Day

Dan is Isabel’s wife, father to Violet and Nathan, and is 40 years old at the start of the novel. Throughout much of the novel he has no job, instead staying home to care for his children and working on writing songs to recapture the thrill he got from opening for bands years before. Robbie and Isabel discuss Dan’s failed attempt at a “comeback”—italicized in their conversations to emphasis their belief that he has no success to come back to—and the fact that he continues to bleach his hair and wear band T-shirts. However, Dan describes himself as a “Knight Templar,” “neither tragic nor melancholy” who serves as the “harried servant of his children [as] he awaits his own comeback” (43). He is, therefore, less tragic than Isabel and Robbie believe, somewhat grounded in his aspirations for his music career.

However, despite Dan’s assertions that he is dedicated to his family and is not looking for more than a moment or two, he is a static character who spends the novel pining for a return to his youth in the music industry. His character takes on a cyclical nature in the novel: He experiences substance use disorder during his youth when he plays music, settles into fatherhood, pursues music fame again, then, once he briefly finds fame with over two hundred thousand followers on social media, considers his comeback successful. However, in the final section of the text it is revealed that Dan has started doing drugs again. While Isabel believes that he “is handling, with unanticipated good humor, the fact that his comeback was not only minor, but has come and gone” and that he “hasn’t needed […] the bucking up Isabel dreaded being asked to provide” (230), the reality is that Dan is still fixated on his music career and is using drugs as a means of coping with his “second failure” (262). Additionally, despite Isabel moving out of his apartment and her desire to move onto a new career and love interest, Dan still believes that there is hope for their marriage. In this way, Dan serves as a foil to Isabel in the novel. Both characters battle with Midlife Disillusionment; they are unhappy with their careers and the direction their lives are going. However, while Isabel ends the novel adamant that she is going to find a new home and career, Dan falls back into the cyclical nature of his life by experiencing substance use disorder again, fixating on returning to his music, and refusing to believe that his marriage with Isabel is finished.

Chess is a college literature professor who has a child, Odin, with Dan’s brother, Garth. She has been friends with Garth for years, living with him at one point as his roommate. She is adamant that she has no sexual interest in men, instead asking Garth to impregnate her so she can raise Odin as a single mother. However, as Odin gets older, she struggles with an internal conflict over how much to include Garth in Odin’s life. Although she is adamant that she wants Odin to know that Garth is his father, she also believes that Odin should not “feel confused about having any kind of traditional mother and father” (174), instead keeping Garth largely out of the act of raising Odin. Her conflict conveys the theme of The Complexities of Love and Attraction, as she begrudgingly admits that what she feels for Garth is “not, exactly, not entirely, not love” (223), yet feels no physical attraction to him. She battles against her own feelings while also feeling “encouraged, sentimentalized, because the world wants women to marry men, the world prefers it that way” (223). While society wants her to form a typical nuclear family—and she frequently wonders throughout the novel if this is the better option—she instead stands by her decision that her own personal feelings and desires are more important. Additionally, she repeatedly notes Garth’s failings as a father, as he is frequently late, unreliable, and largely cannot be depended on to care for Odin. All of these factors contribute to Chess becoming a static character in the novel. Although she considers allowing Garth into their family, she ultimately stands by her decision to raise Odin on her own.

Garth is Dan’s younger brother, 37 at the start of the novel. Like Dan, Garth is described as having been a “desperado” when he was younger—“off-handedly handsome in [his] motorcycle boots and ragged jeans” with “jaded unconcern” for his appearance or whose heart he “breaks” (95-96). However, while Dan is largely depicted as having matured, with a wife and children and a more reserved appearance, Garth continues to behave the way they did when they were younger. At times, Garth serves as one of the only antagonists in the novel. He puts pressure on Chess to allow him into her life, confessing his love to her and making her feel guilty for trying to raise Odin alone—as the two of them had originally agreed to.

Additionally, he is an antagonist to Dan in how Dan compares his life to Garth’s. Dan describes Garth as “the uncontested winner of their childhood bad-boy competition, the one who’s never yet listened to reason, who accepts no responsibility” while Dan has “pulled himself together” (96). In Dan’s view, he has managed to settle down, marry Isabel, raise two children, and put aside his career in music. Conversely, Garth is largely absent from Odin’s life, lives in a rent-controlled apartment, and is a failed artist creating sculptures in a gallery where “no one of influence seems yet to have stopped” (96). However, in many ways, Dan’s critique of Garth serves to highlight his own bitterness and Midlife Disillusionment. He fails to recognize that his marriage is failing, that he, too, has largely failed as an artist, and that his return to substance use disorder highlights his unhappiness with his own life. In the last section of the novel, Garth finds success with his art, as a famous artist purchases his Hamlet sculpture. As a result, while Dan is using drugs again and still struggling to write songs, Garth’s career is beginning to take off. The differences between the two characters highlight the idea of fulfillment and success. While Dan is suffering with the realization that he has abandoned his music career in exchange for stability and a family, Garth is finally finding success after years of dedication to his artwork. Garth has put aside the things Dan sees as important—wealth, marriage, children—to focus on what he believes is important. Although he challenges Chess’s ideas of parenthood and confesses his love for her, he also ends the novel by deciding that he cannot move to California with her “now that his career is taking off” (249), ultimately choosing to stick to his ideals of success and happiness.