WELCOME TO THE DAY

A debut novel about three generations of a family offers a lot of sadness and pain but also plenty of love and acceptance.

Raymond Chandler (yes, named for the famous crime novelist) is not just old and frail, but coping with lung cancer as well. His wife, Joanne, is dead and he lives with his daughter, Cassie, who has her own problems, including her sullen teenage son, Joey. The story takes place over a single day, beginning with Ray’s painfully slow process of becoming awake and shuffling to breakfast. On this day, he sees a physician, learns that he is dying, and slips away from the doctor’s office to begin a journey of which he is only vaguely aware. Meanwhile, Joey, suspended for fighting in school, confesses to Cassie that he is gender fluid. Readers also learn about Cassie’s bad marriages and that she is prone to psychotic breaks, and Ray’s past as a farmer and what happened to his son, Joe. Ray encounters a variety of people, including a very protective orderly; a helpful Girl Scout; a chubby, curious baby; and a veteran with PTSD. He learns from them all, and they inadvertently give him gifts: real, material gifts. The book finally springs a few big surprises, some shocking and some poignant. Suffice it to say, that some of the characters are very much better off at day’s end. Catharsis has done the good that it has worked ever since the Greeks came up with the idea. As the back cover summary notes, this tale alludes not just to Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man,” but also to The Odyssey. Not Homer’s so much as James Joyce’s Ulysses, which tracks Leopold Bloom on his meanderings through Dublin on that fateful 16th of June, 1904, a trek that the Joycean faithful still celebrate as Bloomsday. Renken delivers a wonderfully inventive idea, just close enough to Joyce, Homer, and Shakespeare without devolving into a parlor game (And Joey would be who?). The pacing, too, is admirable, from the very first chapter with Ray’s reluctantly leaving sleep and orienting himself to the frazzled Cassie. She is trying to hold things together as she struggles to make breakfast while getting senile Ray and sullen Joey into gear for the day. Clearly, the woman has more on her plate than anyone deserves. Often, the author finds a striking phrase or word (“Time traveled out in front of” Ray; the swishing windshield wipers as the “heartbeat” of Cassie’s car). More’s the pity, then, that the moving novel is marred by such things as confounding tense switches (“But she doesn’t know where her son was”; “Raymond does not turn to look at them but heard them”). A strong editor was needed. Early on, readers will find Joey “putting both his head in his hands.” And especially as they near the end of the story, the typos come thick and fast (sheer, not “shear”; moved, not “loved”; Joey, not “Jory”).

A messy family tale with a clever idea and often sensitive writing.