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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/871689.Day?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Day" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1179079601m/871689.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/871689.Day?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Day</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/619104.A_L_Kennedy">A.L. Kennedy</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/13365735?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars A tiny WWII <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Lancaster">Lanc</a> tailgunner volunteers as an extra in some postwar prison camp documentary, and then returns to his job at a used book store. That's the basic plot, but there's so much nasty in between. The constant shifting back and forth of the wounded narrative never lets you go. Plus, "you" are him -- the second-person voice kicks in frequently enough to make you wonder (when you're finished) whether you have a reliable narrator here. In the end -- the very last page -- things turn shifty-eyed and ambiguous, cast a pall (if palls may be cast) over many of the previous grim events. Makes me want to reread it, pry between the winks, scabs, and grudges. 
 
 Kennedy knows how to throw a description at your knees, usually things you thought could never be described, such as killing your dad with a brick, pitching desperate woo at a married bomb-shelter skirt, or (best of all) eating fear in the skies:
 
 --thumbs firing and arse over tip into the corkskrew, thumbs firing and more noise than you can hear, thumbs firing and the gleam of tracer and churning at angles you don't understand, falling as if you will die and a bitterness filling your lungs and the belt cutting into your hip and doing no bloody good to hold you and the fit of the turret is close and you think of coffins and down Q for Queenie runs and surely you'll hit the water before you tear up, flat out, sick and staring.
 
 Like that. Best fiction writer in the English language (not sure if she researched this shit or just imagined it, but either way...). Yes sometimes she puts out trails that seem to be metaphorical and resonant -- dead mams and dads, benighted singing Irishmen, a "Dear John" letter rattled halfway out "your" brain. The whole enterprise comes to a head, I think, in the following exchange with a Brit government functionary toward the end:
 
 "And no need to look at me like that. I follow the line which is the government line. We must think to the future, not the past."
 "Fuck you."
 
 Memorable, sneaky, and strange. 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/88991?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Mark's review
rating:
bookshelves: fiction

A tiny WWII Lanc tailgunner volunteers as an extra in some postwar prison camp documentary, and then returns to his job at a used book store. That's the basic plot, but there's so much nasty in between. The constant shifting back and forth of the wounded narrative never lets you go. Plus, "you" are him -- the second-person voice kicks in frequently enough to make you wonder (when you're finished) whether you have a reliable narrator here. In the end -- the very last page -- things turn shifty-eyed and ambiguous, cast a pall (if palls may be cast) over many of the previous grim events. Makes me want to reread it, pry between the winks, scabs, and grudges.

Kennedy knows how to throw a description at your knees, usually things you thought could never be described, such as killing your dad with a brick, pitching desperate woo at a married bomb-shelter skirt, or (best of all) eating fear in the skies:
...more A tiny WWII Lanc tailgunner volunteers as an extra in some postwar prison camp documentary, and then returns to his job at a used book store. That's the basic plot, but there's so much nasty in between. The constant shifting back and forth of the wounded narrative never lets you go. Plus, "you" are him -- the second-person voice kicks in frequently enough to make you wonder (when you're finished) whether you have a reliable narrator here. In the end -- the very last page -- things turn shifty-eyed and ambiguous, cast a pall (if palls may be cast) over many of the previous grim events. Makes me want to reread it, pry between the winks, scabs, and grudges.

Kennedy knows how to throw a description at your knees, usually things you thought could never be described, such as killing your dad with a brick, pitching desperate woo at a married bomb-shelter skirt, or (best of all) eating fear in the skies:

--thumbs firing and arse over tip into the corkskrew, thumbs firing and more noise than you can hear, thumbs firing and the gleam of tracer and churning at angles you don't understand, falling as if you will die and a bitterness filling your lungs and the belt cutting into your hip and doing no bloody good to hold you and the fit of the turret is close and you think of coffins and down Q for Queenie runs and surely you'll hit the water before you tear up, flat out, sick and staring.

Like that. Best fiction writer in the English language (not sure if she researched this shit or just imagined it, but either way...). Yes sometimes she puts out trails that seem to be metaphorical and resonant -- dead mams and dads, benighted singing Irishmen, a "Dear John" letter rattled halfway out "your" brain. The whole enterprise comes to a head, I think, in the following exchange with a Brit government functionary toward the end:

"And no need to look at me like that. I follow the line which is the government line. We must think to the future, not the past."
"Fuck you."

Memorable, sneaky, and strange.
...less

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