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Loading... The Given Day: A Novel (original 2008; edition 2008)by Dennis Lehane
Work detailsThe Given Day by Dennis Lehane (2008)
This took me FOREVER to read. It was good, not my favorite. I never seemed to want to pick it and continue reading, but when I was reading it I enjoyed it. (  ) JenniferLynn | May 13, 2013 |  This one really surprised me. I did expect to like it because I think Dennis Lehane is a terrific author, but I did not expect to like it as much as I did. I'm really looking forward to reading the next book in the series which I won in a giveaway. It was so well written and captivating. I'm still blown away that an historical fiction novel could be so compelling. It's really not a book I would have normally picked up. I only read it since I'd won the 2nd book. (  ) Barb_H | Apr 1, 2013 | "What molds us is what maims us." These words from Dennis Lehane's powerfully affecting new novel capture succinctly the outcome of the historic events about which he writes. The deadly outbreak of influenza that followed the soldiers home from WWI; the formation of the NAACP; the violence of class and race riots; the burgeoning organized labor movement; shattered love affairs; family strife -- it's all here, it's all too much for any but the most masterful author. Dennis Lehane, however, has established himself as that author. Ground Zero for the confluence of all these events was Boston in 1919, and Lehane's flawless melding of historical figures and events with some of the most fully-drawn fictional characters brings the era into laser sharp focus. Nobody writes dialog like Lehane, and it is this gift perhaps more than any other that sets "The Given Day" so well above any other novel of its scope. So crisp and authentic are the voices one feels one has pulled up a seat at every conversation. Lehane's accomplishment with this leap out of genre is nothing short of stunning. ( ) BluesGal79 | Mar 31, 2013 | This is a departure for Lehane. Still about Boston but not his usual well-written gritty mystery fare. This is a LONG historical novel about the city post-WW1 - in particular the police force and its attempts to unionize and strike. There are two main characters - Danny Coughlin, son of a legendary police Captain, who becomes the leader of the fledgling police union against his family's wishes. There is also Luther Lawrence; a black man, who leaves his young pregnant wife in Tulsa after his entanglements with organized crime catch up with him. And randomly enough - we also get slices of life from Babe Ruth from his World Series with the Sox to his trade to the Yankees. Predictably he encounters our other protagonists during the story. So the story and all its numerous vicissitudes and side-plots is engaging but incredibly drawn out. Too drawn out - the book is long and felt it by the last 1/3rd. Some editing was in order - for example - nix the Babe Ruth parts. The prose is pedestrian; read a bit like a Hollywood blockbuster. No where near his finest writing which is 'Mystic River,' IMHO. Overall, entertaining but prefer his mysteries. (and this is from someone who actually loves historical fiction.) I think he tried to do too much here and the end result was just above mediocre. (  ) jhowell | Feb 24, 2013 | I wasn't totally excited to read this book at first. I opened it and right at the beginning there's this whole Babe Ruth thing, and I thought, "Oh, crap. Is this going to be another Underworld (by Don DeLillo) and go into excruciating detail about baseball?" While it shares elements with Underworld (baseball and J Edgar Hoover, among others), I wouldn't describe this book as excruciating at all. The biggest beef I had with The Given Day was that there were so many scenes of very detailed violence that it often left me feeling sick to my stomach. If I read it again, I'd count up the number of times the reader hears a bone cracking. My guess is it would be more than 30. I picked it up because I wanted to learn a little more about Boston's history, and I did, at least about this small period of the city's history. I'm still not totally clear about what a Boston Brahmin is, but I've got a general idea. I do, however, have a much clearer sense of the intense loyalty people have for the city. As a life-long nomad, I've never felt myself very attached to any particular location; it's enjoyable to me to be inside characters who do have this attachment. Aside from the violence, my other complaint with the novel was the somewhat contrived feeling it had at times. There was a point about 2/3 through where it seemed like everything was going to crap. People were making bad choices and were caught in untenable situations and being backed into corners. The future looked bleak, but all of a sudden, characters started making sound choices. They were suddenly compassionate and reasoned in their decisions. Bad things happened to them, but against all odds, they came out on top, sometimes in almost comic superhero fashion. I like the points Lehane was making about family and race and the difficulty of doing the "right" thing when all of the parties involved have a different idea of what's "right." I'm glad it wasn't a short book and that Lehane took at least a little bit of time to explore the large number of characters he included (it saved some from being entirely two-dimensional). I just found the tidy little package in which he tied everything at the end a little disappointing. It was an enjoyable read, but when I closed the back cover, I just kind of said, "Meh." And incidentally, I have absolutely no idea why my library put a "mystery" sticker on the spine of this novel. ( ) ImperfectCJ | Dec 31, 2012 | no reviews | add a review
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