After allowing myself a few weeks of fluff in the form of holiday
romance novels, I was ready for a novel like Michael Cunningham’s Day in
the same way I crave vegetables after binging cookies. They are not just
delicious, they are good for you, and restore balance.
I feel privileged to have been allowed to read this novel. The
writing was exquisite and masterful, as I expected. It is a quiet story of how
a family of ordinary people, extraordinary only in their relationships with
each other, lived in the ordinary landscape of Brooklyn, in April in 2019, and
how those relationships and landscapes twisted, turned, and re-leveled in the next
two years. There are eight characters who share point of view with the reader,
though one is only an infant we communicate with by observation. The
existentialism of the members of this family before COVID, and the way
isolation took existentialism beyond the capacity for the characters to cope,
whether that be with themselves, their children or mates, or their career
choices reflects the emotions and mindset of many of us who survived 2020.
The discovery of these characters and their chosen paths is
the joy of this novel, so I won’t go into detail. Themes of self-awareness,
fluidity in sexuality, art and expression, spirituality, and the underlying questions
of what is feminist, what is traditional, and what is simply human are dealt a
gentle hand. It left me wanting to turn back to page one and read it all over
again.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced
copy. Day will be released tomorrow, November 14, 2023.
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