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Radiant Days
During the last days of the Balkan War in the summer of 1995, Anthony, a hapless American questioning the dot-com values that allow him to live a pampered existence in San Francisco, agrees to join Gisela, a beauty he barely knows, in a search for her son, lost in a Hungarian orphanage. In Budapest they meet Marsh, a brilliant but frustrated British war correspondent. Anthony thinks he has found in Eastern Europe what his former life was enterprising young people openly questioning U.S. values, determined to remake their own world. But when an odd and edgy love triangle emerges and he discovers his mission with Gisela is much darker than he imagined, Anthony is thrown further in flux. Moving from the tattered romanticism of Budapest, through the sparkling Dalmatian coast, and into the brutalized landscape of inland Croatia, the novel takes a shocking turn of irreversible consequence.
Radiant Days is held taut in the voice of Anthony, whose desire to experience a more serious (and thrilling) life leaves injury in its wake. With a swift plot and seamless style, Michael FitzGerald delivers a story of unattainable love, misplaced lust, and the politics of compassion.
Radiant Days is held taut in the voice of Anthony, whose desire to experience a more serious (and thrilling) life leaves injury in its wake. With a swift plot and seamless style, Michael FitzGerald delivers a story of unattainable love, misplaced lust, and the politics of compassion.
256 pages, Paperback
First published December 28, 2006
3 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
Michael A. FitzGerald
2 books80 followersMichael A. FitzGerald is the author of
Radiant Days
. The story tracks a dissolving love triangle between a hapless American, a beautiful Hungarian junkie, and a young British journalist during the last days of the Balkan War. Critics have called the writing "beautiful and lucid" and said the book "flawlessly and astutely mirrors the ennui and confusion of this generation."
FitzGerald was raised in Skaneateles, NY. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana. He has been the recipient of a Fishtrap Fellowship, an Idaho Commission on the Arts Literature Fellowship, and an ICA Quickfunds grant. His shorter works can be found in Swink, Massachusetts Review, CutBank, Northwest Review, Other Voices, and Boise Weekly. He presently lives in Missoula, MT and runs Submittable.com.
A recent interview with him:
[link:http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topi...]
FitzGerald was raised in Skaneateles, NY. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana. He has been the recipient of a Fishtrap Fellowship, an Idaho Commission on the Arts Literature Fellowship, and an ICA Quickfunds grant. His shorter works can be found in Swink, Massachusetts Review, CutBank, Northwest Review, Other Voices, and Boise Weekly. He presently lives in Missoula, MT and runs Submittable.com.
A recent interview with him:
[link:http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topi...]
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February 11, 2024
It was about six months ago now that I first heard from Montana author Steve Saroff, who was writing to ask me to review his novel Paper Targets, based on the glowing review I had given his friend and fellow Montanan Michael FitzGerald way back in 2007 for his own debut novel, Radiant Days; and although I found Paper Targets to be only so-so (my review), it did get me thinking a lot again about FitzGerald's old book, so much so that I actually went online and tracked down a used copy so that I could read it again, now for the third time.
For those who don't know, this is one of the first books I ever professionally reviewed as the owner of my old small press, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; and it blew me away at the time, because it was literally the first example of a story type I've since come to really love, which I call "anti-villain" tales. So in other words, if an anti-hero is someone who looks at first like they're going to be the baddie but then eventually turns out to be the story's protagonist, then an anti-villain is the opposite, someone set up at the beginning of the story to look like a typical hero, but whose behavior just gets worse and worse and worse as the story continues. Here now in the 2020s, of course, we have a hugely popular and influential example of an anti-villain story in our general culture, the brilliantly evil "mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher eventually becomes murderous meth kingpin" Peak TV show Breaking Bad (and of course a dozen weaker Breaking Bad ripoffs that have come since); but back in 2007, this was literally a story trope that didn't even exist yet, and the sheer inventiveness and dark cleverness that went into a tale like this, that so turns the tables on what you were expecting by the time it's finished, just absolutely blew me away, a great start to what eventually became another decade and another thousand novels I would end up doing critical writeups of at the CCLaP website.
Something really interesting, however, has happened in the 14 years since this book first came out, which is that the #MeToo movement has really opened the eyes of a lot of people like me about exactly what kinds of monsters lurk inside the genial, aimless straight white male hipsters like the main character of Radiant Days, who starts the book in the mid-1990s as a San Franciscan who has stumbled ass-backwards into a six-figure job at a tech publication, but who impulsively decides to quit it and travel to Budapest after a one-night-stand with a beautiful, mysterious bartender who claims that she had been forced to leave her child behind when she first emigrated to the US. That of course turns out to be a lie, or else we wouldn't have much of a book on our hands; and as the novel continues we start drifting into a shambling Heart of Darkness-style plot that takes our characters from Hungary into more and more anarchic regions of the Balkans right as the Yugoslavian Civil War is raging around them, our hapless narrator finding himself more and more enmeshed in an ugly, messy story about refugee child-stealing and the upper-middle-class American couples willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on healthy white babies, no questions asked.
When I first read this novel over a decade ago, I saw this story as primarily one about a good person gone bad; but in the decade-plus of endless public scandals since, I've now come to realize that the main message here is that all straight white males are essentially born as villains, and that the only ones who rise above this are the ones who very consciously choose to put in the time, work and effort to rise above their inherently villainous tendencies. That's really the tragedy at the heart of this novel, that our narrator isn't an actively evil guy, out there shooting babies while cackling and twirling his black mustache; he's simply a straight white male without a moral compass, choosing to get more and more involved with unambiguous evil simply because he's a bored, spoiled American, more than happy to throw himself into whatever horrible things are going on simply from the act of someone near to him inviting him to, usually while handing him free drugs and easy sex.
The only difference between straight white males like you and me and inhuman monsters like Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump is that people like them have simply stopped giving a shit about what anyone thinks of them; and that's the heartbreaking yet riveting secret behind why this book is so powerful, that we're essentially watching one random middle-class American white male slowly learn over 250 pages to stop giving a shit about morality, which by extension is a pretty good overview of what's happened in America in general over the last decade and a half since this book was first published. So in this, FitzGerald deserves even more credit than before, for correctly predicting in the mid-'00s what exactly would happen in the US in the 2010s, essentially a harbinger of the American Downfall that we're currently now seeing the end result of (that is, the end result being the eventual Christian Fascist takeover of the US this coming autumn, such a sure thing at this point that I already have my bugout bag packed and my passport renewed a good nine months before the moment we'll all need to flee the country later this fall).
Checking out FitzGerald's Goodreads page in preparation for writing this, I can see that this has ended up being the one and only novel he's ever ended up writing; and that's a real shame, because not only has this book lost none of its power to shock and move readers, it's become even more powerful as an indictment of the entire United States and its endlessly corrupt 21st century, over two decades now of a blissful high at the expense of the rest of the world, whose hangover crash and burn is coming much sooner than I think a lot of people realize. So, here's hoping that FitzGerald will be doing some more prophesying soon, perhaps next time about the downfall itself; but in the meantime, this still remains an excellent and surprisingly timely novel that you should absolutely track down when you have a chance. I'm glad I took the time to read this for a third time, and I strongly recommend that you give it a whirl as well.
For those who don't know, this is one of the first books I ever professionally reviewed as the owner of my old small press, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; and it blew me away at the time, because it was literally the first example of a story type I've since come to really love, which I call "anti-villain" tales. So in other words, if an anti-hero is someone who looks at first like they're going to be the baddie but then eventually turns out to be the story's protagonist, then an anti-villain is the opposite, someone set up at the beginning of the story to look like a typical hero, but whose behavior just gets worse and worse and worse as the story continues. Here now in the 2020s, of course, we have a hugely popular and influential example of an anti-villain story in our general culture, the brilliantly evil "mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher eventually becomes murderous meth kingpin" Peak TV show Breaking Bad (and of course a dozen weaker Breaking Bad ripoffs that have come since); but back in 2007, this was literally a story trope that didn't even exist yet, and the sheer inventiveness and dark cleverness that went into a tale like this, that so turns the tables on what you were expecting by the time it's finished, just absolutely blew me away, a great start to what eventually became another decade and another thousand novels I would end up doing critical writeups of at the CCLaP website.
Something really interesting, however, has happened in the 14 years since this book first came out, which is that the #MeToo movement has really opened the eyes of a lot of people like me about exactly what kinds of monsters lurk inside the genial, aimless straight white male hipsters like the main character of Radiant Days, who starts the book in the mid-1990s as a San Franciscan who has stumbled ass-backwards into a six-figure job at a tech publication, but who impulsively decides to quit it and travel to Budapest after a one-night-stand with a beautiful, mysterious bartender who claims that she had been forced to leave her child behind when she first emigrated to the US. That of course turns out to be a lie, or else we wouldn't have much of a book on our hands; and as the novel continues we start drifting into a shambling Heart of Darkness-style plot that takes our characters from Hungary into more and more anarchic regions of the Balkans right as the Yugoslavian Civil War is raging around them, our hapless narrator finding himself more and more enmeshed in an ugly, messy story about refugee child-stealing and the upper-middle-class American couples willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on healthy white babies, no questions asked.
When I first read this novel over a decade ago, I saw this story as primarily one about a good person gone bad; but in the decade-plus of endless public scandals since, I've now come to realize that the main message here is that all straight white males are essentially born as villains, and that the only ones who rise above this are the ones who very consciously choose to put in the time, work and effort to rise above their inherently villainous tendencies. That's really the tragedy at the heart of this novel, that our narrator isn't an actively evil guy, out there shooting babies while cackling and twirling his black mustache; he's simply a straight white male without a moral compass, choosing to get more and more involved with unambiguous evil simply because he's a bored, spoiled American, more than happy to throw himself into whatever horrible things are going on simply from the act of someone near to him inviting him to, usually while handing him free drugs and easy sex.
The only difference between straight white males like you and me and inhuman monsters like Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump is that people like them have simply stopped giving a shit about what anyone thinks of them; and that's the heartbreaking yet riveting secret behind why this book is so powerful, that we're essentially watching one random middle-class American white male slowly learn over 250 pages to stop giving a shit about morality, which by extension is a pretty good overview of what's happened in America in general over the last decade and a half since this book was first published. So in this, FitzGerald deserves even more credit than before, for correctly predicting in the mid-'00s what exactly would happen in the US in the 2010s, essentially a harbinger of the American Downfall that we're currently now seeing the end result of (that is, the end result being the eventual Christian Fascist takeover of the US this coming autumn, such a sure thing at this point that I already have my bugout bag packed and my passport renewed a good nine months before the moment we'll all need to flee the country later this fall).
Checking out FitzGerald's Goodreads page in preparation for writing this, I can see that this has ended up being the one and only novel he's ever ended up writing; and that's a real shame, because not only has this book lost none of its power to shock and move readers, it's become even more powerful as an indictment of the entire United States and its endlessly corrupt 21st century, over two decades now of a blissful high at the expense of the rest of the world, whose hangover crash and burn is coming much sooner than I think a lot of people realize. So, here's hoping that FitzGerald will be doing some more prophesying soon, perhaps next time about the downfall itself; but in the meantime, this still remains an excellent and surprisingly timely novel that you should absolutely track down when you have a chance. I'm glad I took the time to read this for a third time, and I strongly recommend that you give it a whirl as well.
January 16, 2015
I really kind of hate this book. I can honestly say I have never hated a main character/narrator more than I hate Anthony. Much of the novel left me with a dirty, deeply uncomfortable feeling, like a roach was crawling up my spine. So why two stars instead of one? Because Marsh was an interesting character, the one I will remember from the book (I hope to expunge the others from mind as quickly as possible-I am seriously in need of some metaphorical brain-bleach) and the author made some powerful points about the modern world and modern war. For while I would like to think that the soullessness, ennui, and putrid lack of empathy that ooze through this novel are merely elements of fiction, sadly I know better.
August 25, 2007
If you grew up on the fiction of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, this book should appeal to you. It's obsessed with glamor and the fast-life, like Fitzgerald's work, and takes the reader into a foreign war zone, like Hemingway's. But while its roots are in the past, the fruit of this novel are in the present day. (Am I sounding too much like I'm writing for the New York Times Book review? Forgive me.) What I'm trying to say is, the book's premise is rather familiar -- a mysterious and exotic woman lures a bored dot-comer to Hungary and then the Balkans -- but the treatment of the plot is anything but. Follow this protagonist into the closing pages and you'll be rewarded with a journey that'll have you judging him and you and maybe half the young men you know. It's a great book about America that just happens to be set during the waning days of the Balkan war. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. It's a book ready for a large audience.
January 22, 2009
I am Hungarian and I met Michael in Budapest in 1993 when he was living there and collecting impressions. Then I knew nothing of him until I found his book on-line recently. So reading Radiant Days, especially it being related to the Hungarian experience, was such a treat!
His incredibly sharp eye for detail and great sense for absurdity and irony totally shine throughout this book. It is extremely well-written, the comical is so funny and the sad is so sad, and the observations and events somehow so relevant to our generation even if they have nothing to do with any particular life. A bit off the ground and terminally confused, we yearn for things that aren’t there and then completely miss the point of what is there. In extreme cases, each and every time. That was my feeling.
I loved the narrator, Anthony. (I may be one of few people, though, it seems.) He has a rare sense for beauty – and I don’t mean Gisela’s butt -, and his approach to the novelty of being in a foreign place, that is, with acknowledged ignorance and open eyes, is so much more appealing than the arrogant confidence that characterizes the typical and widely hated American abroad. I think self-deprecation is hot and heroes are boring and dishonest. (But remember, I’m Hungarian and we like to kill ourselves.)
I found Gisela’s and Anthony’s relationship interesting beyond the premise of beautiful, slutty girl misleading clueless guy. Although they both seem at times willing to connect, there is a total lack of efficient communication, and their interactions almost always derail, and most painfully, often in the shadow of potentially beautiful harmony. When you do find the beauty, it comes unexpected, in the middle of ugly, desperate situations. I love the contrasts!
And the last line is so cool that it, in itself, is worth reading the book for.
I loved this book and I can’t wait for the next one from Michael.
His incredibly sharp eye for detail and great sense for absurdity and irony totally shine throughout this book. It is extremely well-written, the comical is so funny and the sad is so sad, and the observations and events somehow so relevant to our generation even if they have nothing to do with any particular life. A bit off the ground and terminally confused, we yearn for things that aren’t there and then completely miss the point of what is there. In extreme cases, each and every time. That was my feeling.
I loved the narrator, Anthony. (I may be one of few people, though, it seems.) He has a rare sense for beauty – and I don’t mean Gisela’s butt -, and his approach to the novelty of being in a foreign place, that is, with acknowledged ignorance and open eyes, is so much more appealing than the arrogant confidence that characterizes the typical and widely hated American abroad. I think self-deprecation is hot and heroes are boring and dishonest. (But remember, I’m Hungarian and we like to kill ourselves.)
I found Gisela’s and Anthony’s relationship interesting beyond the premise of beautiful, slutty girl misleading clueless guy. Although they both seem at times willing to connect, there is a total lack of efficient communication, and their interactions almost always derail, and most painfully, often in the shadow of potentially beautiful harmony. When you do find the beauty, it comes unexpected, in the middle of ugly, desperate situations. I love the contrasts!
And the last line is so cool that it, in itself, is worth reading the book for.
I loved this book and I can’t wait for the next one from Michael.
July 11, 2007
I admit it: I thought I knew what the book held in store for me based on the first few pages. Boy was I wrong. Even worse, I made my assumption based on a kneejerk appraisal of the narrator, Anthony, a dot-com era ex-pat in Budapest. But as I continued reading the book kept getting darker and darker and the protagonist's behavior kept diverging from what I expected him to do. At one point I was so startled I let out a little shout, prompting my wife to ask me what was the matter. I didn't have an answer for her. For in addtition to great writing, memorable characters, hilarious dialogue, people doing terrible things, and wonderfully nunaced epxosition, Radiant Days is a blistering attack on the value system that has brought us to this point in our history and culture. A great, but disturbing, read.
September 23, 2007
From its opening at an expatriates' party in Budapest to its bittersweet ending, "Radiant Days" is an admirable first novel, immersing the reader in the pinballing life of a California man who is fleeing the end of a relationship and gets both more and less than he bargained for.
After a beautiful Hungarian bartender persuades the jilted Anthony Sinclair to go to Budapest with her, he convinces himself that he's in love with her, even though she quickly lets him know how willing she is to manipulate him and lie to him. In the course of his alcohol-fueled stay in eastern Europe, he meets a voluble British war journalist, who attracts him with his world-weary erudition and repels him by criticizing Anthony, Americans and virtually everyone else within reach.
The story looks for a moment as if it might devolve into one more meandering tale of a wandering American who is none too experienced and none too sure of his motives. But then he agrees to go with the journalist and the Hungarian woman on a quick war correspondent's trip to Croatia, and the novel quickly moves toward a crisis.
The novel is driven forward by strong description, vivid characters and highly charged eroticism, and it features characters who each show a stubborn moral streak in the midst of general selfishness and greed. It also paints a brilliant picture of the peculiar mixture of banality and terror that can co-exist in a war zone.
Only two of the three principals make it out of the book alive, and both of them, in the end, achieve a kind of world-weary freedom.
A fine first effort. It makes me eager to see what is coming next from Michael Fitzgerald.
August 9, 2007
Radiant Days is thick with detail, angst, desperation, ennui, and culture shock. The story is set in post-soviet Budapest where expats live cheaply and spout philosophy and political theory without doing much else. Our hero accompanies a Gisela to Hungary and finds he might be there under false pretenses. As the lies and truth are revealed they don't seem to mean much to Anthony - he is interested only in his modest goals of appearing cool and screwing Gisela. The story moves to the Balkans (during the height of the war) and life gets riskier and more complicated.
Michael Fitzgerald tells a story within a story - how an average college educated American knows so little about the rest of the world and the history of long time animosities, that everything has to be explained to him as he travels. Fitzgerald is brutally truthful with all his characters - at times I hated some and liked others, only to have my position switched in the next fifty pages.
I loved this book, and I can't stop thinking about it!
Michael Fitzgerald tells a story within a story - how an average college educated American knows so little about the rest of the world and the history of long time animosities, that everything has to be explained to him as he travels. Fitzgerald is brutally truthful with all his characters - at times I hated some and liked others, only to have my position switched in the next fifty pages.
I loved this book, and I can't stop thinking about it!
November 7, 2011
what happens when an american educated "successful" web developer suddenly sheds his ennui, runs off to Hungary and former Yugoslavia with a beautiful but deceitful women, dabbles in nefarious "adoptions", then "wanders" down into the croat, serb, bosian stew of death? education of a different story, WITH MAPS, and accompanying real consequences to moral and "lifestyle" decisions. great novel for american times in the early 21st century.
November 8, 2007
For a first novel, Radiant Days is a hell of an accomplishment. Michael Fitzgerald is a writer of both seriousness and serious talent. He deserves to be read.
On the back cover there is reference to Fitzgerald's MFA; but I'm overjoyed to report that Fitzgerald's work shows almost none of the scars of an MFA program. There's very little of the pathological cleverness, smug zaniness and "look at me I'm writing!" silliness that these programs seem to breed. Too often, the letters 'MFA' promise little more than inside-joke prose created solely for other MFA graduates.
For all its visits to the narrator's unrequited sexuality, Radiant Days is a novel that does not stop being serious. It is a novel whose writing took a lot of hard choices; when war is going on all round him and the narrator should probably be resorting to philosophical kitsch to show his readers how sensitive he is, Fitzgerald's narrator instead provides honesty: he's thrilled at the thought of having another try at bedding the woman who dragged him to Hungary.
As one reads this, he can almost imagine some literary critic - more concerned about his next cocktail party than offering a true critique of what he's read - carrying on about the "chilling dispossession" of contemporary Americans, that they can be thinking of only sex and drugs while people are dying. But that is a very real and true part of the American experience, and Fitzgerald nobly captures it.
If there was a part of the book that didn't thrill me, it was the beginning. We start at a party, and it felt so much like "The Swimmer" and a whole world that seems senselessly literary. Then there was the narrator's confession that he'd read little of Hemingway except biographies and A Movable Feast, and it made one worry about the rest of the novel - just how well Fitzgerald would be able to redeem his narrator's confession that he was more interested in being a writer than actually writing.
But redeem it he did. He did it with seriousness and honesty and a few interesting tricks, too. Here's perhaps the novel's most interesting sentence:
"She'd let me stand while she lay back on the bed and put her feet on my shoulders and let me move in below and her ass was rubbing against the top of my thighs and my memory was letting me almost feel the weight of her feet on my shoulders and I began to speed up."
There are also a number of very insightful observations about women and Europeans' general view of Americans. Fitzgerald has an English journalist named Marsh who provides many of these insights. At one point he says of the narrator's drug-using female obsession:
"People like her are the reason no one ever gets anything done. They smash things up and then retreat into their beauty."
That's a great truth. And it's an accomplishment to create a character who can say this in proper context and have it come out plausibly.
Finally, the reader is left turning pages quickly and admiring the novelist immensely by the end of this work. How much of this is autobiographical? is a question a reader is forced to ask of almost any story told in the first person, no matter how good that reader is.
Let us hope the answer, in Michael Fitzgerald's case, is: Not too much. This was a thoroughly well-constructed and enjoyable novel. I hope there are more to come.
On the back cover there is reference to Fitzgerald's MFA; but I'm overjoyed to report that Fitzgerald's work shows almost none of the scars of an MFA program. There's very little of the pathological cleverness, smug zaniness and "look at me I'm writing!" silliness that these programs seem to breed. Too often, the letters 'MFA' promise little more than inside-joke prose created solely for other MFA graduates.
For all its visits to the narrator's unrequited sexuality, Radiant Days is a novel that does not stop being serious. It is a novel whose writing took a lot of hard choices; when war is going on all round him and the narrator should probably be resorting to philosophical kitsch to show his readers how sensitive he is, Fitzgerald's narrator instead provides honesty: he's thrilled at the thought of having another try at bedding the woman who dragged him to Hungary.
As one reads this, he can almost imagine some literary critic - more concerned about his next cocktail party than offering a true critique of what he's read - carrying on about the "chilling dispossession" of contemporary Americans, that they can be thinking of only sex and drugs while people are dying. But that is a very real and true part of the American experience, and Fitzgerald nobly captures it.
If there was a part of the book that didn't thrill me, it was the beginning. We start at a party, and it felt so much like "The Swimmer" and a whole world that seems senselessly literary. Then there was the narrator's confession that he'd read little of Hemingway except biographies and A Movable Feast, and it made one worry about the rest of the novel - just how well Fitzgerald would be able to redeem his narrator's confession that he was more interested in being a writer than actually writing.
But redeem it he did. He did it with seriousness and honesty and a few interesting tricks, too. Here's perhaps the novel's most interesting sentence:
"She'd let me stand while she lay back on the bed and put her feet on my shoulders and let me move in below and her ass was rubbing against the top of my thighs and my memory was letting me almost feel the weight of her feet on my shoulders and I began to speed up."
There are also a number of very insightful observations about women and Europeans' general view of Americans. Fitzgerald has an English journalist named Marsh who provides many of these insights. At one point he says of the narrator's drug-using female obsession:
"People like her are the reason no one ever gets anything done. They smash things up and then retreat into their beauty."
That's a great truth. And it's an accomplishment to create a character who can say this in proper context and have it come out plausibly.
Finally, the reader is left turning pages quickly and admiring the novelist immensely by the end of this work. How much of this is autobiographical? is a question a reader is forced to ask of almost any story told in the first person, no matter how good that reader is.
Let us hope the answer, in Michael Fitzgerald's case, is: Not too much. This was a thoroughly well-constructed and enjoyable novel. I hope there are more to come.
April 11, 2008
I find myself echoing the review of the esteemed Jim Ruland. I thought I knew pretty much how this book would go after a few pages, but it turned into something else again, something really fine. I was particularly impressed with the way FitzGerald took a familiar story (dude following his dick, more or less), moved it into a war zone, and came up with a fine novel that goes a long way toward explaining why people across the world resent Americans abroad. The prose style is lucid, the author takes some real risk with a somewhat unlikeable narrator, and turned it all into a novel I'll return to.
May 21, 2009
An excellent book, gripping, informative, surprising and quite unlike what I expected; a sort of unholy marriage between Hemingway and Brett Easton Ellis, with a startlingly unloveable - and extremely credible - hero. It's been on my to-read shelf for ages, and I only wish I'd got to it sooner.
October 29, 2007
Hey listen, this is a little awkward, since Michael's one of my Goodreads friends here and I met him briefly when he read from the book at Vermin. So I sort of feel like I'm introducing him at a banquet, or I'm toasting him at his wedding. Here. I am figuratively clamping my hand on his shoulder in a signal that I'm acknowledging him standing right by me as I talk about his work.
The book is really, really powerful. I'm not just saying that because Michael's right here, fidgeting. The pages move quickly, and he does a funny thing with style -- the moments of overtly flowery prose are rare, and experimentation even rarer, but the tone is quietly elegant, vivid, well communicated. Between that and sporadic literary and contemporary high culture references, he delivers in effect a reliable narrator doing extremely unreliable things. I felt always that this could be someone I know, this could be me, even, and it was the kind of stomach-turning suspicion that makes literature a better teacher than journalism.
I was reminded of Dave Eggers' second book (the fact that I can't remember the mothafoca's name speaks more to my deteriorating memory than the quality of the book) for the sort of wide-eyed vantage of an American seeing and recoiling from a very familiar looking sort of war, and I was also reminded of the necessity and despair and gorgeousness of the work of Aleksander Hemon. So definitely read Radiant Days, but also definitely read Hemon and probably Eggers' book, too, what the hell. There are things you should know.
The book is really, really powerful. I'm not just saying that because Michael's right here, fidgeting. The pages move quickly, and he does a funny thing with style -- the moments of overtly flowery prose are rare, and experimentation even rarer, but the tone is quietly elegant, vivid, well communicated. Between that and sporadic literary and contemporary high culture references, he delivers in effect a reliable narrator doing extremely unreliable things. I felt always that this could be someone I know, this could be me, even, and it was the kind of stomach-turning suspicion that makes literature a better teacher than journalism.
I was reminded of Dave Eggers' second book (the fact that I can't remember the mothafoca's name speaks more to my deteriorating memory than the quality of the book) for the sort of wide-eyed vantage of an American seeing and recoiling from a very familiar looking sort of war, and I was also reminded of the necessity and despair and gorgeousness of the work of Aleksander Hemon. So definitely read Radiant Days, but also definitely read Hemon and probably Eggers' book, too, what the hell. There are things you should know.
March 27, 2008
I read this book on the recommendation of the author after I expressed a great liking for the French author Michel Houellebecq on this site.
I thoroughly enjoyed the read and rattled through it in a few days. It paints a bleak picture of the modern human condition and the direction western society appears to be taking. The characters are engaging for all their faults and the I liked the setting of Budapest and Croatia (just after the war of the mid 90s). The author paints a wonderful contrast between the historic Hungarian capital, the striking Dalmatian coastline and some of the war torn interior in the Balkan state. The Balkans are a fascinating part of the world, particularly, I think, for us Europeans and the small insights into some of this history given to us by the English journalist Marsh are fascinating.
Maybe it panders to my preconceptions of a typical Americans grasp of the rest of the world and all the history that divides many nations.
A cracking read!!
I thoroughly enjoyed the read and rattled through it in a few days. It paints a bleak picture of the modern human condition and the direction western society appears to be taking. The characters are engaging for all their faults and the I liked the setting of Budapest and Croatia (just after the war of the mid 90s). The author paints a wonderful contrast between the historic Hungarian capital, the striking Dalmatian coastline and some of the war torn interior in the Balkan state. The Balkans are a fascinating part of the world, particularly, I think, for us Europeans and the small insights into some of this history given to us by the English journalist Marsh are fascinating.
Maybe it panders to my preconceptions of a typical Americans grasp of the rest of the world and all the history that divides many nations.
A cracking read!!
December 2, 2007
Strong book, the first half left me feeling uplifted and energized, while also feeling a bit of regret. I thought my study abroad times were a little rock n' roll. I think I probably should have headed east from Holland to be able to really live it up...I suddenly feel so docile and tame.
After the dark turn "down the rabbit hole" as the cover blurb says, I found myself relating a little less to the characters with each turning page. I think this goes along with the slow unraveling of Anthony and his disconnecting with the other characters and his sense of reality.
Nicely done, Mr. FitzGerald. A real page-turner here. Why do men always want to save women like Gisela?
After the dark turn "down the rabbit hole" as the cover blurb says, I found myself relating a little less to the characters with each turning page. I think this goes along with the slow unraveling of Anthony and his disconnecting with the other characters and his sense of reality.
Nicely done, Mr. FitzGerald. A real page-turner here. Why do men always want to save women like Gisela?
March 29, 2009
I have been trying to think about the best way to express my great affection for Radiant Days by Michael FitzGerald, but it all seems cliche. You know the story in so many ways, its a coming of age tale, a road trip and a love story, rife with drugs and sex, a debut novel done as males tend to do them, and yet it's so rich and audacious, painful and fresh, such a page-turner, that none of that matters. Its more like a reboot or a reinvention, but here's the thing, it also has substance and depth, politics and history, and trying to integrate all that stuff can be so hit or miss, failing to serve the story, or just failing, but here it works, it really works. Kudos dude. Its a triumph.
September 7, 2007
Fitzgerald infuses the complexities of a wonderlust world with a radiant prose style. Full of wisdom and conscience—and exacting of the all too endemic contemporary compromise.
April 13, 2008
So...I was having a discussion with someone about how you couldn't give a book by a friend anything less than 4 stars because it would make the author cry and/or hate you. I don't agree; 3 stars means "I liked it"! This is a good thing! Michael Fitzgerald and I have recently become acquainted on this site, and so it's weird to know that he'll read this review. So let me just get this out of the way: Hi, Michael! I liked your book!
Here's my official review:
Radiant Days is a compelling story about a fairly unlikeable and hapless twenty-something guy in the mid-1990s who follows a beautiful Hungarian woman to Budapest and then to war-torn Croatia. The language is conversational, with an interesting use of fragmented sentences, and occasional lapses into pleasing lyricism. (There's this great passage where the narrator describes these moms waiting for their kids to get out of school--I loved it). The book is funny, and also quite serious; I was impressed with how Fitzgerald wrestled with big international issues, and the ignorance of our American narrator. Some of his reactions, and people's reactions to him, reminded me of my own travels through Europe.
I didn't think Gisela, the Hungarian woman, was particularly compelling, which rendered the narrator's journey a bit underwhelming at times. I couldn't pin down his interest in her. On the flipside, I loved the depiction of Marsh, the British war journalist.
This is a promising debut. Michael, what are you working on now?
Here's my official review:
Radiant Days is a compelling story about a fairly unlikeable and hapless twenty-something guy in the mid-1990s who follows a beautiful Hungarian woman to Budapest and then to war-torn Croatia. The language is conversational, with an interesting use of fragmented sentences, and occasional lapses into pleasing lyricism. (There's this great passage where the narrator describes these moms waiting for their kids to get out of school--I loved it). The book is funny, and also quite serious; I was impressed with how Fitzgerald wrestled with big international issues, and the ignorance of our American narrator. Some of his reactions, and people's reactions to him, reminded me of my own travels through Europe.
I didn't think Gisela, the Hungarian woman, was particularly compelling, which rendered the narrator's journey a bit underwhelming at times. I couldn't pin down his interest in her. On the flipside, I loved the depiction of Marsh, the British war journalist.
This is a promising debut. Michael, what are you working on now?
May 20, 2008
I see a different side of the book, i.e., about how people emerge from situations and relationships. The protagonist, lacking any strong self identity, is part of this emergence, but I was much more attracted by his observations of others than his own development. Almost every character is morally ambiguous, neither clearly good nor bad. It is only the actions we can judge and the power of the book is to make us recognize the difficulty of actually making such judgments.
The story itself is both provocative and gripping. I found it hard to put down, and fun to read. The refreshing ease of presentation makes the reflection on human nature that much more powerful.
The story itself is both provocative and gripping. I found it hard to put down, and fun to read. The refreshing ease of presentation makes the reflection on human nature that much more powerful.
March 7, 2012
The characters in this book were definitely memorable - Anthony ... dude I kept hoping you would get a clue; Gisela - selfish, skanky biatchhh; and Marsh, a serious dude who acts like he's not serious. The writing was well done and the imagery vivid - the contrast between the expats & the locals was fierce. But I just didn't get why Gisela went to Hungary in the 1st place; I wish there was more closure on this. And what happened to Marsh was so abrupt ... but I guess that's how these things happen (I wish we hadn't been clued in to what would happen before it did).
Overall, I liked this book (3.5 stars) - only because I wish the ending was more complete ... not necessarily neater.
Overall, I liked this book (3.5 stars) - only because I wish the ending was more complete ... not necessarily neater.
September 28, 2007
I really enjoyed this book. Although the main character wasn't someone I'd want to hang out with in real life, I enjoyed reading about what happened to him. The book also paints a fairly true-to-life picture of expat communities, in my opinion.
June 27, 2007
It's utterly fantastic.
Read
June 14, 2011This cringe-making journey of a young man in Eastern Europe takes several unexpected turns, and becomes a real adventure.
Want to read
July 17, 2007This guy friended me to get me to notice his book and it worked, it looks really interesting.
November 5, 2007
5 stars 'cause I love it already.
March 29, 2018
I hated every page of this book. However, certain scenes will never leave my mind. If you want to read about an idiot American male, obsessed with sex and masterbation, traveling in foreign countries, this is your book.
January 20, 2008
Give the kids from "Less than Zero" 10 years & send them to the Balkans. Americas Gen X are clueless, soulless, just wanna get laid & do some drugs. Well, maybe (I think this point has been made a time or two before by Bret Easton Ellis & Douglas Coupland).
This is an ambitious novel & it isn't going to give you the warm fuzzies about America or Americans (esp. abroad). I tired of Anthony probably more quickly than the author would have liked. Of course you are not supposed the like Anthony, he has not one redeeming quality, but somehow you know he'll end up on his feet.
The novel is well written, but too many flaws (here is one, Anthony can only find Israel & Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, but later in the novel is reading The Atlantic Monthly?) & tired references to how horny Anthony is, make this book a 3 star read.
This is an ambitious novel & it isn't going to give you the warm fuzzies about America or Americans (esp. abroad). I tired of Anthony probably more quickly than the author would have liked. Of course you are not supposed the like Anthony, he has not one redeeming quality, but somehow you know he'll end up on his feet.
The novel is well written, but too many flaws (here is one, Anthony can only find Israel & Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, but later in the novel is reading The Atlantic Monthly?) & tired references to how horny Anthony is, make this book a 3 star read.
December 5, 2009
This is a fantastic novel. The very act of placing a dot-com era San-Franciscan in the middle of the Yugoslav wars is as hilarious as it is tragic, a move that isn't just brilliant, but also courageous and important. But the best part of this book is the narrator. In all of his selfishness and restlessness, he's truer to life than most other characters in contemporary literature. Anyone offended by his observations hasn't looked deep enough within their own desires. The world that Fitzgerald creates is like our own world, in that it's not populated by heroes or villains, but by humans. In addition, it's a fast-paced page-turner of a book. I took two Tylenol PMs before I started it, and couldn't fall asleep until I'd finished part one.
Read
March 22, 2008LA Weekly's Favorite Undernourished Books of 2007:
[link:http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...]
CCLAP: [link:http://www.cclapcenter.com/2007/07/bo...]
HBC:[link:http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/review...]
NYTBR:[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/boo...]
LifeTimes:[link:http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2...]
All: [link:http://www.radiantdays.com/reviews.html]
[link:http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...]
CCLAP: [link:http://www.cclapcenter.com/2007/07/bo...]
HBC:[link:http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/review...]
NYTBR:[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/boo...]
LifeTimes:[link:http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2...]
All: [link:http://www.radiantdays.com/reviews.html]
February 2, 2011
So, this book is a commentary on the Serbian/Croatian conflict in the 1990s. It examines the American psyche by thrusting a stereotypical American young man into the complexities of an emotional and historically-backed war. I thought there were interesting ideas about America's sense of history and importance and the way that we perceive the rest of the world. I also thought it was interesting to see how we are perceived by the rest of the world. In the end those ideas are extremely complicated. BUT I didn't like the overt sexuality, AND I thought there wasn't enough character development to make me care for the main characters.
June 9, 2008
At the risk of being Dead to Michael A. Fitzgerald I will give this book the 5 stars it deserves. I went through hell and high water to get this book. Sat in Borders on the night the last harry potter book was released just to read it. I have sacrificed. And it was for good reason. this book is fantastic. Michael's wit never ceases to amaze or make me smile. I read it in a weekend and books usually take me a good month or two to get through. Read this book. You won't be dissapointed.
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