Days - James Lovegrove

Days by James Lovegrove is a sharp SF staire about Days, the worlds first (and possibly best) Gigastore.

On starting the book I initially felt that the ideas had dated in the ten years since it was wrtiten. In the UK big department stores are being annhilated by smaller, nimble stores. The trend is towards value and all hours opening, driven by companies like Tesco. This is in contrast to Days, where owning an account is something to aspire to.

However the more I read the more I realised that the details were not what was important. The important statement is the satire about our consumer society, about our money driven class system and about work ruling our loves. And these messages are more relevant than ever.

I found the first half of the book very slow. It spends time building up the characters; there's the store detective who's thinking of leaving, there's the couple who've spent five years saving to get their Silver Days account, and there's the Day's brothers themselves, the owner of the store. Then in the last third of the book events begin to snowball and all of the characters collide in an entertaining and poignant ending.

The satire was quite brilliant, but the plot just a little too slow for me overall.