Book Review – Days of Light by Megan Hunter

About the Book

Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. In the idyllic Sussex countryside, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch, awaiting the arrival of a longed-for guest. It is a single, enchanted afternoon that ends in tragedy.

Days later, at a funeral, Ivy is kissed by the man she will marry, and grieves with the woman who will become the love of her life. And this is only the beginning . . .

Chronicling six pivotal days across six decades, Days of Light moves through the Second World War and the twentieth century on a radiant journey through a life lived in pursuit of love and in search of an answer.

Format: Hardcover (288 pages) Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 17th April 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The tragedy that occurs on Easter Sunday 1938 affects many lives. For Ivy, what promised to be a day of celebration is now associated with loss and guilt. But also incomprehension because she experienced something that day she can’t explain: a sudden burst of light that mesmerised her. Was its source something prosaic or more profound, divine in nature even?

‘For her whole life, she would wonder how to describe the light. It was not like a torch beam or a lantern. It had neither the gentleness of fire nor the simple glow of electricity.‘

We revisit Ivy on five other days over the course of the next six decades exploring how that single event influences her life, her relationships and even her faith. (The fact each of the six days are at Easter seems significant, evoking the idea of sacrifice but also resurrection.) We learn not just about the events of that particular day but what has happened in the intervening years. In many cases, the changes in her life – marriage, motherhood, emotional awakening – have come about not through conscious decisions but in response to others.

Ivy is someone who seems to be on a perpetual quest for fulfilment but unsure of where to find it. And she cannot let go of the mystery surrounding the tragedy or her own misgivings about her role in it, searching for answers (or a revelation) in all sorts of different ways.

The word I most often associated with Ivy was unmoored. ‘This is how life happens, Ivy realized, like a crowd of things and houses and people pushed by a tidal wave, moving towards her, over her. Life took place, and she was within it, but there seemed to be no control, no choice.’ At times Ivy seems to welcome the act of submission, the removal of personal choice.

She experiences a betrayal that I found particularly cruel and difficult to forgive. Only later in life does she take events into her own hands with an act that requires courage and a belief in the future.

Days of Light is a beautifully written story of love and loss, with a strong spiritual element and in which light is a recurring motif. It’s one of those books that reveals its many layers in a quiet, insightful way.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Picador via NetGalley.

In three words: Intimate, intense, emotional
Try something similar: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

About the Author

Megan Hunter is a prizewinning novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Her first novel, The End We Start From (2017) was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Awards, longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Awards finalist and won the Foreword Reviews Editor’s Choice Award. It was adapted into a major motion picture by Alice Birch, starring Jodie Comer and directed by Mahalia Belo. Her second novel, The Harpy (2020), was Indie Book of the Month; she is currently adapting it for television with Red Planet Pictures. In 2024 her dramatic monologue Salt of the Earth premiered at Venice Film Festival. Megan’s other writing has appeared in the White Review, the TLS, Literary Hub, Vogue, Elle, BOMB, and elsewhere. She lives in Cambridge, UK. (Photo: Goodreads)

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