Day for Night Book

The cover of the book, of a carousel submerged into an ocean, the tip visible, is a stunning metaphor of the book itself, as well as a literal scene in one of the book's early chapters. It represents our continuing, revolving narratives, partly hidden from our consciousness, the ocean a repository of life and death, a connection to all. The horse is totemic, an aid to self-discovery and understanding of our past, as well as glimpses into our future.

The title is undoubtedly taken from Francois Truffaut's superb movie, whose theme is that movies are more important than life for those that make them. In the book's context, it is the narratives that make up our lives. And what are narratives but the integration of the deepest memories that have broken up like shards and scattered, or hidden in our deepest and repressed recesses? Our narratives don't exist in isolation; the stories travel, the voices make up our universal experiences and nourish our shared humanity. We are a latticework of voices.

Reiken's novel consists of ten narratives. In each one, a character is brought into focus, their individual story highlighted. Most characters reappear in several of the other narratives, sometimes in the background, or in counterpoint, or even as a parallel. The core story underpinning all of the narratives is a story of survival during the Holocaust. Five hundred Polish-Jewish men in Soviet-occupied Lithuania were promised jobs as intellectuals, as archivists. When they assembled, they were killed. The story has taken on a fable-like history, the fable being that two of the men have survived. These two men are related to the present-day narrators in some way, either directly or through six degrees (or less!) of separation.

Reiken writes with such a natural ease that the connecting lip into deeper consciousness is fairly imperceptible. You start out on the surface of things and spool almost dreamily, tranquilly into penetrating waters. The construct is Jungian and his concept of the collective unconscious is illustrated through the psyches of the narrators and their overlapping stories.

The motifs/symbolism is ripe and transcendent. The Shadow self (which Jung describes as the repressed/suppressed aspects of the conscious self that often appears in dreams as a dark figure) is particularly expressed and explored by different characters, but is centered on Beverly, whose father was one of the five hundred men "lost." It is this Shadow self that stalks her and forces her narrative to emerge more fully into the open and connect with other narrators.

This novel is unputdownable. It winds around the reader so effortlessly and pulls you down, down, down into the heart of mercy, of kindness, of compassion. Secrets and guilt are often toxins that prevent us from knowing ourselves and understanding our lives fully, and divide us from each other. How do we begin to love, and how do we forgive?

All of us with our separate narratives are part of a deeper, richer narrative, a story much larger than we know. "Only later did I realize that the question the story caused me to ponder more than any other was that of what it takes to find a thing that's hidden, a thing that lurks within whatever it is you're staring at each day. Perhaps the meaning of the story is that you must look deep rather than far if you want to unlock any of the secrets of the universe, that once unlocked a secret loses its power unless a part of it is withheld."

If this novel does not move you uncommonly, I would be surprised. If you are not astonished by the beauty and elegance and immeasurable compassion of this book, I would be confounded. What is this book about? It is about everything. Who is it for? It is for everyone.