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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 ha...
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
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
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 rat...
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 Denn...
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 th...
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 ric...
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
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....eve
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 pr...
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 int...
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 eve...
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...
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 CarmenExtra Extra read all about it![image error]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
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
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...
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 ov...
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 thin...
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 ma...
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 d...