Alfred Day wanted his war. He found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and - most extraordinary of all - he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that's all gone now - the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too. Before Hitler and the bombs he was a boy in Staffordshire, helpless to defend his mother, to resist his abusive father. The RAF gave him order, skills, another family and a way to be a man. It taught him how to burn through lifetimes on night ops and brief, sweet leaves, surviving the unsurvivable. But it didn't prepare him for capture, for the prison camp and the chaos as the war wound down. It didn't prepare him for an empty peace. Now it's 1949 and Alfred is doing the impossible again, winding back time to see where he lost himself. He has taken the role of an extra in a POW film. Shipped out to Germany and an ersatz camp, he picks his way through the cliches that will become all that's left of his war and begins to do what he's never dared - to remember. He is looking for some semblance of hope: trying to move forward by going back.
'Day confirms, if confirmation were needed, that Kennedy is a singular, superlative author. I hope that the judges of this year's Man Booker prize pay particular attention to it.' Scotland on Sunday
'A woman born in 1965 who writes a novel about RAF bomber crew in the second world war needs a gift for bringing history alive, as well as guts and true bravado. AL Kennedy has them all... her narrative gift is great.' Guardian
'This is a remarkably clean lined book, of highly literary construction, that still feels huge and wide-ranging. Day is a forceful, wholly achieved piece of work by a writer of enormous power. It ought to win all the prizes going.' Daily Telegraph
Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Alison Kennedy was born in Dundee in 1965. Her numerous awards include Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year, Scottish Arts Council Book Award, Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Somerset Maughan Award.
Day has already won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year and Costa Novel Award 2007. According to the Costa judges:
"We chose A L Kennedy as our winner because, through an extraordinary act of ventriloquism, she describes the waste and eventual resurrection of a young life shattered by war. This book is a masterpiece."
Day is published by Jonathan Cape.
www.a-l-kennedy.co.uk