Okay this is not my normal genre. With that said, what a powerful two part story disputing the old adage, "as long as it is between two consenting adults". This story teaches you the CHILDREN pay the price. Good read

Many novels have dealt with the subject of forbidden passions and love affairs that have disastrous consequences not only for the unruly lovers, but also for the people around them. In The First Day, Irish author Phil Harrison’s debut, the story not only depicts the beginning and eventual end of a relationship between Samuel Orr, a married pastor with children, and Anna Stuart, a young Beckett academic, but narrates the initial love between them as a poetic merge of the often antagonistic sides of philosophy and religion.

Despite the wide age gap between Orr and Anna, they are by no means intellectually mismatched. Theirs is a love affair not only of the body, but also of the mind. The scenes of heated lovemaking are paired off with profound discussions about God, faith and Samuel Beckett’s poetry.

Phil Harrison, author of ‘The First Day.’ Photo: Tim Millen
Harrison’s prose often recalls the style of other contemporary Irish fiction writers like Eimear McBride and Anne Enright, although stream of consciousness isn’t as much a dominant presence as the absence of quotation marks, a frequent enough literary device of Irish literature which reportedly doesn’t appeal to all. In The First Day, this narrative recourse is fitting in conveying to the reader the speed at which Orr and Anna fall in love, the acceleration of their relationship, Anna becoming pregnant with Orr’s child and the eventual aftermath.
In the second part of the novel, it is Anna and Orr’s son Samuel who takes over the narrative, creating not only a time jump of a few decades, but also a change of narrative pace. The clear differentiation between Samuel’s life and that of his parents, a legacy that he both embraces and blatantly rejects, is a clear demonstration of Harrison’s talent as a writer.

In an email interview, I asked Phil Harrison about the initial ideas behind The First Day, his experience as a screenwriter, and his personal take on Samuel Beckett.



There’s an ode to Beckett throughout the novel, even in the main characters’ name. Why did Beckett in particular resonate with you as a kind of muse for this novel?

It seems to me people tend to fall into one of three approaches to life and meaning: repressed (there is a meaning and I must find it – God, nationalism, whatever); tragic (there is no meaning and that’s fucking awful); or comic (there is no meaning, “haha, let’s go make some”). I learned a lot from Beckett about the last two, but especially the latter, the necessity of finding joy, or even just humour, in darkness. The novel feels to me less about finding meaning than making it, or perhaps finding that you need to make it.

This is your first novel, but you’ve written screenplays previously. How is the process different?

Writing screenplays has definitely informed my prose. I am much more interested in having characters do things than in telling people what they are like, which you have to do in cinema. But the question of voice, who is speaking and to whom, and what are they not saying, etc., all of these are more interesting questions in a novel, and afford a writer more space to play with, and rope to hang himself.

There’s a duality between religious faith and atheism in the novel in the characters of Orr and Anna that mirrors Beckett’s own seeming beliefs in Christianity as mythology. Is Orr and Anna’s affair perhaps a conflagration of the two?

I like that reading. There is surely something of that going on in their relationship. I think God is less what you believe in than what you worship – and in that sense, whether there’s a presence in the sky somewhere or not, there are gods everywhere – everybody worships something, or gives their authority to something. Whatever else it is doing, the novel is exploring this idea of how authority works, of the gods people name and the ones they don’t.

Anna and Orr’s relationship sets off a series of events that not only affect their own lives but that of Orr’s children, particularly Philip and Samuel. Was their affair a catalyst for everything that happens later, or was it rather a consequence of Orr’s desire for Anna?

I don’t know that I could answer that any better than you. Contingency is everywhere – there’s no sense that things had to work out as they did, simply that one thing tends to follow another until you end up there and not here. Anna has as much agency as Orr, albeit with a quieter, less brazen effect. Again, there’s that open question of control – what do we do when we try to control our lives, and what happens when we realize we can’t? Do we call that failure, or something else? What else might we do with our lives, or our children’s lives, than try to control them?

All the characters in the novel are extremely complex, and in a way, difficult to understand completely. Which character was the most challenging for you personally?

I’m pleased to hear the characters described that way, knowable only up to a point. Sam was probably the most difficult to write. The story is in some sense about his negotiating his own autonomy, in the light of his memories and alongside the omnipresence of his father. He had to be articulate and yet also have limitations, both to what he knows and how he thinks about what he knows.

Would you say the novel is a statement on religion? Infidelity? Desire? Faith? Philosophy? Sin?

It’s all in there I’d say. I hope though it’s primarily a story about specific people negotiating their messy situations in their own idiosyncratic ways; the effectiveness of any considerations of any of the subjects you mention emerging from the characters themselves and their interactions. If there’s one question that keeps emerging for me in the narrative, and to which I keep returning: how do you be an individual?

The novel ends in not just an unexpected way but also thought provoking. Did you have it planned out from the start or did it change as you wrote?

I’d no idea at all how it was going to end until I arrived. The characters seemed to be moving in some direction I had to follow. This is absurd, of course, in that they did nothing I didn’t make them do. But it’s the weird paradox of writing, I guess. You can make up anything you want, but truth still somehow exists, insists on being heard.

Tell me a bit about your future projects. Is there another novel in the works, or screenplays?

I’m playing around with a few screenplay ideas, mostly collaboratively, which will be interesting. But my main focus is a new novel. I’m about halfway through, I think. Though I’m not sure how I’d even know that. The future is unwritten.

The First Day is a really well crafted novel exploring love, loyalty, forgiveness and revenge.

Samuel Orr is a pastor in East Belfast. He is married and has children. One day, inexplicably, he meets Anna, a literature PhD student from across the divide. They fall for each other and Samuel Junior is the result.

The first half of the novel is told in third person by a very present narrator, throwing in editorial comment. It is heavily laden with biblical references - perhaps also Samuel Beckett references that I wouldn't recognise - telling the sorry tale of Samuel and Anna. Samuel wrestles with conflicting loyalties to Anna and his wife; to God and to his congregation. He tries to do the right thing, but sometimes there is no right thing to be done. This part of the novel is not a new plot but it is told in such a distinctive way, and the spirit of Belfast is evoked with brilliance.

The second half of the novel is set thirty years later - some distance in the future - where we meet Sam Jr in New York where he works in the Met art gallery. He is haunted both psychologically and literally by Philip, his half brother who has never forgiven the two Samuels for the infidelity. Sam Jr narrates this in first person but, ironically, it loses some of the immediacy and feeling of the first half of the novel. The time and place never seems to be fully created and the plotting becomes somewhat more obscure. The chronology gets really hazy and it is not always clear what is driving the characters, what is motivating them to do what they do. It's still a good read, but just not as captivating as the earlier sections.

Overall this is an impressive novel that captures some of the nuances of Northern Ireland society without being captured by the obvious divisions of sectarianism and politics. It demonstrates real innovation in narrative voice and structure, and leaves the reader wanting more. That's pretty good for a debut novel.

Thanks to NetGalley, Fleet Publishing, and Phil Harrison for the opportunity to read his debut novel.

This story is told in two parts - the first takes place in Belfast, Ireland, and centers around a preacher, Sam Orr, and Anna, a young Beckett scholar. Despite the fact that they are more different than alike and that Sam is married with 3 boys, they begin an affair. This, of course, reaps long-reaching consequences on his family, escalating when Anna gets pregnant. The second half of the book centers around their son, also named Sam. Sam is living in NYC, working at the Met, when his past comes crashing into his life.

I wanted to get into this story more than I did. The writing was great and holds much promise for the author. This was one of those books where I felt I just didn't get it - was I missing things I was supposed to read into the story? Lots of scripture quoting and flowery prose but I just couldn't get into the characters and their stories too much.

read/skimmed 1/4 of it but could not get into it. It dragged and I found myself not caring for any of the characters so I stopped. On to something better.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review

Intense, impassioned but too self-conscious for me.

An incredibly fast paced novel about how an affair can have wicked consequences years later. You will not want to put this down until the very last word!

I had, as I said, told her who I was, but in every story there are gaps, and I’d been careful enough, or cowardly enough, to leave out some of the darker ingredients.

The sins of the father shadow the sons, twisting every possibility of the future. What begins as a forbidden affair between 38 year old Pastor, Samuel Orr, married father of three boys and 26 year old Beckett scholar, Anna Stuart becomes an evolution of tragedy. The first half is full of passion, and where one would expect Samuel to repent for his ‘sins’, instead his shameless love for Anna is like a religion itself. Anna is ‘flooded by Sam’, seduced by his words. When she becomes pregnant, he must come clean to his wife and children and find a way to bring his two families together, remain steadfast in his devotion to Christ while well aware of his hypocrisy. Fate isn’t done with him, and soon tragedy strikes, forcing his hand with his flock. Staunch in his belief and his desires, that refusal to hide who he is and instead acceptance of his ‘punishment,’ so to speak, by retreating from his work as a pastor, sours something vital in his eldest son’s soul.

The tragedy is for the children to bear, and for who do you weep? Which fruit? The innocent child born into a game of revenge or the eldest son, tormented by the consequences of his father’s indiscretion? What I expected was a story I’ve read before, the old struggle of faith over sinful lust. This is not that novel at all! This is not your usual ‘step family’ makes or breaks it. As much as Samuel loves to speak in scripture, his words can never be loaded with enough salvation to repair the rift in his children’s universe. When the newly formed family decides to come together, it seems Philip draws closer to the infant, and later, to Anna. It’s hard to see what is real when you’re so close. Samuel turns distant and cold, becomes an absence, wants Anna and baby Sam to leave. Philip’s resentment is a planted seed, growing until he is near bursting. One moment alone, between Philip and his little brother Sam, is the start of a great divide full of disappearances and fractured memories. Never will they know how life could have been before the cruelty.

Fast forward to the future, Sam is now living in New York City working in an art Museum, Anna isn’t so much a main character in the second half, more flirting on the edge of her son’s life. He seems to have broken free of them all, trying to find out who he really is when he isn’t under the wings of his mother and her close friend, but still haunted by the past. His father Samuel has his own failing health to contend with and struggling with his memories, Sam is unsure and full of insecurities, but longs to anchor to something safe. Where is Philip? The threat of violence is alive in Sam’s mind, always, a scar a reminder of what hate can give birth too. More than anything, this novel is a mind game, and surprisingly you’re never sure what will happen. I had compassion for each character and understood the violence growing below the surface. Samuel will frustrate readers, just when things have a chance to begin anew, he retreats and we are left in the dark with Anna and their child. In his beliefs, he is also selfish, what a refreshing freedom-at the cost of so many.

It’s a strange read, and I actually felt the ending was perfect, because it isn’t tidy and neat. This is one interesting book, the family a complete wreck. When Philip appears in Sam’s life again, the reader knows it’s a portend but of what? We live in fear beside Sam and long for a confrontation, for something, anything! Some of us suffer with the hatred we harbor, and others are the target, through no fault of our own, just the happenstance of our birth. How different we are, how much the same. I was uneasy through much of the novel, but I like stories that shake me. It’s strange for a book to be quiet and destructive at the same time, and it is. I know every reader is going to be reading a completely different book here. It’s sad, horrific, tender, and always frustrating! How did they get here? How could desire cause so much destruction? It was different too that it’s the father and his sons that are the center of the novel, usually it’s the woman being punished in such stories of forbidden fruit. I can’t wait to here other reader’s thoughts.

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This is a two-stage tale of love. In the first we have lovers in love with words: he is in love with the Word of his Savior and she is in love with poetry. They both use these words to explain their emotions and physical yearnings until they can’t; once their words fail them, their relationship ends. The second half of the book involves the repercussions from the first but relies upon imagery more than vocabulary to guide the tale. The child of the previous affair works with art but is less facile with words. It’s a fascinating progression within the novel and the author does an outstanding job of bringing everything together. The tale itself is mostly dark with brief moments of light, it is meant to be an Irish tale of suffering for love rather than denial for family and faith. It’s a remarkable tale, well-told and difficult to put down. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my copy.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. Very well written book. I enjoyed it right from the very first page!

I tried but could not stay with this book beyond the first fifty pages. Thank you for the opportunity to read the ARC. Apologies for my boredom.

4.5 Stars

When first they meet, Anna is a twenty-six year-old Beckett scholar who taught at Queens University, and Samuel Orr is a pastor of a small mission hall in east Belfast, married, with three sons, his building between an off-licence and wasteland, filled with weeds, refuse, broken glass. They meet under his sign above the door, which reads:
ACQUAINT THYSELF WITH HIM AND BE AT PEACE. JOB 22:21

She was taking a photograph of the setting, the early-autumn evening light fading from the sky. He stepped out of his door and into her photograph, a film camera.

He asks if she only photographs places of worship, she replies: “Is there anything else?” He responds by quoting Psalms: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” She counters his scripture with words she holds as holy, Beckett: “The earth makes a sound as of sighs.” He asks if she is saved. Drawing once again on Beckett, “What is that unforgettable line? she said. If I do not love you I shall not love.”

Religion is his passion, he loves the words of scripture, and it is there he finds beauty. Words are her passion, Beckett’s words and then his when he courts her with scripture. She falls in love with his words, he falls in love with her passion. Despite the obvious obstacles that should prevent this courtship begat by scripture, this love affair fueled by their individual passions creates a new passion. There is a child on the way.

The truth emerges with the birth of Samuel, slowly repercussions follow, and guilt begins to wear on him, on them. Eventually there is the inevitable domino effect and the unforeseen, but unavoidable brutal consequences that unfold over the following few years.

Some thirty years later, Sam is living in New York City, his memories of all those years ago faded, the edges worn, but not completely forgotten. It is here he must confront his past and find a way to untangle the story of his being, a love conceived by way of deception, before the consequences consume them all.

Religion, faith, morality, marriage, love, family, deception, guilt, grief, bitterness, vengeance, forgiveness, all of these are observed, questioned in this haunting, beautifully lyrical debut novel which abstains from easy solutions or resolutions. It leaves you, instead, with a sense of compassion and, perhaps, recognition of how human we all are, and how utterly we fail at perfection.


Pub Date: 24 Oct 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is no denying that the prose in this novel is some of the most beautiful I've ever encountered. But that's about all that can be said for The First Day, which I found to be directionless and disappointingly misogynistic.

This book is divided into two parts. The first half chronicles a love affair between a priest called Orr and a Beckett scholar called Anna, living in Belfast. The two of them fall in and out of love, and somewhere in between, they have a child, called Sam. The second half is set some thirty years into the future in New York City, where Sam is working at the Met, and suddenly comes into contact with a figure from his past.

There's not much congruity between these two halves. Each focus on different themes - the first, adultery, religion, predestination; the second, sexuality, fear, shame. Harrison's writing seemed to exist constantly on the precipice of genuine insight - if he had given himself more room to develop the themes in this novel, I think the result would have been a lot more resonant. But unfortunately, coming in at 224 pages, this novel stops short of making any sort of statement that hasn't been made before. And it's frustrating, because Harrison is an incredibly skilled writer. His prose is incisive and clever and compulsively readable - lyrical, but not flowery - but really, it ends up being window dressing for a rather aimless story, that builds tension but culminates in a lackluster conclusion.

And now to my second criticism - the treatment of female characters in this novel is abhorrent. Or should I say, character. One. There's really only one female character who makes any significant impact on this story, and while the men around her are three-dimensional, complex, enigmatic, contradictory, she, Anna, is essentially a void, unfulfilled until she becomes a mother. This is one of those books that is so, so obviously written by a male author. I'm sorry, but when you devote an entire paragraph to the experience of motherhood being literally (I'm not bending the use of the word 'literally,' folks) orgasmic, you've lost me.

"For Anna, the sheer physicality of her son was a starling location of pleasure, an eroticism she had not expected but found herself longing for daily, the strange combination of pain and focused, visceral pleasure[...]"

Anyway. Disappointing too were Anna's lack of convictions about Orr, who let her down on more than one occasional, but who she still begged to take her back when he tried to leave. Again, all of this wouldn't sting quite so much if Anna weren't the only noteworthy female character in this novel.

I still have no idea how to rate this, so I'm going with the noncommittal 3 stars. I occasionally liked this in spite of myself, in spite of my many criticisms, and undoubtedly it will work better for some people than it did for me. Phil Harrison is definitely one to watch in Irish literary circles. With the self-assured quality of the prose, it's hard to believe this is a debut novel.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley, Houghton Mifflin, and Phil Harrison.

I would have read and reviewed this novel had the publisher included a send to kindle transfer option. 99% of titles have this facility. The download function here is not recognised on my iPad and my 2 software packages here

A perverse waste of an opportunity.

Can you explain how you took this decision?