The Given Day: A Novel | Dennis Lehane | Why Wasn't This Book On The Best Seller List?

The Given Day: A Novel | Dennis Lehane | A Great Book

books:

The Given Day: A N...

	The Given Day: A Novel Dennis Lehane William Morrow, 2008 - 720 pages average customer review:based on 95 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Why Wasn't This Book On The Best Seller List?

I noticed this book in the "free book store" - the public library and read the inside cover. The subject matter intrigued me and I check the book out. Allthough I had lots of things to do and lots of books to read, once I got into a few pages of THE GIVEN DAY, I was hooked. Everything else went to the back burner.

There have been many reviews of this work and there is not much that I can add other than the fact that I thought it was excellent - a real page turner. For the reviewers who were critical of it, I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but it my book, it's one of the better novels that I have read in several years.

I should note that several years ago I saw the movie Mystic River and then bought the book but had a hard time getting into it and eventually loaned it to a friend, who never returned it. For some reason I just couldn't get into it.

But the characters in THE GIVEN DAY jumped off the pages at me and intrigued me. While it was a great story, it also gives a real glimpse into early 20th century America, race relations of the period and the brutality of life at the time. People of all races survived, but it had to be a really tough time to live in America. The up side it to see how far the society has come since that time. The down side is that the book shows what poverty and disregard for the rights of all people can do to a society. It shows how unbridled power can corrupt person in power - like some of the police officials in the story.

If you want some enjoyable reading be sure and pick this book up. Just do it when you have a lot of time to read. Hopefully, you'll be hooked just like I was.

One reviewer mentioned that he heard this book was the first of a triology. I'll be first in the book store to find out more about these fascinating characters.

for more information click here

A Great Book

Although it doesn't quite measure up to "Mystic River," it's an easy 5 stars and one of the best books I've read in years -- a true epic. I thought the Babe Ruth angle was particularly effective and the chapters about the Boston police strike were fascinating and exciting. The only drawback in my mind -- and it is minor -- is the ending. There were too many convenient coincidences and an overdose of melodrama.

One of the best Audio Books I've ever experienced!

This unabridged audio book is a masterpiece. Not only is the content of The Given Day facinating in it's subject matter, character and prose, but the reading by Michael Boatman is a tour de force. I couldn't stop listening to it. I've been an avid audiobook listener for over 15 years and this one is one of the best ever!

for more information click here

Dennis Lehane Reaches for the Gold Ring

In "The Given Day," Dennis Lehane is reaching for the gold ring of American literature: The great American novel, an enduring masterpiece of great moral force and stunning imagination -- the kind of book that might belong on the same shelf as Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" or Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man."

He reaches -- oh so hard -- in that direction but doesn't quite deliver for the reasons I'll enumerate below. Overall, I enjoyed the plot and well-developed characters, particularly the main storyline about Danny (Ayden) Couglin, an idealistic Boston patrolman who galvanizes his fellow policemen to strike against the corrupt, Brahmin-dominated political establishment. Lehane's grasp of Irish immigrant sub-culture in Boston, circa 1919 is very strong indeed.

Unfortunately, the novel fails on several fronts, in my opinion. Besides uneven pacing in the narrative, "The Given Day" tries too hard to weave together historical and non-historical characters. After a while, it all seems somewhat forced and hard to believe.

For example, Babe Ruth plays a pick-up game of baseball with a Negro league team while his train is sidelined in Ohio. One of those African-American players just happens to end up in Boston, by way of Oklahoma, and he just happens to rub shoulders with the likes of WEB DuBois. Meanwhile, Danny Coughlin just happens to cross paths with J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Reed and about a dozen other famous people from the era. And then, to wrap it all together, the black baseball player from Ohio ends up working for Coughlin's father in Boston. The connections are just too amazing to make a plausible story.

Compare "The Given Day" to E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime," a similar novel in many respects. Doctorow succeeds because he doesn't force the issue of historical intersections. Key characters (e.g., a famous architect and black piano player) may pass each other in subtle ways that add to the plot, but they aren't pushed together like chess pieces.

Another thing I found quite disappointing about "The Given Day" was Lehane's tendency to abandon major historical events abruptly like so much stale coffee. For example, he gives us a fine initial portrait of the great influenza outbreak, but fails to weave this huge social upheaval into the rest of the story. Ditto for the Great Red Scare, the Russian Revolution, the great African-American migration and about 10 other major events that shaped this era. It's almost as if he had a "checklist" of major historical points to mention in passing. (For an excellent history of this period, read "1919: The Year Our World Began:
by William K. Klingaman.)

Dennis Lehane is a fine writer with amazing potential. I hope he learns from his mistakes in this novel and tries again soon.

for more information click here

Cumbersome and Slow

Sketching out post-WWI Boston in detail and delving into the cumbersome subject matter of the strikes, riots, and epidemics that earmark the time period, Lehane bites off quite a mouthful. The Given Day is a foreboding mammoth, with all of the positive and negative aspects that being so daunting includes. When taken in from afar, the plot surrounding the freshly green and resilient Danny Coughlin, a young beat-cop from a well known Irish family, is an epic beast that gives off a feeling very much like "The Godfather," and whose movements shake the very earth beneath it. But, when you get up close to it, you realize that all of the intertwining threads that you admired on the beast from a few steps back have become drenched and now feel like a sodden wool coat that is holding you down. You become tied to this mammoth, and unable to move faster than your leash will allow you to, unable to move faster than the mammoth will; Creatures that size always take their time when they have to move, and stop to rest much too often.

With not enough Mystic River-like flashes of brilliance, Lehane's latest attempt was simply too heavy. It was too heavy for him to write, and it is most definitely too heavy sit through. Should you be able to, you'll gain a tremendous amount of entertainment, but in the meantime you'll feel like you're dog paddling, with ankle weights on, through a sea of maple syrup.

for more information click here