Day by Al Kennedy

Day by Al Kennedy

Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too. Before Hitler and the bombs he was a boy in Staffordshire, helpless to defend his mother, to resist his abusive father. The RAF gave him order, skills, another family and a way to be a man. It taught him how to burn through lifetimes on night ops and brief, sweet leaves, surviving the unsurvivable. But it didn't prepare him for capture, for the prison camp and the chaos as the war wound down. It didn't prepare him for an empty peace. Now it's 1949 and Alfred is doing the impossible again, winding back time to see where he lost himself. He has taken the role of an extra in a Pow film. Shipped out to Germany and an ersatz camp, he picks his way through the cliches that will become all that's left of his war and begins to do what he's never dared - to remember. He is looking for some semblance of hope: trying to move forward by going back. A superbly realised novel about the brutal simplicities of war - of horror, and the camaraderie found in the closeness to death - and a moving exploration of the complexities of human emotion, "Day" is a wonderful piece of storytelling: the freight of history and humanity carried effortlessly by the beauty of the writing. For previous readers of A.L. Kennedy's books the dark humour, close observation and thrillingly original language will come as no surprise; for new readers, this novel will be a revelation.

A.L. Kennedy has published four previous novels, two books of non-fiction, and three collections of short stories, most recently Indelible Acts. She has twice been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and has won a number of prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at St Andrews.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780224077866
ISBN 10	0224077864
Title	Day
Author	A L Kennedy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2007-04-05
Number of pages	288
Prizes	Winner of Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2007, Winner of Costa Book of the Year 2007, Winner of Costa Novel Award 2007, Short-listed for The Clare Maclean Prize for Scottish Fiction 2007
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable