It was an endless change of images around a central point.

Frederick Reiken's novel DAY FOR NIGHT reminds me of that kaleidoscope. Ten first-person voices narrate events, in the present or past, in ten independent stories. Personal relationships between lovers, friends or relatives are being described, others only subtly hinted at. From one story to the next, at least one such connection crosses over, playing now a bigger or smaller role. Still others, apparently abandoned, turn up again later in more or less obvious combinations. Some also just disappear completely and regrettably. Gradually, some patterns are forming in the reader's mind, possibly disappearing again and, just as likely, re-forming in different, maybe even surprising, ways. At some point in the novel, the upcoming connection points can be anticipated: a web structure emerges. The centre of the web is held by a particular series of harrowing events in the past that have haunted survivors and escapees and they continue to have a deep psychological hold also on the next generation.

The historically factual events and their aftermath are so traumatic and of such magnitude that it is difficult to write about Reiken's novel without recognizing the strong emotions that his story-telling provokes in any reader. Yet, by addressing the reader through several of his protagonists, the author has a message beyond that of the characters and circumstances presented: on the role of stories, of unlikely coincidences, and of the meaning of human connectedness in an ever shifting and changing world. "If you look hard enough into the history of anything, you will discover things that seem connected but are not..." explains one narrator while, by contrast, another sings about: "... we're much closer than we think to the random people we see in any given day...".

And the story in the story continues as it moves from generation to generation. Much is told by second-hand witnesses (friends, spouses, sons and daughters) of those directly affected by the past traumas. While these accounts add more colour to the kaleidoscope and create intriguing patterns, they also soften to some degree the haunting memories of the survivors and those who had escaped the atrocities at a young age.

And, summing up the multitude of issues contained in this novel, another protagonist contends: "It is a story that is much bigger than we know. Do not confuse the life you live with the story [...] Do not be afraid to leave the story, You may get scared sometimes because you fail to understand that what is scared is not you. It's the story. The story looks for a way to travel. The story is afraid that you will let it go." [p.144]

Returning to the literary aspect of DAY FOR NIGHT: does its structure of autonomous stories with a wide range of narrators hold together as a novel? Not completely, in my view. I did not find the voices as distinct as one could have expected. In a generalized sense, despite the author's clear and concise writing, the chosen structur implies a loss of depth of character and relating of context. At the same time, while some interpersonal relationships can be easily anticipated, some events live off coincidences that fall beyond the range of probability even within a novel's reality. Others, especially in the later chapters, appear artificially convenient, and also somewhat too drawn out, thus reducing the power of the messages and of the story's impact. However, that may have been a deliberate approach.

Regrettably, Reiken uses a considerable amount of stereotyping (prevalence of blond and always beautiful women, of blue eyes, and the simplistic representation of non-fluent English speaking foreigners, to just name a few). Finally, the representation of male characters in the novel is surprisingly reticent: they form only a minority among the protagonists (three) and, more importantly, except for one, they all seem to lack depth and three-dimensionality. Most of them remain like shadows either in the past or in the present. [Friederike Knabe]