Day

I read in another review once, don’t waste your time reading this review, go out and buy the book. You should do that now, this book is awesome. Still here? Oh well... The Day of the title is Alfie Day, former RAF sergeant and gunner in a Lancashire bomber. The year is 1949 and Day is back in Germany in an ersatz prison camp as an extra in a prisoner of war film. Probably not a...more

I read in another review once, don’t waste your time reading this review, go out and buy the book. You should do that now, this book is awesome. Still here? Oh well... The Day of the title is Alfie Day, former RAF sergeant and gunner in a Lancashire bomber. The year is 1949 and Day is back in Germany in an ersatz prison camp as an extra in a prisoner of war film. Probably not a good idea as Day previously was a prisoner of war in a German prisoner of war camp. Alfie could be said to be suffering from post-traumatic stress, although such terms didn’t exist then. Then, you just got on with it. Or not. Alfie feels like he is floating, not connected to the world. Sometimes he tries to solve this by sitting very quietly, or lying flat on the ground on his back, or by howling. Day loves a good old howl. There is something of Catch 22 about the camp. Some of the extras are digging a tunnel, escapes, ruses are being plotted. And factions are building up - there are the Good Germans, the Ukrainians, people with pasts they are trying to hide. Unfortunately for Alfie his past is right there in his head and this past is the story of the novel; the first meetings with his crew, flying bombing raids, going out to London, meeting and falling in love with Joyce, his brutal father and the mother he loves. His life in the bookshop where he worked before going to the film camp. Kennedy is a short story writer and that perhaps shows. This book is made up of many episodes, a drunken train journey, a night in a shelter, a particular raid. The writing is fabulous, Day a brilliant, confused and mixed up character. And this is a book about war, about bombing people and being bombed, about what that does to you and them whoever ‘them’ may be. One of the Costa book judges said that this is a masterpiece. It is. Kennedy said her writing is like anal sex. It’s much, much better than that.   hide