One Day They All Went Home

by Robert Davies

Robert Davies' début is a book about two very different people looking back on their lives before they die.

"The more I look up at the sun the more sure I am that there are times when the only peace we can find is through violence. Maybe we need the pain to push us to great heights of unimaginable nuclear fire, and only when it has burned everything away can we really be free."

A gentle story with unexpected endings, One Day They All Went Home sees two seemingly unrelated lives revolve around the disappearance of the same mysterious girl. As the strong pull of teenage love turns into all-encompassing loss, Ted's kindly patience and Ryan's untameable wildness eventually send them down very different paths.

Unknown Binding

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[Dione Sage · Rating 3 out of 5]

One Day They All Went Home is Robert Davies first novel. As far as first novels go for any author, I thought this was really good. The plot is interesting even if I didn’t agree with a few approaches to certain POV or quite a bit of back in forth with the stories that end up colliding in the end. The story is almost like two different sets of lives, yet kind of the same ones from different time periods that collide in an array of events. At first I thought the book was confusing maybe even a little dull, however I am glad I finished the entire book because I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it towards the end. After I read this book I couldn’t help but think of a De’Jevu (sp?) theory or the theory of past lives and how I read a book once about a man who meets his past life by some cosmic oversight the two accidentally overlap. This is what this book reminded me of. I liked the characters Ryan and ‘Ted’ the most. The female characters did not connect with me on any specific level. But over all I would say it was good. This is a book you can read on a weekend.