Days of Light<\/em>. She\u2019s a poet whose use of language is often very striking, part of the attraction for me. This third novel tells the story of Ivy, the daughter of a bohemian Sussex family, through six pivotal days in her life beginning with Easter Sunday in 1938 which ends in tragedy.<\/p>\nShe had been trying to write poetry lately, had been trying to content herself with being unkissed, untouched, to imagine that nature itself was her lover, that the whole world \u2013 meaning nobody \u2013 could adore her.<\/em><\/p>\nIvy wakes to the sound of her brother singing, one of the few things he does badly. She\u2019s nineteen with none of her family\u2019s obvious artistic or literary talent, searching for meaning and a way to be. Joseph has invited the woman with whom he is in love to Cressingdon for Easter and Ivy is eager to meet her. Two weeks later Ivy is at a funeral, grief stricken but finding solace with a man much older than herself which will lead to marriage and children in a cottage not far from her family home. Towards the end of the war, a friendship ripens into a love that might fulfil Ivy\u2019s longing for meaning, hopes dashed ten years later on a day in which she experiences an epiphany pointing her to another way of life altogether. On the sixth day, Ivy remembers the many Easters she has lived through and the course her life has taken, understanding that her quest for meaning has been fulfilled.<\/p>\n
Now, when Ivy thought of that day, it was in sepia, in an orange gauze, every movement softened with the ongoingness of life. This was before death, she felt, before any fact of death in her life. <\/em><\/p>\nIvy\u2019s story is unfolded from her perspective although not in her voice which suits this woman cast as an observer on the edges of a colourful family caught up in their own lives, unsure of her place in the world. Hunter\u2019s writing is luminously beautiful at times \u2013 the Sussex countryside surrounding Cressingdon is lyrically described \u2013 and there\u2019s an elegiac quality to the early party of the novel which lends it a gentle melancholy. Through Ivy, Hunter shows us a changing world from 1938 with war on the horizon to the turn of the century when she hardly recognises the London in which she now lives. Throughout it all, she remains haunted by the tragedy of 1938, unsure to the end if she might have played a part in it. Looking at pre-publication reviews, I see that some readers found Hunter\u2019s novel unsatisfying, but I loved it, partly its structure suited it well but mostly for its quietly gorgeous writing.<\/p>\n
Picador Books London 9781529010183 288 pages Hardback<\/p>\n
\n
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I loved both The End We Start From <\/em><\/a>and The Harpy<\/em><\/a> which made me keen to read Megan Hunter\u2019s Days of Light<\/em>. She\u2019s a poet whose use of language is often very striking, part of the attraction for me. This third novel tells the story of Ivy, the daughter of a bohemian Sussex family, through six pivotal days in her life beginning with Easter Sunday in 1938 which ends in tragedy.<\/p>\n