The Given Day

Coughlin #1

by Dennis Lehane

1918. Boston. A city in turmoil as soldiers return home from World War One, bringing with them an epidemic of Spanish influenza.Danny Coughlin is the son of one of Boston's most powerful police captains. An undercover cop, he is hunting for revolutionaries and anarchists who, in the aftermath of war, are pledged to overthrow the city's ruling classes. But Danny soon finds his ideals compromised as, drawn into the conflict, his family starts to question where his loyalties really lie.Luther Lawrence is on the run. Having survived a murderous confrontation with a crime boss, he lands a job in the Coughlin household. But it isn't long before his dangerous past and his tenuous present are on a life-threatening collision course.As the city goes into meltdown, Danny and Luther must confront the storm of violence that threatens to engulf them if each is to survive...

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, Historical, Crime, Thriller, Book Club

734 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2008

About the author

Dennis Lehane (born Aug 4th, 1966) is an American author. He has written several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award winning film, also called Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon (Lehane can be briefly seen waving from a car in the parade scene at the end of the film). The novel was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystere de la Critique.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lehane is a wonderful writer. Mystic River was his opus magnus, and his Boston hard-boileds are quite good. This novel is his attempt to break out into a larger literary world. Set in the period around World War I, Lehane offers us a sense of the times, and they are not pretty. The two primary characters are Danny Coughlin, a Boston cop in a long tradition, and Luther Laurence, a poor black. There is much in here about the condition of the working man, and it is startling, even to someone who has read quite a bit about the struggle of labor for decent treatment. Things were much worse than I’d imagined. This is a sweeping effort, as Lehane projects himself through a Dickensian lens, covering geography from Boston to Ohio to Tulsa, from Babe Ruth to the governor of Massachusetts to the lowliest criminal element. Lehane has done his homework and offers considerable information about the time. Two incidents stand out. One was the collapse of a vast molasses container that resulted in a flood of the stuff with waves 15 feet high. The other, his burning of Atlanta scene, is how the citizens of Boston react to the police strike. He offers us as well a sense of the political turmoil of the time, the Palmer raids, the fear of Bolshevists, anarchists and immigrants, and how those fears were stoked for political gain. Sound familiar? Lehane is particularly eager not to present his book as being political, and there are many readers who will not see what is right in front of them, but this novel keeps a sharp eye on contemporary events.

This is not Lehane’ best book. That would be Mystic River. But it is an ambitious one. Coming in at slightly over 700 fast-reading pages, it is by far his largest. And he writes about a much wider swath of humanity than he has before. I would say that overall he succeeds in the attempt. This is a very good book, engaging, with believable, well-drawn characters, insight into the complexities of familial relationships, sensitivity to the cultural environment of that age, and with a critical, politically aware eye.

There are several scenes in which Babe Ruth figures. While these scenes are fine, with one being outstanding (the contract negotiation), they could have been omitted without damaging the overall story.

Lehane is an excellent story teller and he plies his trade here quite well. Where the book falls short of the rare air occupied by books like Serena is in his hesitation to incorporate grander imagery into his work. He tells his story, with many intense scenes, many interesting and memorable events, but not the metaphorical, mythological ear of a Ron Rash or a Michael Ondaatje. This keeps the reins on his work. I expect that in future the reins will be loosened and he will produce work in this new Dickensian vein that might be remembered as long as the work of his hero.

This is a terrific book. Read it.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Other books in the Coughlin series
-----Live By Night - #2
-----World Gone By - #3

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

November 26, 2016 - Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly ‘Tsunami of Molasses’ of 1919, by Eric McCann, looks into the science behind the real-like Molasses tsunami that holds a significant place in The Given Day

For more reviews of books by Dennis Lehane, I have an entire shelf of them

[Orsodimondo · Rating 3 out of 5]

IL GIARDINO DELLE DELIZIE



Progetto ardito, impresa ambiziosa, dal mio punto di vista non del tutto riuscita.

Stati Uniti, dall’Ohio a Tulsa in Oklahoma, (che tre anni dopo sarebbe stata palcoscenico del più sanguinoso massacro razziale della storia americana), ma soprattutto Boston.
Prima Guerra Mondiale agli sgoccioli, gli USA parteciparono a partire dal 1917: dopo aver devastato l’Europa con la spagnola, che fece più morti della peste nera, e fece più morti della stessa guerra (50 milioni per la pandemia, 10 milioni per il conflitto bellico - e all'epoca erano due miliardi a occupare la Terra), i soldati USA ritornano a casa e si portano dietro l’influenza letale, e Lehane ha pagine notevoli sull’argomento.


Lo sciopero della polizia di Boston l’11 settembre del 1919, il primo 9/11 della storia statunitense.

La nascita dei sindacati, i primi scioperi, la scintilla comunista che si è accesa in Russia nel ’17 rischia di invadere anche gli US.
L’integrazione razziale che semplicemente non esisteva (e non esisterà ancora per diversi decenni), i neri sono in fondo alla scala sociale, più in basso perfino di un immigrato irlandese o italiano di prima generazione.
Il baseball, lo sport nazionale, grande simbolo dell’americanità.


”Mystic River”, regia di Clint Eastwood, 2003. Sean Penn vinse l’Oscar per il miglior attore protagonista, e Tim Robbins quello per il miglior attore non protagonista.

Anni importanti per il paese: la guerra era finita ma, con la scusa che il trattato di pace non era ancora stato firmato, il governo americano si rifiutava di cancellare le norme straordinarie del periodo bellico e di riprendere la normale dialettica sindacale e politica: anzi, rispondeva con attacchi alle libertà civili, repressioni, arresti e deportazioni al fermento sociale e agli attentati messi in atto da gruppi estremisti (gli anarchici italiani sopra tutti).
Come conseguenza ci furono scioperi di minatori e operai siderurgici, e soprattutto lo sciopero generale che a Seattle sembrò quasi consegnare il paese ai ‘rossi’.

Il primo sciopero della polizia a Boston, e qui Lehane, forse, raggiunge l’apice nella descrizione della città in mano alla folla libera e sfrenata in assenza dei protettori della legge costretti a scioperare per vedersi riconosciuti diritti fondamentali.


”Gone Bay Gone” regia di Ben Affleck, 2007.

L’amore, l’amicizia, la famiglia, l’onore, la corruzione, la politica, risse, l’alcol e l’arrivo del Protezionismo…
E si potrebbero citare altri argomenti, nominare temi trattati, o anche solo sfiorati da Lehane, in questo suo gigantesco affresco, che tuttavia definire il Grande Romanzo Americano è davvero esagerato: è come guardare il trittico del Giardino delle Delizie di Bosch, sembra contenere tutto, dal simbolo più complesso a quello immediato, dalla scena principale al dettaglio meno apparente. Lehane tiene insieme tutta la materia, ma secondo me qualcosa è di troppo, su qualcosa divaga o insiste oltre misura, ci sono pagine di cui si poteva fare a meno senza rimpianti.


”Shutter Island” regia di Martin Scorsese, 2010.

La scrittura di Lehane si avvale di una prosa fluente, scorrevole, ma non asettica, facilmente approcciabile da qualsiasi tipo di lettore, senza essere didascalico.

Edizione poco curata, abbondanza di refusi, con alcuni passaggi che si fa fatica a capire per la sciatteria della redazione.
Il titolo si poteva tradurre in “Il giorno stabilito”, ma diventa ‘Quello era l’anno’ senza vera ragione, visto che la storia abbraccia una parte del 1918 e si esaurisce nel corso del 1919.


”The Drop - Chi è senza colpa” regia di Michaël R. Roskam, 2014.

Dennis Lehane è arrivato alla scrittura dopo essere stato educatore per bambini affetti da handicap e vittime di abuso, cameriere, parcheggiatore, autista di limousine, libraio, scaricatore di camion.
Afferma che il suo unico rimpianto è di non aver mai fatto il barista.
Quattro suoi romanzi sono arrivati anche sul grande schermo: Clint Eastwood ha meravigliosamente diretto Mystic River; Ben Affleck l’eccellente Gone Baby Gone; Martin Scorsese Shutter Island; secondo me con risultato non eccelso; Ben Affleck non è riuscito a ripetere la magia del suo debutto, e dei due film a seguire, e La legge della notte, che avrebbe dovuto avere Leonardo DiCaprio nei panni del protagonista, poi sostituito dallo stesso regista, è un film un po’ stantio, imbalsamato.
Da un suo racconto, Animal Rescue è stato tratto un ottimo film, The Drop – Chi è senza colpa diretto dal belga Michaël R. Roskam.
Dennis Lehane è anche sceneggiatore di serie tv (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire).


”Live By Night – La legge della notte” regia di Ben Affleck, 2016.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coughlin book No. 1. After being flabbergasted by how great the last book of this trilogy was, I returned back in time to read the story of the Coughlin family (Boston police centred) in the years after the First World War ended, and not only was I in awe of the story, characters and world building, but I got a history lesson, of the events leading up to and ending in the Boston Police strike of 1919!

Lehane, in this book first published in 2008, makes no bounds in pointing the finger at White privilege and White supremacy and how its predominance in the post-war years caused utterly horrific living conditions and lives for the immigrant Europeans and even more so for the African Americans. A book that took me back into the 1910s America like no other book ever, with such in depth but absorbing looks in to the way of life for many in these years.

It's so refreshing to see the story of the working-man from a neutral and fact based position; how things never change as those in power love to label those seeking basic human rights as Leninists, Bolshies, Reds etc. no different to Trump-ism attacking the racial justice movement - Black Lives matter. The sad thing about America, more than most civilised countries, is that it doesn't learn from its mistakes.

An utterly spell-binding book, with a top-class family, racial injustice and working-man drama - a book that very muchly puts Lehane on my must-read-all-his-works list. 9.5 out 12.
2020 read

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The size of this novel equates to the size of this story: Mammoth. Huge. Epic. Lehane sweeps us into the world at the end of ww1 in Boston. It's a time of unrest, social uprising, anarchists, revolutionaries, immigrants, plagues and violence. It's the story of 2 men: One white - an Irish cop; one black, a house worker. Both struggling to define themselves during a turbulent time in history leading up to a given day, where change is inevitable.

The stories are told In contrasting parallel with richly flawed characters and a dense story of these lives converging.

This is a pint drinking warm comfort food kind of read. If you are looking for a quick fix, this isn't it. The characters are slowly developed with historical significance of the city of Boston at the forefront.
A compelling and descriptive story of a country fighting its own internal war. An engaging read 4.25* it could have been shortened slightly as the story was interspersed w a Babe Ruth story which would not have impacted the plot in anyway.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses while every privilege that society can offer is given to them. These titans of capitalism underpay their employees for hard labor that lasts at least twelve hours a day in unsafe conditions with no overtime or benefits. If any of these workers dare complain, then the government will happily label them as dangerous socialist terrorists who threaten the American way of life and do anything within its power to crush any attempts to organize the labor.

Ah, it’s enough to make a right wing conservative weep with joy.

Danny Coughlin is a Boston patrolman at the end of World War I. Since his father is a legendary and politically connected police captain, it seems like Danny’s got a bright future ahead of him with the department. Danny’s father and some other power brokers offer him a chance to make detective by going undercover in various subversive groups including the social club of the Boston Police Department which is looking more and more like a union.

Danny doesn’t want to cause problems for his fellow police men who have been shafted by the city. Working a minimum of almost 80 hours a week at a wage below the poverty level and forced to pay for their own uniforms and equipment, the men of the BPD literally can’t feed their families but when their grievances are brought up, the men in charge insist that the cops are vital government personnel and therefore can’t strike so they can safely be told to go fuck themselves. When the men complain about this treatment, the politicians are shocked and insist that anybody who wants to make enough money to buy his kids some food is nothing but a damn Bolshevik. Danny eventually finds an actual danger to the public in the form of a bomb happy anarchist, but his superiors continue to be more concerned with those who might force change on the economic system.

Meanwhile, a black man named Luther Laurence, who is on the run following a messy incident with a local kingpin in Tulsa, is trying to lay low in Boston and ends up working for Danny’s family. Luther has a hard enough time just working around the racism that runs through all aspects of life, but things get worse when he runs afoul of a psychotic police crony of Danny’s father. Danny and Luther eventually strike up a friendship that defies the odds as they get caught up in the conflict between the old world and the changes being forced upon it.

Lehane’s books have often a crime oriented social component to it, and it seems like his time working for HBO’s The Wire encouraged him to add a depth and complexity to his work in this historical fiction. This is the story of a bygone era, but it seems familiar since the tactics employed by the powerful are still in use. One of their favorites is getting half of the working class to turn on itself by claiming that anyone who questions the fairness of the economic system is an American hating socialist as well as probably being a secret terrorist. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The only parts that really didn’t work for me were the interludes with Babe Ruth. It seems like Lehane was trying to point out some things regarding a common guy who could barely read becoming rich and famous as a city ripped itself apart while refusing to pay its police a living wage, but those segments just didn’t seem to sync up with the other action.

Still, it’s one of Lehane’s best and most ambitious books yet.

[Delee · Rating 4 out of 5]

October/2015

Buddy read with Stepheny- the kidnapper with the heart of...well...lots of people probably, Jeff- the whiny prisoner with a blue crayon, and Jess- the not so innocent bystander, and two new comers (who incidentally finished waaaaaay before me) Steve and Carmen

Extra Extra read all about it!



THE GIVEN DAY is a historical novel set in Boston- Massachusetts and Tulsa- Oklahoma.

Aiden "Danny" Coughlin, an Irish Boston Police patrolman whose father -Thomas- is an influential detective and captain in the police department, and Luther Laurence- a black amateur baseball player from Columbus, Ohio...are the two main characters.

Babe Ruth- appears in the prologue and various chapters within the novel.



WWI is over and union organizing activities are happening across the country. The year is 1918 and the Boston patrolmen have not been given a raise since 1905. They have been promised raises after the war is over...but as of yet- that promise has not been kept...and they are living way below the poverty level.



Things are not going well in Boston- and Luther- who has recently moved here with hopes of a new start, and Danny- both have their hands full- dealing with corrupt cops and politicians who manipulate the system at every turn.



...In a country they no longer recognize.



I loved THE GIVEN DAY!!!....even though it took me a long time to read it. It was one of those "right book, wrong time moments....but I am soooo looking forward to the next in the series....just not right now.

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy buena novela.

Me esperaba una novela centrada en un tema concreto y me he encontrado con una obra que repasa la historia de tres personajes: Luther Laurence, Danny Coughlin y Babe Ruth. Son hombres, pero sus vidas se forman a partir de las mujeres que los rodean. Ellas los moldean y son el centro de sus pensamientos durante todas las páginas.

La novela va desde la gripe que asoló EE.UU después de la I Guerra Mundial (sus consecuencias están presentes en todo momento) hasta la huelga de la policía de Boston de 1919. Entre estos dos hechos destaca el béisbol, el racismo, la lucha por la supervivencia, el sindicalismo, el terrorismo anarquista, el anhelo irlandés de ser aceptado en un país que te quiere pero no te quiere y, sobre todo, el amor entre una mujer y un hombre y el deseo de estar juntos y formar una familia en un mundo devastado por una guerra y por innumerables conflictos sociales.

No es una novela histórica propiamente dicha, pero se aprende mucho sobre la situación de EE.UU de principios del siglo XX y de Boston en particular. Los barrios de Boston están muy bien reflejados: el barrio italiano, el barrio de los negros, de los rusos, etc. Una ciudad hecha de inmigrantes, muchos de los cuales no hablan inglés.

El tema del sindicalismo y la relación con la Revolución Rusa de 1917 está muy presente en la novela.



Very good novel.

I was expecting a novel focused on a specific theme and I have found a work that reviews the history of three characters: Luther Laurence, Danny Coughlin and Babe Ruth. They are men, but their lives are shaped by the women around them. They shape them and are the focus of their thoughts throughout the pages.

The novel ranges from the flu that ravaged the US after World War I (its consequences are present throughout) to the Boston police strike of 1919. Between these two events stand out baseball, racism, the struggle for survival, trade unionism, anarchist terrorism, the Irish longing to be accepted in a country that loves you but doesn't love you and, above all, the love between a woman and a man and the desire to be together and form a family in a world devastated by war and countless social conflicts.

It is not a historical novel as such, but you learn a lot about the situation of US in early 20th century and Boston in particular. The neighbourhoods of Boston are very well reflected: the Italian neighbourhood, the black neighbourhood, the Russian neighbourhood, etc. A city made up of immigrants, many of whom do not speak English.

The theme of trade unionism and the relationship with the Russian Revolution of 1917 is very present in the novel.

[Labijose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta primera entrega de la serie Danny Coughlin me ha parecido espectacular. El cambio de registro que introduce el gran escritor Dennis Lehane con respecto a su serie policiaca de Kenzie Y Gennaro (una serie que ha producido grandes novelas) es digno de reseña. Es, quizás, el mejor libro del autor que he leído hasta la actualidad.

El Boston descrito en los años 18-19 del siglo pasado está tan bien elaborado, que me sentí inmerso en la época. Y los personajes son tremendamente creíbles, sin contar que las situaciones descritas (las salvajes huelgas y la no menos salvaje represión policial, la epidemia que sufrió Boston en 1919, y el anarquismo reinante durante esos peligrosos años) fueron reales y marcaron un antes y un después en la historia de los EEUU. Si a eso añadimos una escritura (al menos en inglés, su idioma original) perfectamente elaborada, nos encontramos con una novela que, en mi opinión, es una auténtica joya.

5 💎💎💎💎💎

[Dan Schwent · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Given Day is the tale of two men, Danny Coughlin and Luther Laurence, and their families, set against the backdrop of pre-prohibition Boston.

Yeah, I know that didn't really say much but it's hard to write a teaser for a 700 page historical novel.

As I understand it, this was Dennis Lehane's return to the novel world after five years of doing other things, mostly writing for The Wire. And he crammed every thought he may have had in about Boston in the early 20th Century in those five years into this book.

Danny Coughlin is a cop working hellish hours, almost 100 hours a week, with the Boston PD, following in the footsteps of his cop father. He's conflicted about his feelings for Nora, his family's housekeeper, and is something of a black sheep. When his father comes asking for help rooting out Boleshivik cells in Boston, how can he say no?

Luther Laurence, who once played an impromptu baseball game with Babe Ruth, goes from Columbus to Tulsa, and heads to Boston to escape some trouble and winds up working for Danny's father and getting under the thump of another cop, Edward McKenna, racist extraordinaire.

Danny and Luther drive the book, living through historical events like the Spanish Influenza epidemic and the Boston Molasses Explosion, while dealing with their conflicts with their respective families. For the most part, it's a pretty gripping read. The political climate of Boston circa 1920 was a spectacle to behold: downtrodden blacks, unions rising up to protest horrible pay and working conditions, communists lurking in the shadows, and the old guard struggling to hold everything together and maintain the status quo.

The supporting cast is a diverse and colorful bunch. Ed McKenna is despicable but you get the feeling he's doing what he thinks is right, which makes him that much more horrible. Danny's father and brother are also conflicted characters. I also really liked the friendship between Luther and Nora.

The entire cast goes through the meat grinder so many times they look like ham salad by the end of the book. While the ending is largely happy, it's not a happily ever after sort of thing. More like a "we're lucky to be alive" sort of thing.

Like I said, it was a really good read but I felt like LeHane was trying to take on too much at times. There was a little too much going on and also it felt like LeHane did a ton of research and was trying to get the most of out his nickel with it. Cutting 100 pages out of this beast wouldn't have hurt it. Also, apart from the initial baseball game with Luther, I thought the Babe Ruth parts were pretty unnecessary.

This one is right on the 3/4 line. I guess I'm going to call it a 3.5.

[Sergio Ferenczy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Otra maravilla del señor Dennis Lehane. No hay libro que haya leído de él que baje de las 5⭐. Me atrevería a decir sin conocer toda su obra, que está es de las más ambiciosas.

A diferencia de esas otras novelas leídas (Mystic River y Golpe de Gracia), el autor nos lleva al género de novela histórica, a los convulsos años 1918 y 1919 en la ciudad de Boston -como no-.
Me ha encantado como te hace partícipe de todo lo que ocurrió esos días, que no es poco. Te sientes como un ciudadano más y te echas las manos a la cabeza con tanto despropósito.

¿Y que ocurrió esos días? Demasiadas cosas para contarlas aquí. Pero aparte de la fiebre española, la explosión del tanque de melaza, ambas provocaron muchos daños personales y materiales, en lo que más se centra Lehane es en la crisis socio-política. Personalmente me ha parecido todo muy interesante.

❝...últimamente el Gran Capital ha espabilado. Se han apropiado del leguaje para limitar el debate. Ya no eres un trabajador que luchas por sus derechos. Eres un bolchevique, eres un subversivo. ¿No te gusta la semana laboral de ochenta horas? Pues eres un anarquista. Solo los comunistas esperan una paga por invalidez...❞

Lo mejor de la novela aparte de su narrativa que es maravillosa, son los diálogos. No me extraña que Lehane tenga mucho trabajo como guionista para cine y televisión, leer los diálogos de sus personajes es un gustazo.
Personajes que están a la altura de la novela. Por un lado tenemos a Danny Coughlin, un joven policía de familia irlandesa que espera de él que se comporte como un buen patriota y un buen hombre blanco. Y por otro lado a Luther Lawrence un negro que llega a la ciudad de Boston.
Con Danny se centra más en la lucha por los derechos de los trabajadores, mientras que con Luther con todo el eterno problema del racismo.

❝...había pasado por delante de muchas iglesias de blancos en su día, lo había oído entonar sus himnos y sus 'Amén', y los había visto congregarse después en algún que otro porche con su limonada y su devoción, pero sabía que si alguna vez él se presentaba ante su puerta, hambriento o herido, la única respuesta que recibiría al ruego de la bondad humana sería el 'Amén' de una escopeta apuntada a la cara❞.

Una novela que es una crítica a todo lo rancio, a esos poderes económicos y políticos que tratan a la gente como a las vacas que se apelotonan en los amarraderos. Y da igual en que año estemos, que toda la misma mierda seguirá estando igual. Mi respeto máximo a Lehane.

❝Los pobres luchando contra los pobres, como siempre habían hecho. Como siempre se los había alentado a hacer. Y eso nunca cambiará❞.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s interesting to see an author branch out from his/her comfort zone and attempt to tackle a different genre. Here Dennis Lehane tries his hand at Historical Fiction and although not entirely a fiasco, the book falls far short of his usual compelling work.

Centered on the labor unrest and Red Scare of 1918-19 in Boston, the book bites off more than it can chew and at over 700 pages feels bloated. To a lesser or greater degree, Lehane also references World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic, race relations, Prohibition, the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and a Boston molasses factory explosion.



A huge sticky tar-like sea of molasses everywhere, giving birth to the expression” slow as molasses”.

Really? That's where the expression originated?

*shrugs shoulders* I guess.



Lehane creates fictionalized events from the life of Babe Ruth as a narrative framing device and these are some of the best chapters. The book initially starts off alternating between the trials and tribulations of Luther Lawrence, an African-American and Danny Coughlin, a Boston policeman. Lehane uses Lawrence’s chapters to illustrate the plight of African-Americans, while Coughlin’s chapters are used to bring the story to the climactic police strike, examining as much of the times as Lehane can squeeze in along the way.



Even the narrative structure breaks down as Lawrence’s chapters, the ones with some of Lehane’s traditional zing, become fewer and farther between and Lehane, late in the novel, even introduces other character centric chapters to muddy the flow even further. Of course, at some point Lawrence goes from Ohio via Oklahoma to Boston in order to become best pals with Danny. Charles Dickens would be proud.

As with much historical fiction, real people, other than Babe Ruth, are pigeon-holed into the story: J. Edgar Hoover, Eugene O’Neill, Jack Reed, and Calvin Coolidge who gets punched in the face, twice .



Keep cool with Coolidge!

I love most of the characters, but Lehane cuts them adrift and they almost drown in a sea of history. If you're expecting Kenzie-Gennaro level intensity, it isn't here.

This was a Non-Crunchy Pantless buddy read on the side with Steve, Carmen, Jess, Delee and that banshee, Stepheny.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

He felt a hopelessness that had refused to leave him since he'd woken on the basement floor of Salutation Street. It wasn't just Salutation (though that would play a large role in his thoughts for the rest of his life), it was the world. The way it gathered speed with every passing day. The way the faster it went, the less it seemed to be steered by any rudder or guided by any constellation. The way it just continued to sail on, regardless of him.

I hate the cover. It's so ugly. Couldn't they do any better than this?

This book is about three people whose lives end up crossing paths.

1.) Babe Ruth. This is the smallest portion of the book, Ruth doesn't even get a third of the book. Perhaps 10%. While reading fictional accounts of real people always makes me uncomfortable, I have to say that Lehane has obviously really done his research on Ruth. I feel like this is a realistic and accurate portrayal, and a very well-written one.

2.) 45% of the book is dedicated to Danny Coughlin, a Boston police officer from a wealthy Irish-American family (his mom and dad were born in Ireland). His father is Chief of Police.

Danny vacillates between being a man and being a piece of shit in this book. At times he is helping pregnant women and beating up rapists, saving immigrant women from arrest and standing up for his friends. At other times he is doing things like fantasizing about a woman's rape, and allowing a woman he loves to starve in extreme poverty.

At 68% of the book, Danny finally starts shaping up to stand up and actually be a man full-time. It was such a relief to me after lecturing him non-stop for 480 pages of the novel. Actually, not non-stop, because half of the time I was lecturing our third protagonist

3.) Luther Laurence. He is a black man living in Ohio. He is in love with Lila, and then is surprised when she gets pregnant with his baby. She wants to move with her folks. But of course they are Christians and as soon as her aunt finds out she's pregnant, she and Luther have a shotgun wedding.

Luther feels completely suffocated and constrained by marriage to his lovely, loving wife. Even though he has a great and well-paying job, he starts fucking around with a kingpin who runs drugs. When shit goes down as it always does when you are involved in the criminal underworld, he has to flee Tulsa. But his woman refuses to go with him, calling him on his piece-of-shit behavior. So he goes to Boston alone and that's where his path crosses with Danny. I won't say anything else because I don't want to spoil you.

Luther is sometimes an excellent, badass man. Like Danny, he did things that made me cheer: he stands up for women who are in trouble. He defends his friends and is a loyal friend. He beats and kills men who need beating and killing. He shows mercy on people - sometimes too much mercy, in my opinion. He really, really has the potential to be an amazing man.

BUT. Just like Danny, I was alternating between cheering him, swooning over his manliness and cursing him out for being a complete shitheel. He fucks up his life. He fucks up his woman's life and puts her in danger. He does some other bad things that I won't list here. But just like Danny, Luther shapes up to be a man - and a strong, badass one at that - by the end of the novel.

They were a scary sight. Luther would admit that much as he caught their reflection in the window of Arthur Smalley's living room as they walked up the steps to his house - two wound-up colored men with masks that covered their noses and mouths, one of them with a row of black stitches sticking out of his jaw like a spiked fence. Time was, the look of them would have been enough to terror the money out of any God-fearing Greenwood man, but these days it didn't mean much; most folks were scary sights.

Well, that's good, Carmen. That means Lehane is writing realistic and three-dimensional characters.

Yes, I agree. The (male) characters ARE realistic and three-dimensional. As an added bonus, the book is 702 pages long, so you really get deep into their respective psyches and you get to know them very well. It's excellent.

But I don't have to tell you how exhausted I am after 702 pages of lecturing men on how to act right. Jeez. This book is about men acting wrong and making poor decisions. There was no end to the yelling, shouting, and scolding I was doing. My voice is hoarse.


WOMEN
You might have noticed I said that the MALE characters were realistic and three-dimensional. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the women who are paragons of virtue, patience, hearth and home.

The only woman who is not like this is a through-and-through villain, a femme fatale with seemingly no soul. Danny expresses bewilderment at this woman and her behavior.

It was as if she'd had an overpowering need to remake her rage as flesh and blood, to be certain it would live on and pass down through the generations. This need (and 00000000 [name hidden to avoid spoilers], as a whole) was something he would never understand.

Really? You don't understand this? She was sold to a brothel when she was 12. YOU KNOW THIS. Do you think you can possibly connect her being a sex slave since she was a child to her rage and her seditious behavior? Do you think that one might have to do with the other??!?! THINK, man. Use your head. Sadly, this never dawns on Danny and is never ever discussed in the books. One sentence is dedicated to the fact that she was a sex slave. 10 billion sentences are dedicated to her "incomprehensible evil." No character puts together these two facts, Lehane NEVER gives her backstory besides this one fact that slipped out. It could have been FASCINATING if Lehane (who is a great character artist) developed a backstory for her or gave us a window into her reasoning and motives. BUT NO.

I was really disappointed in Lehane on this front. Of the three "main" (really, they are side characters to the men) female characters dealt with in this book, two are angels and one is the devil. No nuance. No subtleties. The men are rich in flavor, detail, and character. The women - while beautifully described and given wonderful dialogue and personalities - are only allowed to be saints or sinners.


BRUTAL HATRED
I want you to know as a fair warning that Lehane pulls no punches in regards to the racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred of Italians, hatred of gay men, etc. etc. etc. that were a big part of America in 1919. Brace yourself.

Because Luther is a black character, I found the racism against black people to be the hardest for me deal with in this novel. I literally had to put this down and stop reading for a while after Chapter 11 because I was getting too depressed. Luther is sneered at, beaten, spit on, betrayed, lied to, harassed, etc. etc. all the time, day after day, hour after hour by white people. It was completely devastating. Very powerful and effective writing on Lehane's part.

As for women, there are a few rapes in this novel, but they either happen off-page or far in the past, so I was holding together okay. Nothing I had to DNF over. I really appreciated his delicate handling of sex crimes.

Tons of slurs against Jewish people, Italians, fat people, gay men etc. etc. etc. but as none of those people were main characters or even side characters - it is all talk. But I'm telling you because it might be disturbing to some readers. Very offensive language is used to talk about these groups quite frequently.

It's also a violent book. If you have no stomach for violence, perhaps this isn't you. It's not overly graphic. Lehane is NOT creating gratuitous, overly described violence here, but the violence does permeate almost every page.


JOE ABERCROMBIE
Dennis Lehane reminds me a lot of Joe Abercrombie.

What? Carmen. They are so different. Abercrombie writes fantasy and Lehane is writing historical fiction here. With real-life characters such as Babe Ruth and J. Edgar Hoover.

Yes, but they are both so grim. Both authors create a world that is just full of pain, suffering, rape, injustice, hatred, murder, greed, child molestation, etc. etc. etc. It's depressing. I realize that 1919 was not exactly a paradise, but I doubt it was a complete cesspool of pain and misery.

But Lehane has a redeeming feature that Abercrombie lacks: he is able to give his characters (relative) happiness at the end (with only a few permanent damages). Abercrombie never cottoned to this idea, which makes his books worse, in my opinion. Both men are expert world-builders and masters of wordcraft. There's NO DOUBT about their skills and talents. However, Lehane allows me to close the book with a tiny bit of hope, and Abercrombie takes great delight in crushing all my hope to dust beneath his heel. It's no wonder I prefer Lehane.


Lehane counters his three-dimensional am-I-a-piece-of-shit-or-am-I-a-man MCs with complete through-and-through villains. He does this to lessen their shitty behavior. "Sure," you think, "Danny is just allowing this woman he's in love with to starve to death on the street. But he's nothing like Villain, who is murdering a black man every week just to prove a point or Villain II who is a grown man regularly raping his 14-year-old cousin." This kind of he-may-acting-shitty-but-this-guy-over-here-deserves-to-die-painfully act is popular with authors who write more unlikable heroes. It's effective, but don't think I don't see what you are doing, Mr. Lehane.


Lehane is an amazing writer.

The faces of the mob, however, did not elicit anything near to joy in him. His people, the faces nearest him as Irish as potatoes and drunken sentiment, all twisted into repulsive, barbaric masks of rage and self-pity. As if they'd a RIGHT to do this. As if the country owed them any more than it had handed Thomas when he stepped off the boat, which is to say nothing but a fresh chance. He wanted to push them straight back to Ireland, straight back to the loving arms of the British, back to their corn fields and their dank pubs and their toothless women. What had that gray country ever given them except melancholia and alcoholism and the dark humor of the habitually defeated? So they came here, one of the few cities in the world where their kind was given a fair shake. But did they act like Americans? Did they act with respect or gratitude? No. They acted like what they were - the niggers of Europe. How dare they? When this was over, it would take Thomas and good Irishmen like him another decade to undo all the damage this mob had done in two days. Damn you all, he thought as they continued to push them back. Damn you all for smearing our race yet again.

That's from one of the novel's conflicted villains.

Here's one from Luther:

Luther gave a soft smile but didn't say anything. He'd lost comfort with saying "nigger," even around other colored men. But both Jessie and the Deacon Brocious had used it constantly, and some part of Luther felt he'd entombed it with them back at the Club Almighty. He couldn't explain it any better than that, just that it didn't feel right coming off his tongue any longer. Like most things, he assumed, the feeling would pass, but for now...

Here's Danny:

Danny would have thought it outrageous if it hadn't been steeped in a truth he'd accepted since he could first walk: the system fucked the workingman. The only realistic decision a man had to make was if he was going to buck the system and starve, or play it with so much pluck and guts that none of its inequities applied to him.

Lehane is a wonderful writer. His book is gripping for all 702 pages. I couldn't put it down (except out of sorrow after Chapter 11. The racism is very hard to read about) and he kept me glued to the pages every step of the way.

However, some of his writing was... not so good. Like when Lehane goes on and on about how wonderful a certain character is, and how everyone loves him and is attracted to his presence: men, women, children, dogs, and then he ends the paragraph with:

Because there was something unbroken in the man. And people followed him, maybe, just to see it break.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

How about this one:

...his eyes so clear it was impossible to read them. They could have been the eyes of a lamb lying down in the last spot of sun on a summer evening. Or those of a lion, waiting for the lamb to get sleepy.

WTF? I just... no.

How about this?

...and one of those loud, jolly natures Luther believed could never be trusted. Men like that always hid the part of themselves that wasn't smiling and hid it so deep it got all the hungrier, like a bear just come out of hibernation, lumbering out of that cave with a scent in its nose so focused it couldn't ever be reasoned with.

I seriously don't know where Lehane is coming up with this shit.


Lastly, let's talk about how attractive Luther and Danny are. There were some serious swoon moments. For Danny, it was when he comes to the rescue of a pregnant woman who is in labor, scooping her up in her arms and physically CARRYING her to the hospital, OMG, can he be any more sexy?

He scooped her up in his arms and started walking and staggering, walking and staggering, the woman not terribly heavy, but squirming and clawing the air and slapping his chest.

For Luther, OMG. He's so badass. Look at this scene where he's dealing with a very evil man:

"Please," he said again.

"Please WHAT?"

"Make... this right."

"Okay," Luther said and put the gun into the folds under 00000's chin and pulled the trigger with the man looking in his eyes.

Or how about when a man comes hunting Luther trying to kill him, sent by an even eviler man. First, Luther beats the shit out of him. Then,

Luther shrugged. "I am special. Any day aboveground that I ain't you or I ain't THAT?" He jerked his thumb behind him. "You're goddamned fucking correct I'm special. Ain't afraid of them anymore, ain't afraid of you, ain't afraid of this here color of my skin. Fuck all that forever."

Old Byron rolled his eyes. "Like you even less."

"Good." Luther smiled. He crouched by Old Byron. "I 'spect you'll live, old man. You get back on the train to Tulsa. Hear? And when you get off it, you go run your sad ass right to 00000 and tell him you missed me. Tell him it don't matter none, though, because he ain't going to have to look hard for me from now on." Luther lowered himself until he was close enough to kiss Old Byron Jackson. "You tell 00000000 I'm coming for HIM." He slapped his good cheek once, hard. "I'm coming home, Old Byron. You tell 000000000 that. You don't?" Luther shrugged. "I'll tell him myself."

He stood and crossed the broken glass and stepped through the window. He never looked back at Old Byron. he worked his way through the feverish white folk and the screams and the rain and the storm of the hive and he knew he was done with every lie he'd ever allowed himself to believe, every like he'd ever lived, every lie.

Damn. That is some fine writing and that is a fine man. :D Yum. ANYWAY.


Tl;dr - I think reading One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson earlier this year really helped me to already be in the mood and mindset to accept this novel. It also educated me to the extent that I was familiar with the history and the time period, it was all fresh in my mind.

Lehane is a master. I can't put it any other way. 702 pages of historical fiction (especially featuring Babe Ruth and baseball) could have been an absolute nightmare. Instead, Lehane made it an absolute dream. This book is unputdownable. Well-written, fast-moving, and with amazing psychology and character development for the male protagonists. I can't wait to rip into the two sequels and complete the trilogy.

Maybe THIS, of all things, was the true price of family - being unable to stop the pains of those you loved. Unable to suck it out of the blood, the heart, the head. You held them and named them and fed them and made your plans for them, never fully realizing that the world was always out there, waiting to apply it's teeth.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dennis Lehane's epic historical novel "The Given Day" is one of the best books I have read in a long time.

The prologue alone is perhaps the best piece of short story writing I have read in years, and to have Lehane continue the story for another 600+ pages is pure joy.

The novel is set in Boston during the years after the First World War and leading up to the Boston police strike, an event of which I'm ashamed to have had no previous knowledge. It's a novel about the shaping of Boston, which is essentially a microcosm of America, told through the intertwined stories of a dozen or so characters, white and black, young and old, male and female.

Along the way, Lehane brilliantly introduces real-life characters: a blissfully ignorant Babe Ruth, a young J. Edgar Hoover, and then-governor Calvin Coolidge. This is one of those novels that you won't want to put down or want to end.

The good thing is that this is the first book in a (as of now) trilogy of books that follows the Coughlin family.

[Stepheny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Given Day taught me something very important about myself:
I don’t like historical fiction.

I like fiction. Apparently I only like certain parts of history.

When I read Mystic River I was blown away. I absolutely loved Lehane’s writing. He was eloquent and thought-provoking-even moving at times. So when Honk, Graymeat and the White Candle (sometimes Candlestick) and this here crazy MahFah decided we were going to read a Dennis Lehane book I was over the moon about it. I already owned the Given Day and thought it was a perfect choice.

Boy was I wrong.

I only liked one person in this whole book- Luther. For me, Luther was the only real character in the book. The others felt like ideas, or shadows of people we know. They fell flat for me and I had a very hard time connecting with anyone but Luther. Luther’s decisions, though at times were horrible, made sense to me. He acted without thinking, he committed a crime and he left his pregnant wife behind in the wake of his heinous acts. BUT, I understood those decisions. I couldn’t completely sympathize with him but I could at the very least understand that once one thing happened a whole slew of other things happened right after before he had time to evaluate it.

That’s what happens in life. And I like when writers capture those real-life situations. It’s my favorite. That’s why Mystic River struck such a chord with me- he captured very realistic reactions by the characters in his book.

I didn’t like a single person in the Coughlin family- no not even Danny- who for some reason was called Aiden randomly. Danny was a big time whiner. If there is one thing in men that drives me nuts the most it would be whining. Maybe it’s because my dad was never a complaining type and I grew accustomed to men who just went about their life knowing they did what they had to and did so without complaint. Luther reminded me a lot of my father. Not the part where he kills a guy No, not that part, but even given his situation he rarely, if ever, commented on it. He didn’t wallow in his own self-pity. He worked, he saved, and he lived.

Danny, sometimes Aiden, did nothing but play the victim. He complained incessantly and there were times I wanted to reach through the pages and rip his throat out just to get him to shut up. He was also the Ned Stark of this book- “But this is the LEGAL and RIGHT and JUST way of doing things!” He failed to understand that in life there are grey areas. He wouldn’t bend, he wouldn’t budge and he certainly would not open his eyes…even when the facts were laid out before them.

I hated his father the most though- an arrogant and self-righteous man who needed to control every aspect of his family’s life. He was filled with hate, anger and resentment and I grew to loathe him like I did Professor Umbridge. He was a mean old bastard.

None of the other characters even warrant discussion in my opinion. They were background noise on an already muddled storyline. As I have already mentioned- the only storyline in the book that I cared for was Luther’s and he is the reason this book gets the rating it does. I almost one-starred it but in the end Luther resonated with me and I can’t discredit Lehane too much for that. I just think this book was bogged down with history. OBVIOUSLY I won’t be trying historical fiction again. This clearly was a huge failure. Maybe I should stick to Nicholas Sparks? FUCK YOU, Kimberly

This is not to say that my buddies didn’t make the experience better. It’s always a hoot to get the gang together! This book just happened to be a mind-numbing slog for me!

Carmen and Steve both joined us late but ended up finishing before any of us(I think).

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lehane hasn't written a book in five years. The Given Day is his return to fiction.

It is a big book, both in length (700 pages) and scope. Set in late 1918-1919, the book follows two men, one Irish Boston cop Danny Coughlin and a black man from Tulsa Luther Laurence. The book explores race, baseball, the Boston Police Strike, terrorism, love, and a whole mess of other topics.

It is a huge book, and it is beautifully written. I could not put it down.

The major complaint about this book, I feel, is going to be the amount of coincidences that drive the plot along. The first of this coincidences I found rather jarring, but as I moved along I realized that this is a Dickensian novel. Lehane seems to be giving his best Dickens impression, coincidences and all.

A wonderful novel that is at once a crime story, a love story, and a political thriller. Historical fiction at it's finest.

The prologue is one of the best baseball short stories I've ever read.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, The Given Day covers the political and social unrest of the time.
Danny Coughlin, son of Police Chief Thomas Coughlin, is also in the police force. Both are held in high regard by their respective colleagues.
Danny and his fellow police officers are paid a lowly wage, less than half of what a tram driver earns. Their earnings cannot even feed their families. To top it all they have to pay for their own uniforms and work in stations infested with rats and lice!
To the disappointment of his father, Danny gets involved in the unions and attends the Boston Social Club meetings each week.
The second character we follow is Luther Laurence, he moves to Tulsa (a progressive free town for African Americans) and ends up on the run. He finds himself in Boston, where his path crosses that of the Coughlin family.
The book attempts to cover all aspects of life at that time; the Spanish flu pandemic, the growth of the unions, political upheaval, violence, civic corruption and racism, culminating in the Police Strike of 1919.
It was interesting to read about the role of Irish imigrants in the growth of the city.
It is a period in American history that I did not know much about, so I enjoyed this aspect, but I did find it a little bit slow in places.

[Ardell Oeixo · Rating 5 out of 5]

5*

Ambientada en Boston a finales de la Primera Guerra Mundial, Cualquier otro día -primera entrega de la serie Coughlin- es una impresionante epopeya que cuenta la historia de dos familias arrastradas por la vorágine política y social de un mundo que se recupera con enormes dificultades de los estragos de la Gran Guerra.

Estamos en 1918. Debido a un cúmulo de azares, un joven obrero negro de Ohio llamado Luther Laurence es llevado a disputar un partido de béisbol frente a Babe Ruth, estrella emergente de ese deporte, una amarga experiencia que Luther nunca olvidará. Al mismo tiempo, el agente Danny Coughlin, hijo mayor de un legendario capitán irlandés de la policía de Boston, recibe un encargo envenenado: infiltrarse en los medios sindicales y anarquistas. A priori, Luther y Danny no tienen nada en común, pero el destino va a unirlos en Boston en 1919, el año de todas las desgracias. Y en esa ciudad en la que los bolcheviques y otros grupos de agitadores se han adueñado de las calles, la huelga de las fuerzas policiales va a prender la mecha.

A través de algunos de los acontecimientos fundamentales del momento, con un tratamiento cuasi cinematográfico de la narración y unos personajes arrolladores, Dennis Lehane explora la devastadora violencia y la incontenible efervescencia de un país en busca de la libertad y en guerra consigo mismo. Considerada uno de los ejemplos más señeros de «la gran novela americana», Cualquier otro día captura de forma admirable el espíritu de una época y aborda muchos temas que nos siguen acuciando un siglo después: la raza, la inmigración, el terrorismo, la inestabilidad económica o la brecha creciente entre ricos y pobres.

"- Es un club social.
– Es un sindicato – replicó Steve.
– ¿Y entonces por qué se llama Club Social de Boston? – inquirió Danny.
Bostezó mirando al cielo de cuero blanco.
– Buena pregunta. La pregunta clave, a decir verdad. Ésa es una de las cosas que intentamos cambiar.
– Por mucho que lo cambiéis, será un sindicato sólo nominalmente. Somos policías, Steve: no tenemos derechos. El CSB… ¿qué es? Nada más que un club de niños, una puta cabaña en un árbol."

Creía que la reciente “Golpe de gracia” era la mejor novela del escritor bostoniano Dennis Lehane -sin duda uno de los mejores escritores norteamericanos de todos los tiempos y de mis favoritos en la actualidad- pero tras leer “Cualquier otro día”, novela publicada originalmente en el año 2008 como primera parte de la trilogía familiar dedicada a los Coughlin, tengo que decir que estaba equivocado. Leer sus más de 700 páginas han sido para mi todo un placer, un viaje de lo más emocionante, sugerente e instructivo.

Lehane nos propone una saga familiar como “disculpa” para mostrarnos de manera casi cinematográfica y evocar de una forma magistral el espíritu de una época muy concreta de la historia de EEUU y hacer que se nos muestre ante nuestros ojos cómo si fuésemos parte de la historia, del decorado o de los personajes.

Pensada inicialmente como trilogía, "Cualquier otro día” nos ofrece un gran trasfondo histórico del Boston del año 1919, justo tras el final de la Primera Guerra Mundial, en un momento en el que crece el anarquismo, se suceden las luchas sindicales, las huelgas están a la orden del día y los atentados terroristas amenazan a toda la población. Asistiremos a estos y a otros acontecimientos tan trascendentales para la vida de Boston como por ejemplo ese extraño suceso denominado “la gran inundación de melaza de Boston”, ocurrida el 15 de enero de 1919 y que dejaría tras de sí a 21 fallecidos y a más de 150 heridos, tras la explosión de un tanque de almacenamiento de la Purity Distilling Company (ubicado en el barrio de North End) que liberó aproximadamente 8.7 millones de litros de melaza, un producto espeso derivado de la caña de azúcar y utilizado para la fabricación de ron.

El hilo conductor de estos y otros acontecimientos dentro de la trama serán 2 (4 más bien) personajes, por un lado Danny Coughlin, un policía irlandés que empieza infiltrándose en las reuniones sindicales y acaba abrazando la lucha obrera; y por otro Luther Lawrence, un fugitivo negro que huye de un crimen cometido en Tulsa, dejando allí a su mujer embarazada. Sus vidas discurrirán paralelas hasta confluir, en muchos aspectos gracias a otro de los personajes principales de la novela: Nora, una de las sirvientas de los Coughlin por la que lucharán Danny y su hermano Connor y que jugará un papel muy importante en la relación de Danny con Luther. El último de los personajes que servirán como hilo conductor y que aparece en forma de interludios es el mítico bateador de los Red Sox y más tarde de los Cubs de Chicago, Babe Ruth (de nombre real George Herman Ruth Jr., uno de los mejores jugadores de béisbol de la historia), deportista que dotará a la historia de una mayor realidad al mismo tiempo que servirá para descargar un poco al tensión de la trama al ver los acontecimientos de ese Boston tan convulso desde otro punto de vista muy diferente al del resto de personajes.

Como siempre los diálogos son de una finura extrema, muy realistas y como ya dije con un cierto carácter cinematográfico; y los temas de la segregación racial, de la visión de EEUU que tendrán tras la Gran Guerra los negros y los blancos o las crisis sociales estarán de nuevo presentes en el libro, aunque un tema subyace por encima del resto y será el caldo de cultivo sobre el que arranca el libro: las luchas de los primeros sindicatos del cuerpo de policía de Boston por conseguir unas condiciones laborales mejores que las que tenían en el año 1918: medidas de seguridad nefastas y unas jornadas laborales de 80 horas semanales.

Otro 5 estrellas indiscutible, que por fin he podido reseñar tras unas semanas un tanto movidas en lo emocional. En breve más reseñas.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one begin to review a 700-page epic historical novel, which drops names such as Calvin Coolidge, John Hoover, W.E.B. DuBois, and Babe Ruth, among others? Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day is set mainly in Boston at the end of World War I. The action features two families, one black and one white. Luther Laurence is a young “colored” man who is not quite ready to be a responsible adult. He gets his girlfriend pregnant, and at the insistence of her family, they get married in Tulsa, where even blacks earn a living wage. Aiden “Danny” Coughlin is cop, the son of an Irish immigrant who is a well-known, powerful captain in the Boston Police Department. You might think that these families would have nothing in common and that their paths would never cross, but through the magic of Dennis Lehane’s imagination, they do. If my American History class had been so fascinating, I’d have been one happy student!

What was happening in 1917 and 1918 in Boston and other parts of the country was unrest. Cities were beset by workers’ strikes, fighting men were returning home from the war seeking jobs, and blacks were still barely recognized as citizens, not even second-class citizens. Communists and other leftist groups vied for power, and those who joined a union were seen as radicals. Police in Boston faced a lose-lose situation. They could put up with sub-minimal pay, overly long workweeks, and unsanitary conditions in their station houses or they could form a union and risk losing their jobs. As public employees, they were sworn to “serve and protect,” but at what cost? Meanwhile, cities insisted there was no money to pay them.

Blacks, better known in those days as “colored,” or worse, got no respect. Except in Tulsa, which seemed to be the land of milk and honey. Oh, it was still segregated, but a black man could find a job that paid well. He could buy a nice car, even a home. That’s where Luther and his love, Lila, wind up. Until Luther makes some young, stupid choices and gets himself into very, very hot water.

And what about Babe Ruth? How does he fit in? The prologue shows the Babe showing off in a pickup game with a bunch of black ballplayers. His train has stalled, and he and his Boston Red Sox teammates, plus their Chicago Cubs rivals, are all killing time while repairs are made. It is our first glimpse of Ruth, and we see what a jerk the man was. Did we really need the Ruth chapters in this book? It would’ve been shorter without them, and I’m not sure I’d have missed them. Yet, it puts things in perspective, I think. Baseball was known as America’s favorite pastime (until, many would argue, football became so widely televised), and I am sure that Ruth’s exploits on the field provided a welcome diversion from the troubles of the day. Apart from that, who was the star player on that Negro team? None other than Luther Laurence, a man who, had he been white, could have played in the major leagues. As it turns out, he faces more hardships and tough choices and shows more character than Ruth. Then there is the chance meeting of Ruth with Danny on the train at the end of the book. Whom do we pick as our heroes? What do we cherish in life? The contrast is beautiful.

The characters are many. They are diverse. They are human, which is to say, flawed. Lehane scripts his cops and their bosses like people I could see. I imagined this book as a movie with lots of tough guys. They liked their drink and their women. They fought for what they believed in. And some of them loved. A lot.

The Given Day made me angry. It made me sad. It made me smile. Because of the length, I was tempted at times to skim through it, but I didn’t. I savored it. I appreciated the research that went into this work. I loved how Lehane made history come to life. I also loved that Danny could love Nora and that they could be friends with Luther. Much of this book reminded me of the struggles that are happening in this country and in the world today. As the saying goes, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

[Σωτήρης Καραγιάννης · Rating 5 out of 5]

Να κάθεσαι όλη μέρα να διαβάζεις Lehane. Αυτό, τίποτα άλλο.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprise! I am really surprised that a historical-fiction about Boston, Babe Ruth, and more didn't interest me more than this did.

The Given Day is a broad-ranging drama about Boston in the late 1910s. The war is ending, jobs are in demand, money is getting tight everywhere, terrorism is putting fear into the hearts of all, segregationist racism is still rearing its ugly head, and the little guy is getting the shaft.

There's a lot going on in The Given Day, maybe too much. I wasn't overwhelmed by it all, but the preponderance of historical detail bogs down the human story at the heart of this.

The Irish immigrant Coughlin family is the heart of this novel. Sticking with them through out the book might have provided a better, or at least, more concise story. But of course, you can't discuss Boston back in the day (hell, even these days) without bringing up its contentious past regarding poor race relations. So that required Lehane to create his representative of the black community, Luther Laurence, who we spend just about as much time with as we do with the Coughlins. Lehane also wanted to give us a grand vision of Boston, and the country, in the late 1910s, so he added a whole storyline with Babe Ruth, who was just coming on at the time, and who was notoriously traded from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees at this time, much to the chagrin of long-suffering Sox fans for the better part of a century. The problem with adding this story to the mix is that it makes the whole thing tip to the unwieldy side. Weighing in at 700+ pages, I felt every bit of it.

I'm a Lehane fan. I even really liked the sequel to The Given Day. But this one, while perfectly fine, did not suit me quite like I thought it would. Besides its length I might also cite the somewhat comical portrayals of the antagonists herein. At times they come off as Scoobie-level evil-doers.

But hey, this is Lehane and he's a damn good writer, so putting all the complaints aside, this is still a solid book. There is PLENTY to enjoy here. If you are a fan of history and want to know what was going on in Boston 100 years ago, this is a great read for you!

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I frequently experience a letdown after reading the choice new releases that publishers and literary critics push and bookstores parade as the greatest novel of the decade. So I was wary but seduced, anyway, to buy Lehane's book--by Boston, by the Red Sox, by themes of racial injustice and social unrest, by the parallels to contemporary issues, and by Lehane's accomplishment with Mystic River.

I was impressed by Lehane's ambitious genre-crossing. The quality of this book is sufficiently steep that the minor flaws are forgivable. This resonant story with memorable, marrow-deep characters did not fade away after the final page.

Amazon provides an exuberant introduction to this novel, so my desire is to share my response to reading it rather than retelling the events. And there are teeming, cataclysmic events that vitalize the story.

Danny Coughlin and Luther Laurence, the two main protagonists, are portrayed with virile consciousness and psychological intensity. I see them, feel them, hear them, smell them-- until I am breathing them. They are nervy and knuckled. They are not merely the broad strokes that you sometimes get in a period piece of sprawling, epic proportions (although there are a few Rocky-esque contours). They are not secondary to advancing the plot. Danny and Luther drive the story as the story also fuels them. And there is enough brio to keep them elastic and passionate. Danny's father, Thomas Coughlin (police captain), is especially interesting. He is a mixture of confident swagger, moral ambiguity, and tragedy--the closest of the characters to a literary one. He is the most unpredictable and enigmatic and keeps you changing your mind about him until the end of the novel.

Although there is some sentimentality to the story and main characters, I did not feel short-changed. Although the author is transparent about his political views, he makes them tactile and combative in detail and luster.

The background and landscape become character, also. It breathes and belches with dust, dirt, steel, mortar, sky, and water. The potent imagery adds dramatic tension and texture to the story without dragging it down. Individuals struggle to harness their environment and reconcile with its impersonal but cruel nature. Lehane intertwines the landscape as extended metaphor and foreshadowing as well as time, place, and temperament. His descriptions give a fierce undercurrent to a subdued atmosphere and tone--there is never just one sustained note (another problem with some period pieces).

Some reviewers cite stilted dialogue with too much exposition. I did not experience that to any significant extent. There were some moments near the beginning of the novel that were a bit awkward, but once the momentum got going and the characters were well-oiled, the story became fluid and powerful. There is a curve in historical fiction where readers adjust to the author's chosen prose style and narrative flow. This is not a perfect novel--some of the architecture of it can strain believability and it waxes sentimental. And yet it is exhilarating, consistently engrossing. It never got musty or flat--it remained plump and invigorating. Its visceral engagement kept it at a 5-star excellence. Like Steinbeck's East of Eden, it is flawed and overflowing and exciting.

This is an intelligent page-turner--also a thriller, a drama, a period piece, and family saga. It is fiery and wet, tempestuous and fierce. And a gift on any given day.

[Javier Ventura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cualquier otro día no es Mystic River, ni se le parece. Si viene uno a sus páginas esperando encontrar un thriller policiaco tenso y despiadado, comete un gran error.
Esta novela es policiaca solo por cuanto a que narra unos hechos sociales e históricos, donde el cuerpo de Policía de Boston y sus representantantes sindicales fueron protagonistas. Aquí no hay asesinatos e investigaciones. Alguno hay, pero no es relevante. Aquí lo que vamos a encontrar es una novela casi histórica, una crónica detallada y bien documentada de las circunstancias que se vivieron en Boston después de la Gran Guerra, con sus tensiones sociales y raciales, su recesión económica, la epidemia de gripe española, y demás factores que fueron caldo de cultivo para que comunistas, bolcheviques y terroristas hicieran acto de presencia. Y en este contexto, un cuerpo de policía que lucha por reivindicar la mejora de sus condiciones laborales y salariales.
La novela es muy buena, pero estas tramas políticas no me atraen, y en algunas ocasiones se me ha hecho larga y aburrida.
3.5 que redondeo por lo bajo. No es la novela; he sido yo.

[Connie Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! The Given Day has it all. Lehane gives his reader historical facts, tons of strong characters, both good and evil, social and political unrest, murder and mayhem and throws in a love story to boot! This was a powerful book, and even more so for me as I listened to the wonderful narration of Michael Boatman. The ease with which he changed voice, tone, accent was mesmerizing. The immigrant Irish brogue, the street cop Boston Irish accent, the New England sound, the black man's cadence....even a bit of British and Italian thrown in he nailed them all without missing a beat. He became each character as he brought the lyrical writing of Mr. Lehane to life for me. Even Mr. Babe Ruth finds his way woven throughout this book much to my delight.

I appreciated that the unrest of the two main characters matched the unrest of the city of Boston in the early 1900's. The war was over, the "ward bosses" still ruled the city, politics were dirty and anarchy and prohibition was the talk of the day. I had a front row seat at watching history unfold. Lehane had me holding my breath, chuckling to myself and rushing to see how everything turns out. But oh, at the end I was so sad to let these wonderful characters go. This was a story that touched me and had me reading up on the history of the time, seeing which events were true and reading more about them. These characters lived large and life was often hard, but they were proud and believable. Family mattered as did your word. Throw in a few twists and turns along the way and you are rooting for the underdog to win in the end.

Don't let the length of this book overwhelm you. The story (actually the parallel stories) move swiftly and carry you right along. If you enjoy historical, character driven fiction and excellent writing I don't think this will let you down.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have it pretty good here in ol’ 2016. I work nine to five, Monday to Friday. I have a decent health plan and my job consists of sitting on my ass in front of a computer all day. I get regular raises and if I get sick, I can rest up for a few days until I kick whatever ails me out of my system. The men of the Boston Police Department in the early 20th century didn’t have any of this. They’d be lucky if they were even given time off to sleep let alone enough money to feed their families.

For Dennis Lehane, it started with the Boston Police strike of 1919. The simple thought of an entire police force walking off the job had fascinated him, but as he began digging, The Given Day grew both in size and scope. Lehane included the infamous Spanish Flu outbreak, The Great Molasses Flood of early 1919, and Babe Ruth’s rise to the top of baseball - all of this occurring within a city already struggling to find its identity. As Boston formed into a melting pot of immigrants - both the Irish and Italians leading the forefront - to say that they were all at odds with one another would be a gross understatement. Considering the Irish were often connected to the police department and the Italians closely associated with communism and terrorism, events would occur that would poison the minds of Boston's residents resulting in widespread racism that would fuel many of the city's more memorable events.

The Given Day follows three main characters. Danny Coughlin, a young Boston police officer tasked with infiltrating and investigating the Boston Social Club - an unofficial union formed by his fellow officers looking to fight for workers rights; Luther Laurence, a black man who arrives in Boston fleeing from Oklahoma following a botched robbery attempt; and Babe Ruth (do I really need to explain who this is?).

As the plot progresses, all three become linked by the corruption and fear that gripped Beantown. Lehane’s clean, flowing prose is front and center making The Given Day a breezy, but brutal read. Character development is top-notch and I found myself digging in for long reading sessions, desperate to know what horrible thing would hit the city next. That said, the Babe Ruth stuff didn’t do a whole lot for me. Although he wasn’t featured as prominently as the other two characters, I found his story a little jarring and out of place by comparison. Both Danny and Luther’s stories were so gritty, unpredictable and at times unapologetically bleak that Ruth’s story felt like literary padding.

Like Lehane’s signature Kenzie & Gennaro series, The Given Day is about as readable as you can get. Aside from the bits about Ruth, you have a classic crime/historical fiction book that plays like a James Ellroy novel on Ritalin.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mother is a big fan of Dennis Lehane, and because she knows I'm really picky when it comes to crime, she gifted me two of his books that aren't crime. I really liked his short story collection and breezed through it. I took a lot longer with the second book, an epic historical novel.

I read the 700 pages over a period of 1,5 years, despite really liking it. It's easy to pick up again after months of not reading it. You're automatically thrown back into the world, which is one of the best things about this book: the world building is fantastic. Lehane really brings Boston in the late 1910s to life. I think I could have done without the Babe Ruth story. At times I felt like there was too much going on. The Coughlin family, the personal drama, the political, the race and class discussions and the police strike would have been enough for me. I almost feel like there was so much going on, that I would have needed more than 700 pages to get even closer to the story. I kept imagining this great HBO series bringing this book to life, page by page. Maybe this is because Dennis Lehane wrote for my favourite show ever (The Wire), but this read like a really good screenplay to me at times. I mean this in the best way possible, because I'm a sucker for direct writing and lots of dialogue.

There were, some parts, that didn't ring true to life for me. Some dialogue felt stiff and very much like a movie in a bad way, not a good way this time. So I can't give 5 stars. But I definitely want to read the sequel to this!

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This quickly jumped into my list of favorite novels! Not only is it impeccably researched and details dramatic historical events in Boston of 1919, it also follows truly relatable and engaging characters. The book follows two young men, one black and one white, who get caught up in the social and political turmoil in Boston at the time.

I was worried that being a long historical drama, it would be boring, but from the first chapter I was totally engaged and then became swept up in Luther's desire to get back to is wife and Danny's journey into union activism and involvement in the infamous police strike. The books pacing is surprisingly quick for all the historical info it details and I finished it in four days. I've read all of Dennis Lehane's novels and most of his short stories, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I jumped in late on a buddy-read with Delee, Stepheny, Jeff, and Jess.

Couldn't sleep last night, so I finished this plodding novel. 2.5 stars, barely rounded up.

The Given Day is an historical novel set in Boston around the tumultuous times around 1919: the end of World War I, the Spanish Flu, unions forming against business owners, and huge waves of immigrants coming to the US hoping for a better life.

The story centers around tough Boston Irish cop Danny Coughlin, and Luther Laurence, a black man on the run. Coughlin struggles in his relationship with his powerful father, Boston police captain Thomas Coughlin. Luther fled to Boston, but wants only to return to his wife and child in Tulsa. Their stories eventually come together at the Coughlin household over their mutual interests. Beyond the main characters, the supporting cast was shallow stereotypes. Danny's love interest is deep and complex –that is what we are told, but nothing supports this. Every single character wears a black or a white hat. Only Danny's father seems to have any gray; he is the one character difficult to decipher.

Ultimately, this novel was incredibly tedious and repetitious. The plot was predictable, which is expected when dealing with stereotypes. When the good police commissioner promises a living wage, it is unsurprising that he dies before it is implemented. It also wasn’t a shocker that a corrupt cop would use Luther's troubled past to manipulate him.

There were a few redeeming qualities in the book, though. The battle between the cops and Bolsheviks, the battle of the police trying to get a livable wage, the descriptions of Boston's North End and the battle to keep organized labor from growing were all good.

Of the three overlapping and intersecting storylines in The Given Day (Danny the cop; Luther on the run; Babe Ruth the baseball legend), I would rate Luther's story 4 stars, Danny's story 2 stars, and Babe's story 1 star. This novel really needed to be trimmed and edited for length, maybe focusing on either Luther or Danny alone, and eliminating the whole Babe Ruth storyline altogether.

This isn't a bad novel. It's just bloated. In the end, it feels like Lehane was trying too hard to incorporate too many historical events with too many storylines, failing to propel the novel forward. It is at times excellent, at times meandering. This is a novel that I’d recommend only if you're willing to wade through 700+ pages to find the few brilliant bright spots.

[Anthems · Rating 4 out of 5]

De lo mejor que he leído en mucho, mucho tiempo.

Uno de esos ejemplos de la recurrentemente llamada "gran novela americana": una obra a caballo entre la crónica histórica de ese agitado periodo transicional entre finales de la Primera Guerra Mundial y los efervescentes Felices Años 20 y la novela policiaca con un tratamiento narrativo casi cinematográfico.

A destacar la multitud de escenas vívidamente narradas, la personalidad arrolladora de los personajes, los momentos desgarradores, tanto familiares como profesionales, y, como no, el toque irónico y descarnado de un Lehane que probablemente firma su libro más completo y ambicioso.

Una auténtica epopeya sobre las expectativas rotas y los sueños truncados. En general, sobre la crudeza de la vida.

En serio, un libro colosal en todos los sentidos. Indispensable para todo aquél que busque una lectura de esas que llenan y perviven en la memoria.

"Cualquier otro día" se queda muy, muy cerca, de las 5 estrellas.

Nota: 4,5 estrellas.

[Rick Riordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Lehane's since his earliest detective novels. When I was writing mysteries, he was one of those writers I was simply in awe of -- a guy who writes with such talent and vision it's a little intimidating to the rest of us schmucks plodding along in the genre. The general public will be familiar with his novels that were made into movies: Mystic River, Shutter Island and Gone, Baby, Gone. I'll confess I haven't seen any of those movies. I have difficulty seeing movie adaptations of my favorite books even if the adaptations are good, but the novels are uniformly excellent.

At any rate, I hadn't read any Lehane novels in years before I picked up The Given Day. This is a huge departure for Lehane -- an ambitious, sprawling historical novel set in Boston in 1918-1919. Clearly, Lehane has done his homework, and this is a labor of love to capture one of the seminal eras of his hometown of Boston. At its core, The Given Day is about two men -- Irish-American policeman Danny Coughlin, and African-American laid-off factory worker Luther Lawrence -- whose lives intertwine through some of the major crises of the day: the Spanish flu epidemic, the end of World War I, race riots, and the rise of the labor unions. We also get interlude chapters told from the perspective of Babe Ruth, who provides a wonderful third perspective on the era and some dark comic relief. (The story of the piano in the pond is worth the price of admission by itself.)

Do not expect a fast read. This is not a roller coaster of a book. It's more of a steam train ride across a vivid landscape. The characters are fabulous, however. Lehane's writing is as lean and evocative as ever. You will feel like you've actually visited Boston in 1919. And like all good historical novels, you'll be struck by how many things have changed in American culture -- and how many things haven't.

[Kathleen Gilroy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I awaited fervently for my turn at the library for this book and was pretty gravely disappointed. It begins with great promise -- the period in time in Boston's history where the end of WWI, the outbreak of the great influenza epidemic, violent terrorism, and the formation of labor unions all intersect to create huge social upheaval. But I just can't finish, despite how piqued my interest is about this period of history. The writing was often wooden; the characterizations are stock and flat; I do want to know what happens to everybody but not enough to complete the slog. If there are readers out there who can recommend a good non-fiction book about this period, please email me or leave me a note in the comments. Disappointing.