When starting to read a novel by Cunningham there is always some trepidation: will it fulfill its writers reputation? In the first part, April 5 2019, I felt a slight disappointment. Beautifully written words about some pretty self-preoccupied people. Then disaster hits in April 5 2020 and Cunningham got to me. I became captivated by those same people.
Day is the story of a small group of people, connected by family ties. At the start of the novel they are leading fairly ordinary lives. That is to say, ordinary in the sense of not happening a lot in their lives. They themselves have not necessarily chosen ordinary paths. April 5 2019 being an ordinary day just like always.
Couple Dan and Isabel live with their two children Nathan and Violet in a small apartment in Brooklyn; Isabel’s brother Robbie has been kindly requested to search his own apartment in order for Nathan to have his own room. Isabel works for a magazine that is going down-under because of the internet and social media, Robbie is a teacher and Dan a stay-at-home dad would be musician. In some strange way Robbie is the one both Dan and Isabel love; Dan’s love being platonically from the start.
Dan, Isabel and Robbie are struggling, with themselves, with each other, with the children and with life itself. They are definitely not happy people. Nathan is your regular adolescent wanting to live an ordinary life, Violet is considered special by everyone, considers herself special. In what way is never fully revealed. April 5 2019 slightly feels too much like one of those stories about reasonably well-to-do New Yorkers being full of their own problems.
April 5 2020 changes everything: Covid has hit the world and our family core is forced to stay inside. By that time Robbie has gone on a long trip to Iceland and is not allowed to return. Cunningham has added an element of concern that has me commit to the family. They are no longer those rather tedious New Yorkers they have become a family core that has to face a different life, has to deal with the circumstances in changed conditions.
April 5 2020 and April 5 2021 are meaningful days in the lives of a small family, representing many small families worldwide. Cunningham has given a beautiful voice to their worries, to their sorrow and pain. In those two parts he once more demonstrates that he is an extremely talented writer, one being able to fluently put into words all those things that wander around slightly incoherently in our heads.
Structurally the novel is also put together cleverly. Choosing to describe three days in three consecutive years adds an element of normality, of regularity. Something that is totally lacking in 2020 and 2021, in this way stressing the contrast between ordinary life and life during a pandemic.
I had my hesitation at first, Cunningham had me from the first page of April 5 2020.
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