Day

This short novel is powerful, at times harrowing. The writing is compressed, the tone conversational. One would not think the language capable of handling so many large themes--God, the Holocaust, Hell, Suffering, Love--that the author freights it with. Yet it is the very lightness of the language that buoys the subject matter. There is even a touch of humor, albeit of a very black gallows variety. The writing is deft. It possesses a wonderful contiguity, a narrative cohesion as the incidents unfold. It is Wiesel's second novel and a translation from the French. The narrator, a Holocaust survivor, is in wrenching pain, both physical and emotional. He cannot let go of the past with its many dead. At any other time he would probably be a show more morose and dull fellow, but when he steps off a curb in Times Square and is struck by a cab his painful emotional life is brought to the fore. The accident is a nasty one. This febrile, near-death experience reanimates his sense of personal loss. This is essentially a philosophical novel, but so nicely undergirded with action that the reader is never adrift in abstractions. Eliezer, the narrator, cannot let go of his anger and despair. He was raised with a strong belief in God which his experience in the camps has annihilated. Kathleen, raised in affluence in the US, is his lover who, like Eliezer, but for different reasons, cannot wrap her mind around "the event." Both are sufferers of what psychologists would call survivor guilt. Don't let this crude partial summary I'm providing here put you off. The writing is nuanced, beautiful, and to use a phrase by Anthony Burgess "almost unbearably moving." Highly recommended. show less

I grabbed Elie Wiesel's “The Accident” off the shelf of a library without knowing what I am getting myself into. I read it without knowing that it is the third, concluding book of his Night/Dawn/Day trilogy; “The Accident” was the original title of “The Day.” Based on the cover and the first page I thought that I found a novel by Wiesel which is not about the Holocaust. But halfway through the book I realized I was mistaken. I understand that surviving the Holocaust is such a life-altering experience that the rest of one's life may seem a reflection on that. “Experience” is not even the right word for it as what people encountered in the camps changed who they were, left the deepest mark not just on but in the abyss of show more the soul of most survivors.

That is certainly the case for the protagonist of Wiesel's book, who suffers a near fatal car accident 15 years or so after the Shoah. Slowly we learn who are the people around him, how he got to know them, and how they help and hinder his recovery. The most important person for him is his lover, with whom he has a complex relationship. She has strong self-depreciating and masochistic tendencies and he is fighting his way through various methods to help her without hurting her. At the same time he is fighting his own demons of the Holocaust syndrome. The second person is the doctor who saved his life with his operations, but who seems to have fallen for his lover. Whether this longing is unrequited or not stays ambiguous. Finally, his old friend a larger-than-life Hungarian painter, who operates more on the intuitional level than anybody else in the novel, makes a deal with him that makes it impossible to slip away from life. They both honor the deal and the outcome is a new zest for life or at least renewed appreciation for the gift of life.

Telling the story or describing the characters doesn't do justice to the book. Its strength comes from the razor sharp description of thoughts, emotions, and attitudes of inner struggles and their external manifestations in the form of dialogues. I knew that I should have made notes or marked sentences for later recollection, but I missed doing so. Now, I would need to go back and re-read it to find passages that felt revelatory to me at the time of reading. There were quite a few that are now lost until next reading. Wiesel not just knows the secret of how the human soul works, but also manages to share it in a way that makes you feel awe and shame for not realizing those very same truths yourself. That's the feeling I came away from the book,. This is the best and most I can say about any book or any person. Read it with your heart and not just with your eyes.

P.s. I found an extended study guide, complete with quotes here. Below is a line from the guide's free version) that is worth pondering upon even if you end up not reading the book (or buying the full study guide):

"To talk to a stranger is like talking to stars: it doesn't commit you."

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Could I have found meaning in my life as a survivor of the Holocaust? More and more I have to wonder. "The Accident" makes me wonder what I would need to live again after such horrors. Very moving.

After the first two excellent books in the trilogy "Night" and "Dawn" (which I gave 5 stars each), I really struggled with this third story. It seemed like it was too focused on the theme expressed through his thoughts, rather than letting the story portray the theme. The timeline jumped around which sometimes confused me (was this before the accident or after?). And his interaction with the doctor struck me as not quite believable.

But, overall, this very talented writer kept my interest to the end. The theme is powerful, as the main character struggles with the ghosts that control his life. It gets a good, solid 4 stars.

And, yes, I'm still eager for more of Elie Wiesel's many books.

A strong - but very sad - ending of Wiesels trilogy (Night, Dawn, Day). A Holocaust-survivor reflects about his life as he is in the hospital trying to recover from a car-accident that nearly killed him. Three persons try to help him - a doctor, his fiance/lover/friend and a hungarian painter. And we get glimpses of his past experiences/memories/dreams. He reflects about life and death, the distant silent God, his inability to love, his desire to die, the emptiness of life - his soul died in the nazi-camps - is it at all possible for him to return to life and to love again? The question is a hard one, and by the end of the book there is mostly despair - the tears in the end...a lament? A turning point?

A gem. I’ve been meaning to finish reading this trilogy for years: it did not disappoint.Elie Wiesel has exquisitely fashioned a short novel that captures the pain and distress of having survived.

I felt like this novel was about life and happiness rather than death and despair, but that really depends on how you choose to focus on it. The preface poses an important question about the will to live and how we perceive life after experiencing death. I think Day was a great complement to Night and would recommend it to anybody that enjoyed Night.