The End of the Day
By Bill Clegg
Gallery/Scout Press, 9781476798202, September 29, 2020, 320pp.
The Short of It:
I was super excited for Clegg’s new book after loving Did You Ever Have a Family, but I had trouble connecting with these characters.
The Rest of It:
Blurb from the publisher:
A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn’t seen in forty-nine years.
A man arrives at a Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby.
A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past.
Here’s the deal, this is a novel but it reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. I was mildly interested in each of the characters but I struggled to find how they were all connected with each other. It took a very long time for me to see the common threads. But, Clegg’s writing is often very thought-provoking so even though I struggled with the story itself, I still found myself enjoying individual sections. It just never came together for me as a novel.
I had very high hopes for this book but with the pandemic and my current state of mind, I found myself a little frustrated trying to put it all together. Sadly, it was not a win for me.
Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.
Book Chatter 
That’s disappointing. I loved his last novel, Did You Ever Have a Family. In fact, it was a favorite the year I read it. The way you described the connecting stories/threads aspect reminds me of Improvement by Joan Silber, which I loved. Did you know it was set up that way before you started or were you surprised? I’ll still give this a try at some point, but will keep your thoughts in mind. It’ll help temper my expectations.
Just realized I commented earlier via my twitter account… hope it went through.
I did get your comment; it just went straight to WP and not email. The Clegg book. It’s not really a book of stories but it felt that way. It was choppy and the switch between characters was maybe too abrupt? Plus, I only really cared about one of the characters so the others were not all that interesting to me. I kept waiting for it to come together.
Yeah I wasn’t a big Clegg fan with his first one … so I think I’ll pass. Sorry it wasn’t a win for you.
I don’t think this is for me. Thanks for the honest review.
The short blurb for each storline sounds so good and promising; too bad it didn’t all come together in a cohesive way.