“It was a language, she saw now, the way he touched her.”
Megan Hunter’s Days of Light (Grove Press 2025) is very Bookery, and I read it as part of my “get a jump on possible longlisted books” journey. It’s The Safekeep meets Stone Yard Devotional, and while I loved both of those novels, I rather disliked Days of Light. The writing is gorgeous, and Hunter is clearly quite talented; I simply hated both the story and the way it was told – and most of the characters. This is a “it’s not you, it’s me” moment, and I recognize that.
The novel opens on Easter Sunday 1938. Ivy is 19. Her older brother, Joseph, is home from Oxford and his girlfriend is to join them. They have a bit of odd family – their parents aren’t together but are. Her dad has his relationships and her mom has Angus (who has his own relationships.) They’re all “artistic” and rather fit the tortured artist stereotypes. Ivy is passable at all creative efforts, but not really amazing at any of them.
Ivy has a schoolgirl crush on Bear, one of Angus’s “friends” who has, quite literally, known her since she was born. He’s a “writer” and, of course, gorgeous and hellbent on seducing her. (Enter the first “ick”)
Joseph dies that Easter Sunday – and much like when the stone was rolled away, no body was ever found. He drowns while swimming with Ivy. She sees a bright light and pays him no attention as he calls to her. She and her mother blame her.
Ivy and Bear first hook up at the funeral. (Enter the second “ick.”) After a half-hearted suicide attempt, she agrees to marry him. What follows is a story told over six days but over decades, ending on the sixth day, which is Easter Sunday 1999.
My takeaway? Ivy was supposed to be the one to drown – the light was for her, and she knows it. Everything that happens after that moment, she just lets happen to her. Bear? He was as good of a choice as going to Paris – she didn’t really care. When she becomes involved with Joseph’s girlfriend? Is that for her or for Joseph? She spends decades trying to find Joseph. She turns to God and has a few years as a nun because Bear died and Frances rejects her for her own husband. (She becomes Sister Francis. Third Ick.) Finally, the light comes for her.
I didn’t like Ivy. Not at all.
My dislike of this novel means it is likely to be listed.
A Girl Named Tommi 