288 pages
Published November 2023 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review
Publisher's Summary:
April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.
April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.
April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—and with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.
My Thoughts:
I've waited too long to do this book the justice it deserves, I'm sorry to say. I'm so very far behind on writing reviews so I'm afraid this is going to be short, as well as late in coming.
Day is not the kind of book that's going to rock the world - it's meditative, intimate, focuses on issues many would rather not think about, often sad and frequently melancholy. It's a slow read, the kind where, even though we are moving forward in time, even though there is action and the pandemic to deal with, it feels much more character than action driven. Which, of course, makes it a novel for a smaller audience.
It's that intimacy that allows us to really get to know each of the characters in this book, to explore their inner thoughts and emotions. To see them in ways they wouldn't necessarily be able to express for themselves, in ways most of us aren't able to articulate for ourselves. It's that intimacy that pulls us so far in that we have to remind ourselves that Day is touching on universal subjects - love, marriage, parenthood, family, obligations, dreams.
I'm but one reader, a reader who often feels she's not up to the author's level of story telling, so my opinion won't matter all that much. But for what it's worth, here it is: I liked the writing, I grew attached to the characters, I was a little heartbroken in that last "chapter." But it wasn't a book I couldn't wait to get back to and it's a book that, in sitting down to write this review, I had to remind myself what the story was about; it hasn't stuck with me that way I expected it to stick. I think it has as much to do with the Dan's brother Garth's story taking up more space than I would have liked; Garth and the mother of his son were the two characters in the book that I struggled to care about. That's me, of course. Look at other reviews - anyone who writes them for a living seems to be more impressed overall.
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