Lately, my days have been fleeting. I’ve spent time with family from Australia and New Zealand which is rare and special, broken up by time on trains to London meetings and runs along the canal. A workshop in an old university press office with decadent ceilings. Watching Doctor Who with family for the first time since I was a kid. Thinking, reading, entertaining young cousins, running in the rain and in the sun, finally. I’m feeling the rhythm of days. For whatever reason, I think that’s exactly what drew me to Michael Cunningham’s newest novel, Day.
The novel draws out one day across three years, visiting a morning in 2019, an afternoon in 2020, and an evening in 2021, while a family of four goes through the motions of daily life in a Brooklyn apartment. Crucially: while they live through lockdown. Maybe I thought it was a test, and internally I accepted a sort of challenge when I picked it up. Here is a novel that takes on COVID - which feels to me like fan fiction, something imitating life, but unofficially - and is showered in author endorsements.
Somehow Day kept me involved to the end. I’ve given up on far more propellant novels for a lot less. I think it’s because Cunningham has written a character study. A kitchen-sink drama which, though it unfolds at glacial pace, had me latched onto its rhythm. Cunningham’s writing is like honey. Streams of thought run thick and fast, handing over between characters, letting you sit within their minds.
Day is about growing, changing, falling in and out of love. In 2019 the family is straining. Isabel and Dan’s marriage is turning not stale but flat, and they circle each other. Dan is trying to revive a music career that never really was, while hiding that he is sort-of-but-not-quite in love with Isabel’s brother Robbie. This sets a trend of odd relationships in Day, because Dan barely hides his feelings for Robbie, and it seems an established fact of Isabel and Dan’s marriage. One of many things they refuse to confront.
You’re hard pressed to find someone who is genuinely likeable, but perhaps that’s the point. Still, I struggled with the fact that the characters feel at times unrealistic (I can deal with unlikeable) - despite the novel making such effort to be real and raw. Isabel and her brother Robbie run an Instagram account for an entirely fictitious person named Wolfe, a sort of shared fantasy. Wolfe’s life choices take up most of their conversation, and they post fake updates to thousands of adoring followers. I’ve seen many odd things on social media, but I have never heard of anyone doing that.
I did enjoy the way that the Instagram posts are written and formatted to mimic the square visual style of a real post. Beyond that, I thought it was bizarre and deeply unrelatable. Perhaps it’s because I never truly understood why they do it. You don’t need to relate to a serial killer to feel that their actions are realistic.
Day does transport you, though. Into life as a parent, as a sibling, as a child, as a teenager. I imagined my experience of lockdown against these, against America’s. This novel made me dream of the days in Valencia to come, of the daily rhythm they might have. It made me ponder the rhythm of my days now, how they’ll change next week, in a month. The novel is deeply reflective, and that is how it reaches you.
Cunningham made the setting of lockdown feel natural. It didn’t jar, it actually set the stage for the characters to be changed in a way that we as readers can viscerally understand. Where Day falters for me is its sincerity. It strives to be authentic but follows characters I can’t understand, with habits that make no sense. Maybe that’s why Day is a lockdown novel that doesn’t feel like fan-fiction. It’s real, just not too real.
Perhaps the point is that none of the pandemic felt real. Definitions of ‘real’ and ‘normal’ changed, and we’re still working to recalibrate them. Perhaps it’s still too soon. Perhaps, for now, we still want to forget. I think that’s the attitude an author is up against when putting pandemic to paper. So, though I recommend Day for readers who like a novel that drifts and flows, let’s leave it a bit longer?
Rory
Coming soon: Coffee with Sophie Mackintosh
OK, seriously now. I’m sharing the interview in the next issue! I can’t wait to share it.
What I’m reading: Private Rites by Julia Armfield
I loved Our Wives Under the Sea, and I’m hoping Julia’s second novel delivers just as much thrill and effortless flow.
What I’m watching: Stranger Things on stage
A birthday trip for my brother to The Phoenix Theatre to see this prequel story about Vecna (Season 4’s big bad) on stage. We were all blown away. It was gripping, funny, genuinely scary, and so well produced. We’re still marvelling at how they pulled off some of the special effects. Mind-blowing and brilliant. Plus, a valuable (and maybe vital) addition to the Stranger Things story.
Spanish: Necesito un maestro nuevo! I need a new teacher.