Dayswork
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
A startlingly original, incantatory novel about marriage, mortality, and making art. In the endless days of the pandemic, a woman spends her time sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville. As she delves into Melville’s impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth Shaw, she becomes increasingly obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt. Her preoccupation both deepens and expands, and her days’ work extends outward to an orbiting cast of Melvillean questers and fanatics, as well as to biographers and writers—among them Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell—whose lives resonate with Melville’s. As she pulls these distant figures close, her quarantine quest ultimately becomes a midlife reckoning with her own marriage and ambition. Absorbing, charming, and intimate, Dayswork considers the blurry lines between life and literature, the slippage between what happens and what gets recorded, and the ways we locate ourselves in the lives of others. In wry, epigrammatic prose, Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel have crafted an exquisite and daring novel.
Reviews with the most likes.
After reading Moby Dick earlier this year, this seemed like an interesting companion piece, but it turned out to be much more enjoyable than expected. Instead of being dry, as I feared, it has a lovely conversational tone and is full of fascinating details of not only Melville's life, but also of his associates and various biographers. Much of the subject matter is serious, often recounting cruel and upsetting behavior, but somehow this novel still manages to feel charming and even funny at times.
I listened to the audiobook version and thought Janet Metzger did a wonderful job with the narration, especially during the conversations between the couple. These feel remarkably natural, like listening to a friend tell a story.
The authors are married and considering the themes of this book, it's sadly ironic that the “follow author” section on this book page lists only Bachelder. Possibly this is GR's fault and only allows for one author to be displayed, but if not this should be corrected. Or at least Bachelder's bio could mention Jennifer Habel by name instead of just referring to her as “wife.”
Otherwise no complaint, this was a surprisingly fun read!
