Stunning
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I can't say this is an easy book to read and it took me some time to get into the style of writing. Basically many strands of Day's life are intertwined; past, present and future. This means you initially have to work to keep up and make sense of it. When I'd got that sorted I found the depth of the book and the writing breathtaking.
I admire books that encompass the human condition and this is certainly one of them.
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A very good read
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This is not an easy novel and it is easy to be put off by the style but perseverance does bring its rewards. Unlike a number of the reviewers here I found this book gripping. I also found its voice to ring true which is a considerable achievement bearing in mind the writer, the main character and the era it portrays.
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Irritating character + irritating style = irritatating novel
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There's a pretty good story in here somewhere. Day is an ex-gunner who's now taking part in a film in 1949. Only trouble is, he keeps flashing back to his time druing the real war. That's bad news for the reader as it's sometimes hard to tell what is the film and what is the war. If that weren't bad enough, he's a very irritating character; I found it impossible to sympathise with him, and his wartime cronies didn't come across as real at all. In addition to these problems the novel is filled with monologues and stream-of-consiousness stuff from Day's head, and that is even more irritating. (I wonder if I can just say this is arty pretentious piffle?)
The actual story of the wartime bombing raids could have been interesting in the hands of someone happy to tell a tale and not bury it under an obscure style that, these days, seems guaranteed to win an award. A real hard slog, and it wasn't really worth the trouble.
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The Kennedy Assassination
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I read a very negative review of this novel in a Sunday newspaper, but, then seeing that it had won the Costa Book of the Year prize, I assumed the newspaper critic was wrong and the jury was right. Obviously, there's no right and wrong in matters of taste, but I'm afraid that, despite really wanting to enjoy this novel, I couldn't.
I found it disorientating and digressive. It's a sequence of vignettes that don't hang together as a novel, and, while some readers may be satisfied, I wasn't. I was often mystified as to what was actually going on.
All this may be the author's intention, and I would never describe "Day" as a bad book, since A.L. Kennedy is clearly a competent and talented writer. But overall left with an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
Yet I'd be loathe to tell someone not to read it, because I can see that others might enjoy it (including the Costa jury). And I'd also probably read A.L. Kennedy's next novel just to make sure I haven't been guilty of a grievous error of judgement.
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Disappointing
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I was wanting to like this after enjoying 2 of the other Costa nominated books, but unfortunately I found this book a real slog. As a previous reviewer has commented this book failed to keep my attention & I found I had read several pages without taking anything in. There were some lovely moments in the book, inparticularly the parts between Joyce & Alfred but I would not recommend this title to anyone. Sorry!
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