The End of the Day
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3.1 • 69 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Following his acclaimed New York Times bestseller Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg returns with a “delicate, deeply observed, and deftly crafted” (Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs) second novel about the complicated bonds and breaking points of friendship, the corrosive forces of secrets, the heartbeat of longing, and the redemption found in forgiveness.
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.
These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface. It is in this moment that Bill Clegg reminds us how choices—to connect, to betray, to protect—become our legacy.
“Written in lyrical, beautiful prose that makes even waking up seem like a poetic event” (Good Morning America), this novel is a feat of storytelling, capturing sixty years within the framework of one fateful day.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Bill Clegg’s dazzling emotional wallop of a novel lays bare the complicated entanglements of three families, following them through two generations of friendship, interdependence, and betrayal. Clegg focuses on the story’s women, from an aging matriarch who is slowly losing her steely grip on life to her housekeeper’s fiercely proud daughter, whose childhood lies upended countless lives. As long-held secrets emerge, bonds are tested and characters are forced to reckon with past choices. The End of the Day is a potent cocktail of juicy drama and biting social commentary.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clegg (Did You Ever Have a Family) delivers a thoughtful, well-observed story of a patrician New York City family and its Mexican servants. Dana Goss, heir of Edgeweather, her family's Connecticut estate, has in her old age begun to show signs of Alzheimer's. As Dana makes the trip to Edgewater from her townhouse in the city for the first time in 30 years, Clegg alternates the short chapters with views into in the lives of Dana's childhood best friend Jackie, and Lupita Lopez, the house manager's daughter, who grew up in the shadow of Dana and Jackie's friendship and privilege. In the second part, Clegg swings down to present-day Philadelphia, where Hap, a journalist, sits by his father's deathbed. Readers will wonder about Hap's connection to the other characters, and where the story is going, though Dana knows the answer, and her revelations will upend everything. As the pieces come together, little is as it seems on first, or even second, sight. The splendid prose and orchestrated maneuvering will keep readers turning the pages and send them back to the beginning, to read it all over again.
Customer Reviews
I truly have no idea what I just read.
This is the most unremarkable book I’ve read in a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to give any flying you-know-whats about any of the characters and overall the storyline was so incredibly dry. Literally just finished the book and couldn’t tell you what it’s about. Save yourself several boring hours of reading and skip.