DAYS OF LIGHT by Megan Hunter — Review by Stella

Megan Hunter writes beautifully. I was beguiled by her first novel, The End We Start From, with its mesmerising poetic language and precise emotional observation of parenthood under pressure. It was cli-fi of a literary nature. When Harpy announced itself, the dials turned a notch or two higher on the pressures of motherhood. This was a darker encounter amid the chaos of betrayal. Language-wise, again, taut and precisely tuned. Days of Light has a luminosity all of its own. Open the book at any page, and the language takes you to the inner world of Ivy and the times she lives through. Opening in 1938, we meet Ivy, nineteen and ready to launch into her ‘adult life’. It’s Easter, war on the horizon. The family gathers. (Think Bloomsbury group. Unconventional.) The guest of honour, her much adored brother Joseph’s fiancée, Frances, is running late for lunch. Although the train is late, all seems right in the world, until the spell of this idyll is broken by a drowning incident. A singular moment that will change Ivy’s world. Swimming under the stars Joseph disappears. Ivy, his swimming companion, can’t save him. All she recalls is a bright shining light. This elusive light will appear in different guises over her lifetime. Days of Light recalls Ivy’s life in 6 precise days; Easter Sunday 1938, April 1938, April 1944, April 1956, April 1965, and Easter Sunday 1999. Frances will appear across these pages (she is like a touchstone for Ivy), and others who are core to her. Bear, the writer, who becomes her older husband. Her fraught relationship with her artist mother, and her more familial love for Anne, their housekeeper. But it is Joseph who propels her onward towards a luminous answer about what life is, almost always just out of reach. Ivy is always searching, looking for an answer beyond herself, in language, in art, and in faith. Ultimately, it is in the moments when she turns toward herself, that something unexpected is ignited. With reviews mentioning Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Graham Swift, Hunter has a lot to live up to. Days of Light is luminous in content, structure and language, and a telling portrayal of a woman’s life through changing times.

Hardback in stock, Paperback due September 2026