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War is definitive. There’s something about it that stands as the antithesis of basic humanity yet, in a strange way, also shapes human existence. It is within such a parenthesis — the action and aftermath of WWII — that Scottish writer, A. L. Kennedy, settles her newest novel, Day.
The story follows Alfred “Alfie” Day, a former RAF tail gunner who enlisted as a teenager, mostly to escape his violent, alcoholic father and victimized mother. The novel takes place, however, five years after the war has ended. Alfie, now in his mid-20s, is once again a volunteer, this time as an extra in a film about a German POW camp. the dark irony being that he actually was a POW for six months.
On the movie set, he begins to re-live his experiences of the war. In a series of often disorienting flashbacks, he recalls his close-knit flight crew, who were his only real family; reflects on his mother’s death at his father’s hands; and struggles with memories of Joyce, a married woman with whom he fell in love and had a tense, short-lived affair. Overall, the narrative is slippery and elusive, unsteadily shifting through time and place. The storyline repeatedly regresses to Alfie’s days in the RAF, which defined his entire existence. His past is relayed incoherently in regard to the rest of the narrative, yet clearly affects the present: he is depressed, aloof, and hopelessly clinging to nostalgia for his now-dead flight crew, and his feelings for Joyce. As painful as these years were for him, the war gave him a purpose, and when it ended, so did any semblance of his life. He became lost.
It’s easy to get lost in his story, as well. Kennedy blindly immerses readers into the narrative with little, if any, clues for place or time. The opening scene finds Alfie wandering a hillside in the company of a Ukrainian named Vasyl: “They’d left the path an age ago, Alfred hadn’t noticed when, and there was no doubt that they were lost now, if they had ever known where to go. And that had been something of a pain, an irritation: on arriving in nowhere, having to stumble and tramp along on a track that divided and twisted and then abandoned them completely.”
For several pages, the only clear facts are that Alfred has decided to grow a mustache, that he’s short, rather homely, and that, these days, “mainly his problem is tiredness.”
As the reader gropes for context, Kennedy complicates things further by employing a second-person narrative. It’s a jarring technique that shows up with increasing frequency. Suddenly “you” are there, too, conflated into a single being with Alfie, sharing his thoughts: “You’d look in the mirror some mornings and wonder why it didn’t show; the way most of you was always yelling to get out.”
The reader, quite naturally, resists this invasion of personal space. The flaw lies in the fact that merging the reader with Alfie cannot ever be fully accomplished. Alfie’s turmoil and depression are too uniquely his own. While it’s possible to empathize with him to a point, it’s foolhardy to expect the reader to embody him. But that’s exactly what Kennedy seems to want.
The result is a separation from Alfie as a character. Because the reader is inside his thoughts, it’s clearly not necessary for Kennedy to provide a full-bodied background for him. Thus, Alfie never quite takes complete form, which leads to little, if any, emotional connection to him. When Alfie, early on, reveals that he decided to kill his abusive father, the revelation falls flat because, for him, the deed is already done. And then, when the act finally takes place (in Alfie’s memory), it’s with a sense of dull detachment. He’s simply hurling bricks at his drunk father in a slow-motion, dream-like fashion that’s more lackluster than artistic.
Alfred lacks shape, definition, or even a reason for being. In fact, it’s not his present life, but his flashbacks, which are the most vibrant part of the novel. Although the other characters seem, even more so than Alfie, like cardboard caricatures, Kennedy succeeds at least in hinting at a parade of personalities. Her crowning accomplishment is that she effortlessly conveys daily life for 1940s RAF airmen as if she’s writing from experience. In addition, the dialogue and interaction between the flight crew, for the most part, is superbly done. It’s unfortunate, though, that Kennedy’s obvious talents do not extend to character development.
There’s something off about Joyce, not to mention her relationship with Alfie. They have no chemistry and no passion: in fact, they barely even seem to talk. Worse yet, Alfie is such a two-dimensional character that it’s remarkable Joyce has any feelings for him, at all.
Speaking of feelings, little in this novel is inspiring or even rousing. It could have been wrenching; it could have been hauntingly evocative, or, at the very least, somewhat sentimental. Instead, it’s 288 pages filled with the shallow remembrances of a forgettable, “ordinary” man. There is little in Alfie worth pursuing; there is nothing to make the reader willingly accept him as a combined “you,” and at the end of the day, when it comes to Alfred Day, it’s even a struggle to keep reading. |
