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Award-winning Scottish author A. L. Kennedy has also done stand-up comedy. (Kevin low) |
Day
By A. L. Kennedy
Knopf, 274 pp., $24
Scottish writer A. L. Kennedy has in her career to date taken on a number of far-ranging subjects - bullfighting, alcoholism, masochism, the ghost of Cyrano de Bergerac. The word "fearless" occurs often in reviews of her work, and a pleasurable suspense attends each publication as readers wonder what new territory will have engaged her intense intelligence. Now, in her 11th book, "Day," she follows the examples of several of her contemporaries, including William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks, in writing about World War II, and in doing so makes that fertile territory very much her own.
"Day" is the story of Alfred Day, the only child of an empathetic mother and a violent father, who enlists in the Royal Air Force and becomes a tail gunner. He is shot down over Germany, spends the remainder of the war as a POW, and returns to England to work in a bookshop. The novel takes place in 1949, when he finds himself back in Germany playing an extra in a film set in a POW camp. The reconstructions of this crucial time in his life - the phony drills, the gymnastics, the concerts - trigger a flood of memories, in particular of his air crew, with whom he found a kind of familial affection he had never known, and of his wartime love affair with a woman named Joyce.
The narrative shifts back and forth between the shooting of the film and the past, and throughout there are brilliant examples of the curious details, psychological complexity, and wild lyricism for which Kennedy is known. I was full of admiration for her ability to write as if she had lived through these tumultuous times, and indeed flown as a tail gunner: "But he would check his guns again before they flew. He would clean his Perspex, polish away scratches that weren't there and he would practice seeing, scanning, quartering the sky and he would breathe in the smell of his one chosen home: the tight, exciting reek of working oil and skin and his never-to-be-washed flying suit and the good metal and the brassy sting in his throat from ammunition, the choke from hot firing, his trade, himself."
Alfred and his consciousness shape every page of this book, and he is in many respects an appealing character. One of the first things we learn about him is that he is concentrating on growing a moustache, bristle by bristle. We also learn that he is small, swallows his words, looks mainly at the ground, and feels as if he has no choices. More important, we are told that he is trying to escape from his thoughts; the pages that follow illustrate his failure to do so. They also illustrate Kennedy's expectations of her readers. Much of the novel is written in what might be loosely described as stream of consciousness; we are plunged into specific events and memories without explanation. While Boyd and Faulks, for example, guide their readers through their narratives, Kennedy simply lets us experience hers.
At its best, this method makes for vivid, sensually specific, immediate prose, but it also obscures some of the conventional pleasures of a novel - anticipation, clarity, suspense, understanding. Rather, the reader finds things out piecemeal and must work to put them together - or not. This is particularly true of the scenes set in 1949, when Alfred becomes embroiled in a complicated feud with a fellow extra on the film set, the mysterious Vasily, whom he suspects of having been a member of the SS.
This is not to say that there are not moments of clarity in the novel, indeed many moments. What is less clear is how they fit together in a way that allows readers to both remember and look forward. Fairly early on, for example, we are told that Alfred has made four decisions: To join up, to be a tail gunner, to kill his father, and to take part in the film. In a conventional novel, the information that a character was going to commit parricide would at once generate suspense, but, in "Day," I basically lost sight of the fact until the brutal murder occurs and then I lost sight of it again because Alfred does, too. Perhaps this amnesia appropriately reflects the moral economy of the novel (he is, after all, only following the advice of his sergeant when he hurls bricks at his father), but I found it unnerving.
The parts of the novel I enjoyed most were those set during the war. Day's relationships with his crew, particularly with Pluckrose, the gentle navigator who insists that Day is usefully short and not a stunted little man, are beautifully invoked. And Alfred's relationship with Joyce summons some of Kennedy's best writing. The two meet in London when she bumps into him with her bundle in an air-raid shelter. In no time, she is offering him a sandwich - jam or Spam - and inviting him, despite the raid, to come home with her. And in no time, Alfred is looking into those huge dark eyes and feeling "untroubled, slowed." Joyce is witty, intelligent - she is reading "The Odyssey" when they meet - and unfazed by Alfred's reticence; he has never had a woman. She is also, unfortunately, married. Her husband is missing in action in Singapore, and when Alfred is captured, she announces she cannot bear to wait for two men.
There are many dark moments in "Day" - Kennedy is expert at describing pain and violence - but the novel ends on a surprisingly hopeful note. Alfred finally feels as if he has a choice, and he makes a fifth decision, one that makes him, and I suspect most readers, happy.
Margot Livesey is a writer in residence at Emerson College. Her novel "The House on Fortune Street" will be published in May.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
