On This Day : A Novel

Synopsis from the paperback edition:

When their parents die within a year of each other, eighteen-year-old Warren and twenty-year-old Joan are left in their small coastal town in Maine, no longer as a son and daughter but only as a brother and sister.

As they attempt both to grieve and grow up, things become more complicated--their father's business partner strips them of their rightful financial interest in the family plant nursery, and a suspicious aunt and uncle suddenly reappear in their lives. As Joan turns to her ex-boyfriend for comfort, Warren finds himself transfixed with a beautiful single mother from town.

A moving story of two young people's struggle to make a place and a home from themselves, On This Day is debut novelist Nathaniel Bellows's lyrical consideration of memory--the necessity of facing a family's dark past in order to begin a new life.

Click here to view the illustrations I created while writing the novel

“Tenderhearted. Bellows has a warm sympathy for Warren and Joan’s new-found isolation and a cleareyed respect for the power of the bond between them. Bellows succeeds in making their relationship deeply intimate.... Commendable.”

—New York Times Book Review

“On This Day has the same buoyancy in the face of tragedy as Susan Minot’s classic Monkeys. On This Day is in fact a triumph.”

—Los Angeles Times

“On This Day is a careful, sometimes disarmingly funny novel, capturing in its steadfast brother-sister bond the primitive attach- ment that Carson McCullers called ‘the we of me’.... What is most memorable about the novel, though, is its structure. Seeking to deliver the blow-by-blow desolation of one traumatic year, On This Day telescopes a lifetime of family dynamics into crosscuts between past and present. Because of its stark lack of sentimentality, On This Day conveys the sometimes merciless reality of what Joan and Warren must endure - a loss that includes the bitter fact of their mother’s fondness for the bottle as well as sweeter memories of a childhood that seems long gone.”

— Boston Globe

The sensibility that produced [On This Day] has a keen fix on human nature and the ways we seek to celebrate and preserve it.

—Chicago Tribune

“An impressive debut novelist.”

— New York magazine

“Intimate...with equal parts dark humor [and] love.”
—Daily News (New York)

“Spare and finely wrought...piercing and unexpected.”

—Austin American Statesman

“There is an honesty and a directness to this book that makes you...fall in love with its protagonists.”

—Elle Girl

“Poet Bellows brings a lyrical voice to his bittersweet first novel. When their parents die within the same year, siblings Warren and Joan attempt to forge a new family unit. The death of their father from cancer and the subsequent suicide of their mother leaves 18-year-old Warren and 20-year-old Joan in a peculiar state of limbo. Too old to be traditional orphans but too young to be totally independents adults, they learn to rely on each other for both emotional and psychological support. Banding together to safeguard themselves against their father’s unscrupulous business partner and the unwelcome advances of an eccentric aunt and uncle, they undertake the difficult journey to healing and recovery. Underscoring their bitter past and less-than-idyllic family life--re- vealed in a series of flashbacks--is a pervasive sense of hope for their future. A stirring tale of loss and love from a promising new talent.”

—Booklist

“The teenage brother and 20-year-old sister who appear in Nathaniel Bellows’s lovely debut novel, On This Day, have other things on their mind. Hovering between youth and adulthood, Joan and Warren must come to terms with their father’s death from cancer and their mother’s subsequent suicide in a small

Maine town. While Joan tries to fulfill her role as the responsible elder child, Warren attempts to reconcile his overwhelming sense of loss with an instinct to keep living, as evidenced by his new- found feelings for a mysterious local woman. Despite the dark subject matter, Bellows’s characters are lively and likeable, their difficult path illuminated by unexpected humor and grace.”

—Vogue

“Best reason to read: There isn’t a person in the town whom you won’t readily recognize...intriguing.”

—Rocky Mountain News

“This story about a brother and sister who have lost both their parents renders sadness, guilt, emptiness, and mind-numbing fear in entirely raw and unexpected ways. Bellows is an artist, poet, and musician, too, and he mines all these fields for original phras- ing. At a time filled with dreadful books and movies—purport- ing to delve into tragedy yet coming up empty save for a bag of psychobabbalicious crap—Bellows’s debut novel plumbs the true depths of grief.”

—Blackbook

“On This Day is an honest, elegant and compelling first novel... the dialogue here is spectacular, one of Bellows’s real strengths. The author demonstrates a profound grasp of the humor, hatred and intimate bond between brother and sister. He has keen insight into the workings and ambitions, or lack thereof, typically found in small-town Maine life. The prose is simple and honest. We instinctively trust Bellows; he seems to be taking us toward the light.”

—Bookreporter.com

“Bellows is a talented young writer whose elegant way with a sen- tence has resulted in a tale of supreme beauty and pain.”

—Popmatters.com

“Bellows brings grace and grit to this debut novel. Focusing on small family moments, the eloquent yet down-to-earth narrative balances gut-wrenching scenes of grief with some funny, ironic passages.... Believable, beguiling....”

—Publishers Weekly

“Nathaniel Bellows’s first novel, On This Day, follows a pair of orphans through a few painful months of grief. Warren and Joan are twentysomething siblings whose parents have recently died-- their father had cancer and their mother committed suicide. War- ren narrates this tale, which is built from small events: he fights with his best friend; he and his sister are besieged by their aunt and uncle with addled kindness; he talks with his boss at the library about maybe going to college. What’s surprising is the lightness and cleanliness with which Bel- lows delivers this sad story. Joan and Warren are well-defined and believable--their dialogue, especially, is deftly written and darkly funny. Bellows beautifully captures the subterranean currents of humor and hatred that inform sibling conversation. In the end, the novel takes on an almost metaphorical size. Making Joan and Warren orphans gives them greater definition as siblings: they are no longer a daughter and son; they are only a sister and brother. This promising first novel limns that relationship with grace.”

—Claire Dederer, Amazon.com

Nathaniel Bellows has a compelling story to tell, of orphaned siblings in a small town in Maine, but just as compelling is the beauty, clarity, and humor of his writing. He takes the reader subtly by the wrist and doesn’t let go. And as a reader, you don’t want him to. A stunning, wonderful first novel, full of grace and grit.

—Susan Minot

“Nathaniel Bellows gives us what we want in a first novel-- fresh vision, bold intelligence, strong prose, and characters we can’t get enough of. What’s exceptional about On This Day is its dark but liberating wisdom.”

—David Huddle

“On This Day is an acutely wistful novel about love, loss, and recovery, written in supple, imagistic prose. It tells the story of a brother and sister mired in grief, desperately exploring their memories and experience for points of contact that will save them. As a reader, I found myself rushing forward, eager to discover what they discover, about themselves and the world their recently deceased parents have left behind, with its mysteries and disappointments. Warren and Joan are brilliantly realized figures whose interior lives are summoned with great skill by Nathaniel Bellows, a writer of immense promise.”

—Jay Parini