Home Fires

Max Weston, 21 years old and newly recruited as a Lance Corporal, leaves for his first posting in Central Africa, and never returns. The tragedy of his death is incomprehensible and insurmountable for his parents Caroline and Andrew, who withdraw from each other into their own private desolation and grief. Their deep mourning is punctured by the arrival of Elsa, Andrew's 98 year old mother, whose advancing dementia means she can no longer take care of herself. As Elsa's mind wanders and retreats into the past, she relives her own experiences and the painful memories of her father who was changed utterly by war.   

The damage and betrayal of a family in crisis were themes explored in Day's first book Scissors, Paper, Stone, an exceptional novel that won a Betty Trask Award in 2012. Day's writing has often been described as delicate but this is to somewhat underplay her deft handling of the balance between tenderness and trauma. Her succinct poetic phrasing masterfully evokes the utter devastation of her characters' profound grief. When Caroline answers the door to the officers on their grim duty of reporting Max's death, she describes: 'It felt as though the next breath would not come but remain, halted, just beyond reach… She said "No," and her voice when she heard it sounded far away: a whisper on the opposite side of an echoing cave'. Day's writing is filled with moments like these: her ability to portray quiet desperation with descriptions that are both elegiac and powerful is a mark of her unique voice. 

A reader is forced to shift their sympathies for Andrew, Caroline and Elsa: these are complex knotty characters, each bound in their own misery, each selfish in their needs and pain and all utterly convincing and compelling.

Home Fires is, in essence, a story of how the reverberations of war echo through the ages but it is also an extraordinary story of immense hope and humanity. With her second book, Day's voice has grown rich and more assured. It is a novel that a reader relishes to re-read almost as soon as the final page is turned.