What’s on the Bookshelf?

Lately I’ve been reading Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day. Unlike some of his better known works like Gone Baby Gone, The Given Day is historical fiction.

On my last trip to the library, I spotted this on display, happily chillin’ next to Chuck Palahniuk and Stephen King, quite the odd trio. Intrigued by the old photographs used on the cover, I picked it up and started to read it.

I’m roughly a third of the way through the 700 page behemoth, and I’m enjoying it. It certainly is taking a while to get through, and I’m a fast reader.

As can be expected with Lehane, the city of Boston is a character by itself, and he brings it to life very well.

As for the story itself, it involved the Boston Police Department, the Spanish Influenza and the Boston Red Sox, circa 1918. Not to mention the undercurrent of social unrest, plenty of anarchists, communists and other menaces to society. There are undercover cops, bar fights, deaths, Babe Ruth and more.

My assessment of the book might change as I delve further into it, but for the time being its an entertaining look back to a different time.