Blackbird Days

by Ken Glantz

Blackbird Days is a dazzling and original novel by a strong new talent. What happens in the thirteen chapters of this book, over a period of six months, from solstice to solstice, is "ordinary" the story of three brothers living out their plain destinies—and the focus is on what several people have to say about their relationships with one another, about the course of their commonplace lives. But we know, always, that what is extraordinary about human existence is usually not so much what happens but how it is lived in the mind.

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Joe Grantham · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Age had blown up the balloon of his body and withered the corpus of his spirit …”

“He felt strung between past and present, hung like clothes that would never dry.”

“You get born; root for the Red Sox; they don’t win, you die.”

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is the way you go, Will thought. In a glaze of hospital lights, among a swarm of bored attendants; the pain within you mocked by bright, bland decor, the unruffled efficiency of a fast-food joint. You wonder if your life has had meaning, and the nurse's aide considers her pastrami sandwich with anticipatory relish; your peacefully drooping life-functions are gauged calmly, as if you are garbage to be taken out. Garbage: to be thrown onto a smoldering landfill, while gulls wheel in the air, cry, dive and squabble over innards, while smoke rises and then disappears in the sky-while the nurse's aide slathers mustard on her pastrami, sighs, and picks an errant blue thread off her white, white sleeve.”

[Henry DeForest · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was well-conceived and absolutely gutting. It's interesting how both Blackbird Days and Jadis both begin with a man being left by his wife, and end with their reunion. Despite this narrative similarity, these books couldn't approach the issue more differently.