Good Day?

by Vesna Main

In a world where we present our diverse selves through social media, chatbots and messaging, this dark novel listens in on intimate secrets, desires and adultery.

This novel-within-a-novel charts the writing of a story about Richard and Anna, a middle-aged professional couple, who face the biggest crisis of their twenty-five-year marriage when he admits seeing prostitutes. The text unfolds through a dialogue between Anna, the writer, and her husband, Richard, the reader.

As the story of Richard and Anna progresses, the tension between them increases and, on several occasions, they stop speaking to each other. The writer’s novel compels them to examine their own marriage.

Gradually the differences between the characters in the novel on the one hand and the reader and the writer on the other appear to diminish to the point where we begin to wonder whether the reader, like Richard, pays for sex, and whether the writer, like her female protagonist, is coping with the situation by having several lovers.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 2019

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

- Good book
- Very
- Tell me
- Neil does it so much better
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
- Really
- Yes even the author likes his review
- Which author - the Vesna Main that wrote the book, V Main in the book or Anna?
- All three I guess

- But that’s just borrowing.
- The author does it
- But she has writing talent unlike you. What I want to know is how is your review going?
- I was thinking of writing a review in the style of the book itself
- Why, you always do that – no one likes those reviews
- Yes they do
- They don’t – you think it makes you look clever but it’s not. People think you are just copying writers with more ability
- That’s not what people think – that’s what you think, isn’t it

- One thing I don’t understand
- What?
- What causes someone to pay to read a book review?
- How do you mean
- In a paper or magazine. Why would someone do it the first time?
- Maybe the novelty – the reviewers do things that Goodreads reviewers aren’t prepared to do
- Or because they don’t resort to cheap gimmicks and actually review the book properly
- ?

- What will you include in your review?
- I was thinking of describing how I am going to meet with a group of Goodreaders to discuss the book face to face – a fictional group to discuss a fictional review
- That’s very predictable. Who will be in your fictional group and what will they do?
- I was thinking of having someone that works in insurance like me, two experts in IT, maybe a photographer called Neil, perhaps an owner of an office services business
- People will think you are talking about real people
- I will use disguised names like Gumble’s Yard
- Gumble’s Yard whose twin brother uses his real name on Goodreads and makes frequent references to Gumble’s Yard being his twin. I think people will see through that
- Gumble's Yard is only a working name - although it does seem to fit

- One other interesting thing about the book
- What?
- It’s published by Salt – a small press based in Cromer, Norfolk
- I know. They are great – but you said something interesting?
- the fact that it’s on a shortlist with a book by Galley Beggar, the fact they are from Norwich, Norfolk
- Another great small press but what’s interesting about that?
- I am writing this review about 10 miles from Cromer and 10 miles from Norwich
- Typical
- What?
- You make yourself the centre of the literary universe and detract from the excellence of this book

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize

- Good day?
- Okay. Yours?
- All right. What's Anna been up to?
- I've been working on Richard.
- And?
- There's something I want to check with you.
- I'm only a male reader.
- Exactly what I need.

Vesna Main's Good Day? is another wonderful find from Salt Publishing, the Cromer-based independent publisher, celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, and I would strongly suggest seeking out this and their other books at https://www.saltpublishing.com/collec.... (I should say I have no connection with them - I'm just a huge fan of what they do)

Good Day? is very cleverly structured, told in dialogue (as in the example above) between an author and her husband, a researcher into women's rights, both in their 50s. The conversations are typically when he returns from work (hence the -Good day? that opens many of them).

The author is writing a novel about a couple also in their 50s, where the husband, Richard, is forced (when he is found out by colleagues at work) to confess to his wife, Anna, that he has been visiting prostitutes for the previous decade.

The dialogues consist of the author and her husband, discussing her work-in-progress, and we learn the story of Anna and Richard, including various false starts and re-writes in the plot, through this. But the author has - to her husband's disapproval - based her characters closely in many respects on people she knows: Anna shares many of her own traits, and Richard many of her husband's (he is, for example, an academic specialising in suffragettes). As they discuss the novel-in-progress, and the author seeks his views on the plot and characters, the husband often argues that the Anna character is unsympathetic and is more forgiving of Richard's failings (which he sees as partly caused by Anna's character), while the author in turn struggles to explain Richard's motivation and, having asked her husband what it might be, is rather shocked by how reasonably he can rationalise what Richard does.

Cleverly the whole thing becomes a proxy for the strain in their own relationship - indeed at times it is unclear to the reader, and even to them, whether they are talking about themselves or the characters.

The author explains the unusual form of the novel-in-dialogue here: http://bookanista.com/two-voices/ and on this fascinating podcast: https://unsoundmethods.co.uk/2020/01/...

But amidst the metafictional cleverness, Vesna Main also makes some important points about the nature of relationships, particularly mature ones, about the nature of fiction and what it is trying to achieve, and about sex-work and prostitution. The latter area is clearly well researched and a topic Main has visited before: see e.g. this interview https://strangealliances.wordpress.co... about her story collection Temptation: A User’s Guide. Main has also previously written a story Safe, about a young sex-worker which can be found here: http://literateur.com/safe-by-vesna-m...

Returning full circle to the meta-fiction, in this novel the author reads a short story Safe, by Some foreign women. Some V. Main out to her husband, and considers using it as source material for a young prostitute who features in her novel-in-progress, in Anna's past.

And then the novel ends with a postscript which questions exactly what we have just read.

Overall - very impressive: my review doesn't do it justice. At the time of writing, this is the only review of this book on Goodreads, and only three other people have even added it to their to-read list - something I hope and expect to change, as this is an important novel. Don't just take my word for it, as there are, outside of GR, reviews from some of the UK's leading bloggers, which express the novel's strengths far better than I could:

My fellow 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize judge, Jackie Law
https://neverimitate.wordpress.com/ta...

The unusual structure is used to impressive effect. The sensitivities of the writer and her irritation at the male perspective are recounted with candour and wit. By telling a story within a story there are blurred lines between fact and fiction. The loneliness and frustration inherent when couples cannot convey their thoughts and feelings in a way that garners affinity is skillfully portrayed.
...
The writing is tense and compelling. Although nuanced and layered the story has the feel of a thriller. It is admirable that so much has been fitted into such a concise volume. This is a clever and thought-provoking read.

The A Life in Books blog
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2019/05/go...

This is such a clever piece of writing and a daring one, too. To write a novel almost entirely in dialogue and carry it off as well as Main does requires quite a degree of chutzpah . Good Day? explores themes of marriage, gender and fiction within the framework of its characters’ daily exchange with wit and aplomb.

A Twitter thread from Scott Pack (editor-at-large at another excellent publisher Eye & Lightning Books:
https://twitter.com/meandmybigmouth/s...

It is thought-provoking and insightful, and, while it could prove uncomfortable reading for anyone who is part of a middle-aged married couple, I think it is an important book and one that I can imagine prize judges responding to very positively as the year unfolds.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019

This is an unusually structured but very entertaining book. There are at least two levels to the story, because most of the book consists of a dialogue (in which none of the lines is explicitly attributed) between a writer and her husband in which they discuss and argue over the development of her novel about another couple, and what happens when the wife discovers that her husband uses prostitutes.

Much of the discussion is about how much of their own lives appear in the story, and because each chapter is effectively one day's contribution to the conversation, the title is the most frequently used opening line from the husband. At two points in the story, extracts from the novel itself are read out by the writer, and one of these is "borrowed" from a work by one "V Main".

At the Goldsmiths shortlist readings last week, Vesna Main read out a section with her own husband, and this brought the text to life very effectively. She also explained that the prostitution story was the starting point, and she wrote a draft as a more conventional novel but felt that it didn't work.

As it is, the book works very well, and is both funny and perceptive. I would not be unhappy if this book wins the prize.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now re-read in advance of a F2F meeting with some fellow Goodreaders to discuss the Goldsmiths list. Nothing new to add to my original review really, except that the book remains a pleasure to read. It's a serious subject but there is humour in the writing which makes it very readable.

Good Day? is a very cleverly constructed book. It consists almost entirely of dialogue between an author and her husband. Each day, he returns from his job and she has been working on her new book. He arrives and their conversations nearly always start with him saying “Good day?”.

Their conversations are about her book. She is writing a book about a married couple, Anna and Richard, who are having problems because he has admitted to a long-term habit of visiting prostitutes. The husband is concerned because his wife seems to be making far too liberal use of facts about him as she creates Richard in her book. And he believes Anna is very closely modelled on her. He worries that people will read the book and recognise the two of them which will make everyone think the whole thing is autobiographical.

As we progress through the book, we get interesting insights into the writing process. The author re-visits chapters, re-works events, collects ideas from her husband’s life (much to his dismay) that she feels perfectly capture Richard’s outlook on life.

Gradually, the couple’s discussions about the book become discussions about their relationship. Often both the couple and the reader are not clear whether we are discussing Anna & Richard or author & husband.

I found this book working on three separate levels as I read it. Firstly, underneath the text we read, there is the novel that is being written. We don’t see much of this, but we can work out what is being put into it. It explores relationships (especially mature ones, and I could relate to this having just celebrated my thirty-sixth wedding anniversary), it discusses prostitution and sex-work (which I feel I now need to point out I have no direct experience of, but which I understand is something Vesna Main has looked at in other works). It is fascinating to picture how the author is putting her book together.

Secondly, the text itself also explores a mature relationship but raises points in its meta-fictional structure about what fiction is, what the novel is (which makes it perfect for the Goldsmiths shortlist on which is has just been included).

Finally, I found it made me as a reader hyper-aware of myself and my thoughts as I was reading. At several points, the husband says he is just a “male reader”. Sometimes this is an excuse for an attitude he takes; sometimes it is a reason, in his mind, why he can’t understand or relate to something; sometimes it is a reason why he believes he has an insight to offer that his wife may have missed. But I became very, very aware that I am a “male reader”. I found myself questioning my response to everything that happens. Was I responding in some inappropriate patriarchal way? Was the fact that I found something the husband said funny and then learned it offended his wife a problem caused by my male attitudes? Or was it her being over-sensitive? Was I redeemed a bit when I found something the author said funny only to discover it offended the husband?

All the way through the book, I was bouncing up and down through these three layers, often in two or all of them simultaneously. It made for an exhilarating read.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up.

A very clever novel that is a quick and engrossing read - since I can't really do as much justice to it as my GR friends, Neil, Paul, Hugh and Gumble's Yard, I suggest just reading through their thoughtful and erudite reviews.

I'd just add the two things that bugged me and prevented a full four stars from me: I often got lost in who was talking, which was maybe intentional, but often I would have to go back to figure things out (which was compounded by the fact the formatting sometimes got 'off' itself, so that one of the two characters would consecutively speak without the other interjecting). And as is often the case with these small independent presses, the copyediting left a lot to be desired.

Secondly, in the final few pages, there is a rather gross and pornographic (emphasis on the graphic) encounter that seems WAYYYYYY far away from how the wife/author character typically writes, if what she has said about her work throughout the rest of the book can be relied upon. It was jarring and somewhat ruined the ending for me.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vesna Main’s novel within a novel is mostly composed of a conversation between a husband and wife who discuss the wife’s novel-in-progress about a husband (Richard) and wife (Anna). Their daily chats often begin with the casual question “Good day?” – hence the title of this book. The wife’s novel is about how Anna discovers that Richard has been visiting prostitutes for years and the subsequent breakdown of their relationship. The writer and her husband discuss the moral complexity of this situation and its emotional impact on all the characters involved. And while listening to her describe details of the plot and characterizations, the husband grows increasingly frustrated at the liberties the wife takes in borrowing names and situations from their real life and putting them in her novel. The line between fact and fiction blurs so there’s an intriguing suspense where the reader wonders about the truth of this couple’s life. But it also raises questions about the dynamic interplay between the imagination and sex as a physical act. While this might all sound too meta-fictional and self-conscious, there’s a wonderfully comic tone to the situation as well as a poignancy in certain sections where there’s a clear disconnect or breakdown between them.

Read my full review of Good Day? by Vesna Main on LonesomeReader

[Tommi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consisting entirely of dialogue between a married couple, Vesna Main’s Good Day? presents two intertwined narratives. One is about a novel the wife is writing, and we readers hear this level as we eavesdrop on their daily conversations regarding plot and character development, the husband often functioning as a beta (male) reader. Another narrative emerges out of these discussions about the fictive novel: between the lines, we hear the story of this couple. As it turns out, the wife’s fictive novel is instrumental in exposing the husband’s secrets. Through her novel, she is able to approach him with subjects she otherwise wouldn’t. An intelligent, self-referential novel that is highly readable. I could recommend this to just about any reader.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 2 out of 5]

Synopsis

A novel concerning marital strife and infidelity, in which fiction is based around real life. The daily discourse between husband and wife, Professor Richard Bates, and his wife, and author co- narrator Anna gives the novel its title, as the daily question exchanged by couples every day, ”Good Day?”, invites an update on the progress of the emerging novel.
It’s clear, early on, that this is a novel within a novel, and for me the recognition that the fictional characters were being developed in order to induce a confessional from Richard meant that it lacked any great suspense, or a closing surprise.

Lowlights

The way in which the daily dialogue between the Bates is written:

- Each sentence starts
- With a hyphen
- Giving the impression of a student bullet point set of notes

With the consequence that there is no beautiful language, no sentence structure, no flow.

Author background & Reviews

I read this book as a consequence of its Goldsmith Prize listing for 2019.

Vesna Main says the book idea “came from a radio programme about the trauma suffered by a woman whose husband had visited prostitutes for many years of their marriage”.

This inspiration means that there are extended sections on sleazy visits to prostitutes, and a detailed, graphic, description of a loveless sexual act.

Recommend

No. This is not the sort of book I would seek out, I would not recommend it.

[Jackie Law · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Day? by Vesna Main is written mostly as dialogue. The conversations transcribed are between a long married, middle aged couple. She is an author and ardent feminist. He is an academic, researching women in the Labour Party. He is also his wife’s first reader. Each day they discuss developments in her work in progress. The novel being written is about a long married, middle aged couple, Richard and Anna, whose marriage has hit difficulties following Richard’s revelation that he has been sleeping with prostitutes.

The husband is unhappy that his wife appears to be basing her characters on them. He is concerned that she is revealing too much that is true and that their friends and colleagues who read her work will assume it is autobiographical. Also, that acquaintances will find themselves within the story and feel insulted. The wife denies the extent of these allegations but still takes personally her husband’s critiques of Anna’s controlling and self-centred personality. She insists that Anna is lovely and that it is Richard who should be condemned. Her husband’s sympathy for the man, his assertion that Anna shoulder some responsibility for Richard’s actions, creates tension.

The dialogue tells the story of the work in progress and also of the real life couple. Art mirrors life but does life mirror art? There is a lingering question over how much impact stories have on a reader’s subsequent actions.

It is interesting to view how a writer constructs a novel – the conceits and concerns. Ideas are lifted from other tales already written.

The unusual structure is used to impressive effect. The sensitivities of the writer and her irritation at the male perspective are recounted with candour and wit. By telling a story within a story there are blurred lines between fact and fiction. The loneliness and frustration inherent when couples cannot convey their thoughts and feelings in a way that garners affinity is skillfully portrayed.

Within the tale are many interesting diversions. The author explores themes such as: addiction, obsessive behaviour, rewriting memory when exposed to new information. There are threads on class and the affectations of the intelligentsia. There are challenges to thinking that places itself as the moral high ground.

As someone who dislikes reading detailed descriptions of sex I baulked at one particularly blatant scene, yet even this fitted for the reasons given. The author is exploring derivative work and plagiarism. The overlaps between the two couples are somehow both obvious and opaque.

The writing is tense and compelling. Although nuanced and layered the story has the feel of a thriller. It is admirable that so much has been fitted into such a concise volume. This is a clever and thought-provoking read.

[Justine Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75* second time around

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much happening in this spare, short novel, shorn of everything but dialogue. A novelist is writing about a couple who reach a crisis when it turns out the husband has been seeing prostitutes. She tells her husband about the book she is writing. He is both interested, and uneasy about how closely the couple in the book are modelled on his wife and him. Their discussions underscore tensions between them, between the sexes. At the same time, we are driven to consider prostitution as well as unfaithfulness in a number of dimensions. Then there's the metafictional aspect of it. What is a believable plot? A good ending? The question of originality is brought up as the novelist seems to consider plagiarising a short story by one V Main. There's a 'twist' ending that might seem like one meta game too many, except for the fact that the issue of novels that deal in plot twists for their own sake is discussed earlier on, and surely Main isn't in that business?

If there's one drawback, it's that the cleverness and metafictional games take center stage, making the equally thoughtful, involving discussion on sex, sex work, trauma and relationships lose some of its weight.

[Ian Mond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to spoil the central structural conceit, but once you figure out what Main is doing, you begin to wonder how she’s pulled it off with such style and humour and depth. It’s a novel about marriage and fidelity and the narratives we create for ourselves. Literary novels often get bad press for being too po-faced. This one is bloody funny, albeit laced with cynicism abouta particular form of upper middle class (white) monogamy.

[Marie Gameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly original depiction of what is probably a fairly normal long-term marriage, other than the fact that the middle-aged couple seem to interact entirely through the writing of the wife's book. There's a bit of the Woody Allen film 'Deconstructing Harry' about it, as the wife sees nothing wrong with using her own and her husband's experiences to nourish her story, and the lines get increasingly blurred between the characters in the book and the real people who are the inspiration for (and sometimes almost the product of) the characters' speech and actions. I found the format - just speech and punctuation - quite hypnotic.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

[2019] A novel within a novel. A couple in their fifties, married twenty-five years. The wife is writing a novel about a couple in their fifties married twenty-five years, which results in lines being blurred between how much is truth and how much is fiction. The entire book is written as alternating he said/she said dialogue. No dialogue tags, no description, no narration. And it really worked; I didn’t have any trouble knowing which character was speaking. Dialogue had to convey everything - the characters’ inner thoughts, the passage of time, conversation tone, emotions - all through just words. That can’t be easy to do! The entire novel is the husband and wife talking about her novel as it unfolds as she’s writing it. I found this parallel story telling impressive. It did stray a couple of times, providing too much unnecessary backstory on a secondary character and too much description of a couple of events, but that didn’t have any kind of lasting negative impact on my overall very positive reading experience.

[Moose · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Clever piece of metafiction. However, I would have enjoyed this much more had it not been so confusing in parts, repetitive in others, and had it not included the preposterous comical sex scene towards the end about which I’m still laughing 24 hours later.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down. Clever meta-ness but a bit tedious.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to do experimental fiction! Very unique and a great accomplishment.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a quick read, though I struggle to understand why I bothered, or why I was even initially interested in adding it to my shelves. Two horrorshow plot elements for me - dialogue and relationships - were the entirety of the tale. Fucking hell. And it was all so overwrought. The style of the book, a conversation between a married couple about a book about a married couple, felt contrived. Or maybe it was simply poorly delivered. Regardless, I found it dull and almost completely unimaginative and quite the opposite of profound or intellectually involved. Maybe I have had my fill of trite commentary on male-female relationships in general - seems there are thousands of books, articles, podcasts, plays, films, and whatnot - that claim to discover new, until now overlooked, hidden, or entirely misunderstood angles, tangents, and underlayments to the sex-gender binary we all know and now thoroughly despise. Truly, if you want to write a novel about sex workers and the psychological dynamics of who is the buyer and who is the seller, or who is more trapped the buyer or the seller, or what does the side you take in the novel say about your feelings about sex workers, marriage, the patriarchy, etc. then fucking write it. This in no way felt like any sort of smart discussion between adults, or any sort of creative analytics of relationship dynamics and sex-and-gender choices and their concomitant psycho-emotional effects. Maybe social media has detrimentally influenced authors' willingness to delve more deeply into issues, knowing that too many people's thinking stops the nearer they get to proscribed 140 character limits for their normal "conversations". Ultimately, this tidy little tome lacked enough depth to be intriguing or provocative.

[Dorrit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every text raises questions about how you rate a piece of work. So what about this book, which does exactly what it wants to, and knows it too. At that level, it's brilliant, a perfect success of form (epistolary? conversatory? meta-meta-fiction?) and it doesn't stop at it either.
This book calls into question sharply your status as a reader, more than a book normally would. When you read you don't necessarily make clear line judgements about the book- unless you dnf, and if you reach the end and do something akin to reviewing it, the judgement is softened, spread out over the entirity of the book and looking at it like a finished product. But this book takes you along the process of building a book, the narrative and the intent, through the thoughts of the author and a very close critiqer/reader. It blurs all the lines, between you and the in-book-reader, between the reader, writer and the book-in-book characters and it's incredibly smart about it. It knows your voice acutely and as you might feel frustrated, it also gives you a cooling point from this using the reader-in-book.
Along with doing all that, it always delivers on the end. It's hard to describe how exactly, but it's open ended and startling but still incredibly satisfying and concluding. What a book!

[freckledbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

𝙁𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙚- 𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙆𝙞𝙣𝙜.

Good Day by Vesna Main is a uniquely composed book told through dialogue between a husband and wife. The book is a story within a story. Oddly, the characters are slightly analogous to the actual couple.

Every day when the unnamed husband arrives home from work, he and his wife discuss the characters of her book, Anna and Robert. They bicker over the lives of these characters, including Robert's infidelity. The more they discuss the book, the more they look at the stains in their marriage.

The unnamed husband has an issue with how much of their life is a reflection in the book.

"𝙉𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜'𝙨 𝙨𝙖𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪. 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙥𝙞𝙡𝙛𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙."

As the quote mentioned at the beginning of this review, Main gives power to the reader to decipher which parts of the book are "truth inside the lie." Her innovative style and discussions were audaciously captivating.

I enjoyed this reading experience.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional novel. A novel within a novel. A marriage within a marriage. An original creation within a plagerized creation within an original creation. All of this written using a style of bare dialogue.

Lest that description lead you to believe this is primarily a work of stylistic innovation its form very quickly establishes itself as crucial to its artistic content. The effect is unexpectedly accurate - I got uncomfortable with some of the conversations as they seemed transcribed from my own life.

The novel covers a lot of material. Its hall of mirrors structure draws together artistic creation, the creation of marriage, the creation of meaning - personal and social - the creation of one's future and one's past, the creation of an other, and the creation of being. A phenomenal work to discuss!

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Lincoln in the Bardo, this might be a novel best experienced as an audiobook. Written kind of like the script of a conversation between husband and wife about a couple in a novel that the wife is writing. It was frustrating at first not to get into the characters heads or see the world around them, but I think in the end that claustrophobia gives a really unique experience. Loved the ending too.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and clever. The dialogue-based form and content remind me of Nicholson Baker's 'Vox'.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This story within a story is original and thought-provoking. The main character is writing a book, and discussing it day by day, with her husband. The characters in her book appear based on the two we are reading about, and it’s often unclear whether they’re discussing the novel in progress or their own strained marriage.
The metafiction aspect of it is clever and well executed. The author, Vesna Main, has said she originally set out to write about prostitution and its impact on the women involved, including partners of the men who use sex workers. This aspect is rather lost, particularly emotionally, by setting it at one stage removed. This may well have been the point - that in our chattering world, crowded with endless voices in every kind of form, the human and the emotional can be lost. But it does make for a sometimes less satisfying experience for the reader. The other potentially interesting emotional theme was around the breakdown of the marriage between the main character and her husband, but again I felt the structure lost the deep nuance and complexity that would have made it a really excellent book. Eg issues around gender roles often seemed simply to be stated rather than explored, and the rather rigid stuckness of the characters in relation to one another left this reader feeling a bit unsatisfied.
Very much worth reading, though - an interesting experiment in writing.

[Eunice Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about a woman writing a book.

It was a smart way for the author to present daily, somewhat simple (predictable?) dialogues between a husband and a wife, weaving into complex emotions they have held up for each other.

Good Day? the husband initiates conversations dutifully, often times rather ending in an unpleasant bicker with the wife, who seems to vent out her unsatisfied needs on the novel. (Creating a largely similar almost alter ego-like character of her husband within her novel and try to inquire his deep motives by asking for his opinion on the character).

It's hard to read up to why the wife is holding grudges against the husband, but at the end of the day relationships are complicated and hard to put to words. As lost as the writer (the wife) is about her novel, her relationship with the husband cannot be explained plainly.