As I was reading this, I felt this wasn't Patrick Gale at the top of his form. It's a cleverly crafted book, exploring a love affair between two people who'd been in a relationship at University, where they had eventually split up, through the passage of a single day. This was a successful device, through which we learnt the back stories of the main protagonists - all believable, flawed and individual - and began to understand what made them tick. I could have done without some of the discussion of the research into HIV and into Laura's mother's academic career - it seemed unnecessary, but this is a minor quibble. The book redeemed itself in its ending, which brought all the strands together in a believable way. I'm holding back on the adjectives, not to be guilty of a spoiler alert. I'm giving this book three stars, because I hold Gale to very high standards. Written by someone else, I might have given it four. ( )

Patrick Gale is a reliably good read. The story flows and draws you along. Laura and Ben were lovers at Oxford. The affair was benignly opposed by their friends and ends abruptly (we find out why in the novel). Then they meet by chance in Winchester. The affair is rekindled and each has to learn how the other has changed over the years. I am always left wanting to read another of his novels. ( )

This novel is about Laura and Ben had an intense relationship as students; in the now of the novel they are middle-aged and caring for family members in Winchester (Laura for her mother and Ben for his younger brother) when they unexpectedly meet again and start seeing each other again. But things are not that simple this time. I mostly enjoyed this book and found it easy to get into its world, but it seemed to end rather abruptly. ( )

rather like the British novelist Patrick Gale: I like the way he thinks ‘outside the box’.

The Whole Day Through is, at first glance, about a relationship of missed opportunities and the obstacles imposed by family obligations.

Forty-something Laura isn’t very good at relationships but she’s been reasonably contented living in Paris (and who wouldn’t be, eh?) but she’s had to come back to Winchester to look after her elderly mother after she started having falls. And Ben, an old friend from Oxford with whom she had a very brief relationship, has had to move from London after his mother dies, to take on the care of his adult brother Bobby who has a mild form of Down’s Syndrome.

What complicates things even more for Laura is that her mother is a naturist, that is, she gets about at home without any clothes on. Professor Jellicoe is a former academic, once influential in Ben’s career, and she still has all her marbles. Although she knows that professional care is probably inevitable, she wants to enjoy the freedom to do her own thing as long as possible, and that constrains the choices that Laura has.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/01/08/the-whole-day-through-by-patrick-gale-read-b... ( )

My fellow LibraryThing reviewers were not as enamoured with this work as I, but that's their loss, I think. Actually, as I have written previously, the appeal of Gale's writing to me is somewhat hard for me to understand, but more and more I am coming to the conclusion that it's due to he and I sharing a common experience or perspective of life in some way. He writes about stuff he knows and I find great resonance in that. Perhaps it's more than that - I suspect he's writing about lives that I aspire to live. The dominant role of music, the peripheral influence of the church, the aging and decay of our parents' generation, the connection with the land, western middle classes, sexual identity, educational elitism - all these themes regularly crop up in his books as they also appear as influences in my life. Reading his books is like having a chat over coffee with someone who knows my life well and who asks me questions that make me think more about the whys and wherefores of how I'm spending my days. The particular issues in this work that I connected with most were the aging, decaying parent; and what might determine who we marry and whether the marriage 'lasts' - and in what form it lasts. I also mark out my day with eating/drinking occasions, similarly to the way the day is divided up in this book. ( )