COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE "A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making."—Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize ...

So this NUBClub meeting was largely a love fest for how successful we thought Barry was in communicating a story of struggle, identity and family. We were blown away by the language; we all recognized it wasn't meant to be a literal version of how someone would talk at that time, but as a lyrical depiction of the internal life of a very smart but uneducated soldier, it was breathtaking. Barry did a remarkable job of exploring deep questions in very brief and subtle passages, and we felt that allowed him to range across large issues -- who gets to define identity, what is a family, how do we whitewash (literally in this book) history -- without getting away from the lived reality of a trans-gendered soldier in a committed relationship. Nick questioned the necessity of the last turn of the book and a couple of people wondered how much suffering needed to be inflicted in this book for us to get the point (see A Little Life as an analogue), but most of us defended the plot, arguing that it was a chance to see more sides of the endurance and family dependency that was the main character's lifeblood. Overall, we found the book a stunning, painful, and moving journey through issues of revenge, responsibility, and identity, and couldn't recommend it highly enough.