BOOK REPORT: The Given Day: A Novel (Coughlin Series Book 1) by Dennis Lehane – 201021

This is an experiment here on this patreon. For years, Penn has had a private blog/email list that consists of his friends over the years. Whenever he reads a book, he types out a quick blurb and then pastes his favorite quotes from the book beneath. Penn has agreed (for now at least) to let me share these book reports here. Part of the reason why, is that patreon is also a private source. So please keep these to yourself as they become more frequent.

From Penn:

The Given Day: A Novel (Coughlin Series Book 1) by Dennis Lehane – 201021 – Eddie gave me this book so I’d read something I would never read.  Babe Ruth? 1918 flu? Molasses flood? Police strike? Anarchists? FBI? Boston?  I just don’t care about any of this.  But I do care about a great book and this is that. I loved the movie “Gone, Baby, Gone” and it’s the same writer. He’s really good. I got caught up in all these stories I didn’t know I cared about. Wow. I didn’t know I cared, but Eddie did. I had trouble putting it down to go to sleep. See?  See?  I can dig things I don’t dig. Thanks Eddie.

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“But I’m learning you, boy. Learning you like I’m awake in school.”

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Just a not-quite-guy where the guy had lain, a distant, cooling thing.

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it was the world. The way it gathered speed with every passing day. The way the faster it went, the less it seemed to be steered by any rudder or guided by any constellation. The way it just continued to sail on, regardless of him.

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the open windows loosed the smell of boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, and boiled ham on the bone.

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A child. A rest-of-your-life responsibility. A thing that grew up while you grew old. Didn’t care if you were tired, didn’t care if you were trying to concentrate on something else, didn’t care if you wanted to make love. A child just was, thrust right into the center of your life and screaming its head off.

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Because there was something unbroken in the man. And people followed him, maybe, just to see it break.

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They’d come back home, weary from lack of work, and compose or listen to music just like this, stare up at paintings of ancestors as hopeless and empty as they were, and preach to their children about right and wrong.

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the way Federico’s smile didn’t mask the great pain that lay undoubtedly in his past; it embraced it. And in that embracing, triumphed.

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He thought she owed him an explanation. He was convinced there was one.

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wasn’t no way to tell hell from hell that day.

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The air was cold but smelled so clean Luther wished he could put it on a plate and eat it.

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“What my compatriot here is saying,” Jim said, “is that the future opiate of the masses is not religion, Mr. Ruth, it’s entertainment.”

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Not easy. Quite hard. But simple.

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This was work of the hand and of the mind and of muscle. Work that left some hint of itself and yourself behind after you were gone.

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How could you fight righteous rage if the only arms you bore were logic and sanity?

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He didn’t pray, but he didn’t quite not-pray either.

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It was like they were all walking through this crazy world, trying to keep pace but knowing they couldn’t, they just couldn’t. So part of them waited for that world to come back up behind them on a second try and just roll right over them, send them—finally—on into the next one.

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Hated them wholesale.

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Every bear was once a cub.”

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“Ain’t nothing easy.” Luther shook his head. “Simple, though, yeah.”

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“You’re treading a tightrope in a circus fire about now.”

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a dazed look on his face, the kind a man got when he saw something he’d never expected, a long-dead relative, perhaps, or a kangaroo in his basement.

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He’d heard others say he was a man who wore his power lightly, but the truth was, he’d never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion of the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they thus wielded “power” barbarically so the world would not find them out.

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self-pity disguised as inner counsel.

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no one knew better than Luther himself how completely a man could step on his own dick when what he thought he wanted contradicted what he knew he needed.