DAYS WITHOUT END

Days Without End is a rich, disturbing and sometimes funny read.  Imagine Walking Dead meets It Ain't Half Hot Mum (or Good Morning Vietnam).   But more poignant, daring and experimental in style and content.

  

Costa Book of the Year (2016) Days Without End is set in mid-nineteenth century America but it’s still a story of our time. Days Without End follows two young orphaned Irish immigrants arriving in the ‘land of the free’ who are unwittingly caught up in the gruesome cross fire of other wars - firstly the Indian Wars and then the Civil War.   The war depicts deep rooted racism but also allows a touching openness towards the boys’ own love for each other and a native Indian girl whose life they have saved and adopted as their own.  War allows the boys to be drawn together and a loving gay relationship is formed. 

 

Didn’t win everyone’s hearts in the group but we couldn’t deny it was a daring and memorable  novel that we probably wouldn’t have read if it had not been for the club. And it definitely deserved to be in our Den's Dozen. But it does come with a warning:  not for the faint hearted! 

 

Scores out of 10 - varied from 6/10 to 9 and 10/10.

 

- for people who love books -