Robbie

Robbie Byrne is one of the novel’s primary characters. Because the narrator grants Robbie’s storyline precedence throughout Day, the reader might identify Robbie as the novel’s protagonist.

At the start of the novel, Robbie is in his late thirties. He is “a schoolteacher who makes sixty grand and survives in a New York where you can’t rent anything livable for less than three thousand,” by living with his sister Isabel and her family (9). Robbie moved in with Isabel, Dan, and their children Nathan and Violet around the time that his boyfriend Oliver broke up with him. Ever since, Robbie has been attempting to reestablish his life. Losing Oliver not only meant losing his romantic partner, but his sense of the future. As a result, Robbie’s sense of self feels tenuous in the narrative present, too.

In order to withstand his otherwise disappointing circumstances...