Saw Bachelder as a coauthor and had to immediately request this audiobook having loved The Throwback Special. I am of two minds with this brief little book. First, I absolutely adored the Melville minibiography that centers much of this novel. It brought forth so much great information about the American giant while providing ample discussion of his work and quotes from modern literary figures. Second, the pandemic part, I do not feel I am quite ready for this sort of pandemic novel, perhaps because my pandemic did not resemble so many others. I was not stuck at home able to luxuriate and think through thick historical texts and spending hours upon hours with family, but rather stuck working long hours at a hospital.

I really loved The Throwback Special and some similar threads of beautiful and thoughtful writing come through here from Chris Bachelder, but the plot (if you can even say this book has one) is mostly a miss.

I really enjoyed all the Melville scholarship, so that part was a delight. I didn’t mind the concept of the information being relayed by an active scholar in the field either. But the marital issues/quarantine stuff is just a complete miss.

In part I just feel that there’s no call for pandemic literature at the moment. We just lived this. It was terrible. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be interested in reliving it through fiction and I certainly don’t want to do it right now. There are plenty of other more interesting ways to create a feeling of isolation and subsequent reckonings.

But the real problem is the book’s messy attempt to take both the pandemic isolation and the Melville research and weave them in through whatever issues are going on in the narrator’s marriage. What exactly these issues are is never exactly defined in any tangible way. But mostly it’s just a boring rendition of a literary theme that isn’t especially interesting even when it’s better articulated or better tied to other parts of the plot than it is here.

The book is kind of worth reading for the interesting Melville scholarship, but it’s a really disappointing comedown from the flawlessly plotted and beautifully written Throwback Special. Read that instead.

I am reviewing the audiobook version of "Dayswork" and narrated by Janet Metzger. The narration is good and I found this book really interesting as it takes us through life of a married couple with children during the pandemic lockdown. Because of the forced isolation, it allowed the narrator to ponder at length about Herman Melville and most notably his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne. I enjoyed the journey of going down multiple rabbit holes and yet if also feels a bit obsessive compulsive in details including many detailed lists of things. I glanced at a printed copy of the book to see how it reads and I think I might have enjoyed it more on the written page as opposed to an audio book. I couldn't fully appreciate the list of misspellings and other lists through the audiobook. It is a relatively quick listen and there were a lot of interesting moments and factoids about Melville and insights into a marriage and family.

Thank you to Netgalley and HighBridge Audio for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

NetGalley audio received in exchange for an honest review

The first thing I would say about this audio is: It is not a good book for the audio format and even if the narration is as needed the structure of the writing (lots and lots of lists) makes it very tedious when listened to--numbers in the lists read, many sentences go on and on with multiple ors and ands. I love audio in general but this book really tried my patience and I even increased the listening speed. In print one can skim but audio doesn't allow the reader to tune out completely or skip forward easily.

As far as the novel? memoir? itself--never a good sign when the reader is unsure if the book is meant to be fiction or slice of life. This book read more as a memoir but I had a hard time actually believing the story and felt more likely it was a fictional type memoir. Written by a husband and wife team it takes place during covid when the spouses are both home, children out of school and confined mostly to quarters. Mostly what we hear about is the wife's research on Herman Melville, his life, the many novels he wrote, how Moby Dick was never seen as a great work or sold well during his lifetime, his friendship with Hawthorne and what a lousy poor husband he was.

One hour was more than I needed on Melville but this went on for over six. I soon lost interest but there were occasional facts I might bring forth at a cocktail party but really have no need of. I don't want to be snarky but this book just went basically nowhere. It was all lists, what happened during the day, five opinions on how tall Melville was, it went on and on. The occasional real time conversations by the husband and wife were the bright spots and there were way too few.

So 2 stars but I can't honestly recommend it--unless you are what the author calls a Melvillian wanting to know all things Melville--than this is for you!