What a delightfully bizarre book. I put off reading it for a while (because, for obvious reasons, reading a book about a pandemic wasn't exactly what I wanted to do in 2020/2021), but I'm glad I finally picked it up. I've never read a book set in South Africa before, so the use of Afrikaans and South African culture was an unexpected positive of this book. It shifts perspectives between people quite a bit, so you have to pay close attention to who's who -- but it made the book that much more interesting, as it's almost equally focused on characters as it is on the plot. And I really enjoyed all of the characters, even the not-so-savory ones.

I've never read anything like this one before. What fun! I think this opens up a new genre for me with lots of fun books ahead.

The Down Days is about Sick City, where a plague called The Laughter has taken over. Set in South Africa, this story includes ponytail sellers, dead collectors, ghosts, sin-eaters, an ancient diary, and much more.

What I liked:
-This book is clearly inspired and influenced by South Africa, and the love the author has for the country is clear. Afrikaans is sprinkled throughout the book and there's a lot that just speaks for the love of the country.

-There's an interesting plot going on, with a stolen brother, the Laughter, and more. I think the author did pretty well weaving these things together.

What I didn't like:
-The middle section of this book drags a lot, to the point where you don't know what the plot is anymore. The beginning is strong, the last 30% is strong, but there's a good 40% in the middle where nothing is happening and that makes it very hard to continue with the book. It takes a long time for the characters to come together and then when they do, they don't work together, which makes it frustrating. Each character has a piece of the puzzle, but none of them communicate it to each other despite being in proximity with each other for quite a while.

-The ending doesn't really make sense and just serves to confuse you a bit more after everything that happened. The last 10% is very rushed, and I think an additional 50 pages would have fleshed out that ending more. If I could take some pages from the middle and give it to the end, it would be a much more compelling book.
A side note:

-This book, through no fault of it's own, came out when the Coronavirus started to get really big. Unfortunately, books about pandemics don't do very well in a pandemic. And I think that hindered my reading of this book, since I didn't want to read about something I was living. That might also impact your reading, if you choose to pick up this book.

Overall, The Down Days has promise and I think Hugo could write a really compelling book in the future, but this one just dragged too much for me to really love it.

An interesting, quirky post-apocalyptic/pandemic novel.
Ilze Hugo has penned a really interesting, well-written, and often amusing pandemic novel - not something one typically thinks of. However, if you are a fan of pandemic lit, but want something a little bit more fun, then I highly recommend THE DOWN DAYS. It's a bit weird, but it's very good.

Good characters, well-written plot and prose. Really looking forward to reading whatever the author comes up with next.

Disease - The Laughter
Symptoms - uncontrollable laughter that could lead to organ failure and finally death in subjects
Cause - unknown
Infectious agent - unknown
Patient zero - unknown
Global status - Pandemic
Timeline - 7 years & counting

The Down Days follows the happenings after a pandemic had hit in a sick city of Africa. With multiple povs + global happenings, the story takes interesting turns when the pandemic causes all normal activities to cease, which paves way for felonious underground activities! Amazingly written futuristic novel, with many factors blended in such as religion, hate, self-medication etc. This is not a typical post-apocalyptic novel, it is more of a literary fiction with dystopian notes and is easily a 400 page book. I wish to reread this book sometime in future!

To read this amidst a real pandemic has been a nightmare. So many relatable events - handshakes are forgotten, public gatherings are a thing of the past, masks & gloves are mandatory, etc etc. I wish someone really writes a book about 2020 & Coronavirus in the future!

Thanks to Galley books, Netgalley & Author Hugo for the arc. This is my own honest opinion.

An imaginative and unexpectedly hopeful dystopian story about how humanity might respond to a pandemic. Colorful and memorable characters keep the pace moving until the very end.

I would like to thank NetGalley for providing a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. The Down Days follows several individuals during the span of one week in Sick City, located in Africa. It has been seven years since a global pandemic of The Laughter first hit. This highly contagious disease continues to plague our world. The infectious agent is unknown. The main symptom is uncontrolled laughter, although organ failure and death can also occur. Those who have been infected with the disease are said to have “caught the Joke.” There is currently no vaccine or cure. Meanwhile, there has been a string of missing children reports and we find our characters trying to locate one child while trying to unearth what’s behind recent mass hallucinations. They also want to know what causes the disease and find a cure. The book is broken up into parts by days of the week and the chapters are narrated from the perspective of various main characters. Some chapters consist newspaper articles that provide a unique perspective to the story being told. The novel succeeds at painting a multidimensional picture of a wounded city undergoing the effects of several years under a pandemic. We see increased civil unrest, crime, misinformation, distrust in media and government. We find people exploring different avenues—religion among them-- to find relief and answers to what’s happening. In desperation, we find people mulling over bleach as an ingestible option as treatment for the disease. As the borders close, there develops a shift in where individuals of differing socioeconomical backgrounds live. People dress and behave differently in public. Masks and gloves are mandatory in public. Handshakes are a thing of the past. An elbow bump is now the greeting of choice. Public displays of laughter are banned. As a result, underground comedy clubs start to pop up. Companies change how they market their products. Companies shift their business plans and the services they provide. Taxi companies go from carrying live people to corpses. Jobs like “data dealers” and “sin eaters” become desirable. There is also an increased demand for certain goods. Hair attains incredible trade value. The Down Days is a brilliant novel that captures the uncertainty and isolation that comes with living through a pandemic. It is ultimately a story about people just trying to survive in this new reality that they face.

The Down Days was a good read with plenty going on. It was lyrically poetic at times and read with ease. I really enjoyed the style of writing used throughout the book.

As for the story itself, it was original to say the least. With people getting the Joke and dying from it to the taxi drivers now becoming corpse collectors, this is a fun, fast paced romp though a South African city. The characters are all well thought out and balanced and the story flows well from chapter to chapter.

I can't wait to see what Ilze Hugo comes up with next.........

DNF. I'm already crying uncle on this one. I have no idea what's supposed to be happening, the story jumps around between so many different characters, it's just not capturing my attention.. I do have to say that the cover artwork is awesome though.

The Down Days was not an easy story for me to read at this moment due the pandemic that our characters are trying to survive and sadly so are we.
But....overall it was an interesting story. It’s told from several POVs but it was easy to follow. These characters are living day by day with fear. Fear of the disease, the government and the religious. They do their best but at times the choices they made come back to haunt them. There are some paranormal elements towards the end of the story that I was left a little confused with.
This is the first book I read by this author and I did like her style of writing. I look forwards to more of her work

Ceelee Sunshine's review of THE DOWN DAYS

May 25, 2020 – Finished Reading

April 16, 2020 – Shelved

April 16, 2020 – Started Reading
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Review
** spoiler alert ** First, thank you to the author Ilza Hugo, Simon and Schuster's Skybound Books/Gallery Books , publishers for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC galley of DOWN DAYS in exchange for my honest review.

I gave the book 5 stars because it is just that good!

Yes, the book is a novel about a pandemic and oddly enough we are going through a pandemic ourselves. A weird coincidence but this should not stop you from reading DOWN DAYS The story is actually based on an outbreak of mass hysteria called the Laughing Epidemic n e in Tanganyika in 1962. The story may be different but a reader can see the similarities to that outbreak, the pandemic in the story and our own current situation. People are dying and there is no cure, outrageous remedies like bathing in cleaning products, wearing masks, protesters, crazy politicians and even a news paper spouting conspiracy theory. The world has gone insane and laugher is forbidden. I know, it sounds awful, but is not!

DOWN DAYS reminds me of books I used to read in college where there is a Tragic Event and there are a group of diverse people trying to cling to some sort of normal and whose lives intersect in some way. In the novel, which takes place over the span of a week, Faith is a dead collector who is contacted by Tomorrow, an orphan girl, who is looking for her little brother who was snatched when she wasn't looking. There is also Sars, a trader illicit goods, like pony tail hair, for the group of nuns who have opened their own business. selling the pony tails. (kind of like dying for a haircut) Sars is also looking for his Uncorny, the woman he saw ina fleeting glance and knew she was the One. Reminds me of the movie American Graffiti" when Richard Dreyfus was looking his own Unicorn, the blonde I the white T Bird. :) There are many characters besides these;;;a sin eater, a pet hyena, a guy named Lawyer who writes for the TRUTH, and enjoys dressing as the Easter Bunny while boxing. There are theory bars, seers, ghosts, an underground library and a mysterious book that is supposed to connect the entire story and provide the answer for a cure.
Literary efferences abound, quotes from Shakespeare, George Orwell John Lennon, Johnny Cash, and more. Also the information about the Bicycle cards in WWII is TRUE! I looked it up! Ms Hugo gets an extra star for that because I never heard of it and I wish my dad was still here so I could ask him about it because he spent 21 months in a German person camp and could have used them.
There literary and cultural references are great because it gives the reader a sense of connection with the story and for the characters a connection to the past that is still remembered and valued.

I am so glad I read DOWN DAYS! It is funny, has many interesting people that are fleshed out and real and it is relatable to my life while experiencing our own lives during COVID19 You don't think you want to read a book about a pandemic when you are in the middle of one? This is EXACTLY the kind of book you should be reading during a pandemic! It's a faun and crazy ride and so much deeper than a cozy mystery or a sappy romance. I read those too but I discovered I needed this book too. I hope we can find that book with the cure and not become Sick City but time will tell how we will face the future.

The worldbuilding in "The Down Days" was very well done and the characters are distinct and interesting. Their troubles as they try to manage day to day in the plague ridden town in South Africa show a world teetering but still trying to function. A nice tale that felt like the ending was perhaps wrapped up too quickly after the build up.

“As a pony man – the best, mind you, in this Sick City – he made a living dealing in real, 100 percent human hair, which a network of street kids and a convent of swindling sisters procured for him by all manner of means. It was the Down Days, sure, and Sick City was worse off than most, but chicks still dug their weaves, and a full head of hair cost a pretty penny.”

The story takes place in an African city 7 years after the start of a pandemic of unknown origin. The disease is called the Laughter because it’s victims first laugh uncontrollably, followed by fevers, breathing difficulties and death. The main protagonists are Faith, who picks up corpses and also has a side occupation as a truthologist (sort of a PI), and Sans, who is an all around hustler but primarily a dealer in human hair. The two ultimately intersect in a quest to find a missing infant and possibly a cure for the Laughter. The book also introduces a lot of other characters struggling to get by in Sick City. The book uses some South African terms, but there is a Glossary at the end of the book that explains them.

I recently read “The End of October” by Lawrence Wright. That book was quite prescient about the start of a pandemic. Let’s hope that “Down Days is not equally prescient about what the world might look like 7 years from now if there is no vaccine for Covid-19. There were many things in this book that hit close to home, and many more that seem more plausible now than they did 2 months ago. Does this sound familiar: “A few suckers even started drinking diluted bleach, thinking it would cure them from the inside out.”? In this post apocalyptic world people are regularly scanned to prove that they are healthy. Masks are worn at all times. Conspiracy theories abound about who spread the disease and why. Cell phone apps were used for medical screening (until they were hacked). Therapy bars let you beat up the target of your choice to relieve stress. Professional athletes are screened daily. All borders have been closed. There are no handshakes, elbow bumps only. Smog is caused by the constant cremations. Truth is invalidated. Public laughter is a crime. There are shortages of cleaning products and long lines at groceries. Establishment entrances have buckets of chlorine to dip your hands into.

This book was very fast paced, imaginative and entertaining. The last 20% took a supernatural turn that was abrupt, confusing and unconvincing, but overall I liked this book a lot.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

If you want to escape the current pandemic through the pages of a book, this is definitely not that story. It is so eerily prescient of what is happening now that it is a bit mind-blowing. This is a portrait of a country torn asunder as the result of long term pandemic. It is a gritty and raw look at how society as a whole along with individual people both fall apart and people lose their grip on reality and civilization. It’s not quite a Lord of the Flies situation but it is similar in some ways just on a larger more adult scale. In this case the setting is South Africa which has a different set of real world problems than here in the West but so much is easily recognizable in the current situation. In response to the disease the government closes the border and puts strict restrictions on behaviour. Everyone must wear gloves and a mask at all times. The medical and death systems are overwhelmed. Conspiracy theories and rumours run rampant and many people point the blame at other countries for starting the pandemic. There is distant faint hope for a vaccine but the disease has been ravaging the world for years and the vaccine hasn’t materialized yet. When it is finally produced and distributed some won’t trust it due to misinformation and false rumours. Some people try crazy cures like drinking bleach. Yep, this is way too close to our present world to be comfortable.

The Down Days started out quite strong, lost my interest for a bit in the middle, and finished up as a real suspenseful thriller. It took me forever to read but that may be because it was just too much like the situation outside which I am trying my best to forget about for at least short periods. Reading graphic descriptions of a pandemic during a pandemic might be fine for some but I had a difficult time with it. There are some elements especially near the end that are clearly not of our world which is maybe a bit of magical realism. It is never really clear if the surreal weirdness is supernatural or just hallucinations. After finishing I’m still not sure what I just read or how I feel about it. In some ways it was painfully realistic but in others it was just bizarre. If you want to immerse yourself more fully in the terror and strangeness of a pandemic then pick this one up. I’m going to pull the covers over my head and go to a happy place.

Thank you to Gallery Books and Skybound Books for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

I wanted to love this book so much, and not just because of the Book of M comparisons, but it ultimately fell flat. The pacing was so erratic- the first 75% of the novel felt like background exposition, the next 24% was the buildup to the climax, and then the entire conflict was hastily resolved in the two pages of the epilogue. Looking back, I can see some vague attempts at foreshadowing, but they were so underdeveloped in context that I didn't find the ending satisfying at all. I think the characters were the stronger point of the story- I was partial to Faith and Tomorrow in particular- but while their storylines intertwined almost from the get-go, they didn't mesh well until the last quarter of the book, by which point it almost felt too late.
This story has such good bones- the ghosts, the Joke, the cast of main characters- but it was frustratingly undeveloped. The sickness itself is never addressed in any way, with regards to its origins and potential cure; the book that Faith begins to decipher just vanishes from the plot without explanation; the kidnapped child plotline moves from point A to point B with almost no explanation. A disappointed 3.5/5 stars.

The Down Days is about an African epidemic of laughter that quickly turns sour when it is found to be 100% fatal. It is based on a real pandemic of mass delusions that happened in Tanzania in 1962.

The Down Days seems like it is a news report from our present day pandemic. Unfortunately, the setting in the book has much in common with our own troubled times. Shortages, PPE, stay-at-home orders, home delivery, masses of bodies, and a feeling that life is never going to return to normal are all here. The only difference is we have people dying from too little oxygen and the characters are dying from too much laughter. The middle of the book is where we currently are—paranoid theories abound about what started the virus including their own government and foreign ones. I just pray that we don’t get hit with the twists at the end.

This tale was written by a South African author in 2019 or earlier. It is eerily spot-on about what happens during a pandemic. If you don’t mind reading a fictional tale based on a real pandemic in 1962 Tanzania, I believe you will enjoy this book. It is a compelling read with a surprising twist at the end. 4 stars!

Thanks to Skybound Books, Gallery Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

The quirkiness of this book was super entertaining. I loved the mystery of the novel until the end. It kept me on the edge of my seat up until the last page.

The laughing disease that leaves it's victims into bleeding mush before death has taken a toll on the locked down city. People who haven't been infected with the disease are able to have jobs, carry cell phones and still interact with their peers, but under extreme guidelines.

Face masks and gloves are a must, which the novel explains multiple times. While people still move on with their lives under constant worry and fear, there is still no cure for this mysterious disease.

I thought the ghost aspect of this novel was unique and that was one of the main reasons I was so intrigued the entire novel!

The only negative I have is there are too many perspectives we read from. That was a little confusing, but other than that, I thought this was a wild ride of a novel that I highly recommend!

Ponytail thieves! Ghosts! A pet hyena! A sin eater! A missing diary that may have predicted the future as well as containing a cure to an ongoing pandemic! Secret library! Do I have your attention yet?

In the aftermath of a deadly pandemic-one where the key symptom is laughter- residents of Sick City, a quarantined city on the tip of Africa, are losing their minds with hallucinations , paranoia, and visions of the dead. Is it simply more mass hysteria or something more sinister? In a city where the inexplicable has already occurred, rumors, superstition, & conspiracy theories abound. Follow Faith, corpse collector by day, puzzle solving truthologist in her spare time, as she attempts to help a young girl find her missing brother who may or nay not be real in the first place. Then there’s Sans, illicit hair dealer, who becomes so enthralled by a mysterious woman that he lets a bag of money he owes his “business partners” go missing. On a desperate quest for both, he begins to question how own sanity. Told over the course of just one week, Faith, Sans, and motley crew of others- a security guard with a pet hyena, a data dealer, a sin eater, and more- are each searching for answers in a city where nothing is as it seems.


If you read one pandemic novel during this time, it should be this one! I know not everyone is feeling up to reading books like this one and I had requested my copy from Net Galley months before our own “down days” of sorts came upon us. If anything though, living through a real life pandemic adds to the whole experience of reading this and I’m so glad I did.

Ilze Hugo is a phenomenally talented writer. I fell in love with her writing style by the second or third page. It’s sharp, filled with unique description, and a viewpoint unlike any other I’ve encountered. The characters are all offbeat in their own individual and different ways and you want to get to know them. You want to see where this wild ride will take you. It’s addictive. Plus scroll back up to my first paragraph for a moment. Tell me that doesn’t sound awesome, right? And it is!

I’ve simply never read a book quite like this one. I had no idea what was going to happen and couldn’t even begin to guess. Best to just buckle up, pop your face mask on, and enjoy the ride. And what a ride it is! I was glad I read it on my Kindle because there’s a number of references to South African animals, slang, alternative medicine, and a sprinkling of Afrikaans. Nothing too confusing but being able to quickly look those bits and pieces up added to the experience for me. It, in addition to the incredible writing, made the book come alive for me.

And reading it in the time of COVID-19 added to the experience as well. For me it was just the right blend of uncannily familiar things- the ubiquity of face masks and gloves, a quarantined city, the number of unknown aspects and distrust in government leading to all kinds of conspiracy theories and even a fringe group who baths one bleach! Yet there’s also so much that is different as well from the popularity yet difficulty in acquiring weaves (and hence the ponytail thievery), the fact that in this case it’s the city that is quarantined so our characters aren’t stuck at home but they are stuck within the city, and so much more. Hugo has a way of subverting the utter absurdity of living in a pandemic and running with it and it makes for one heck of an adventure and wild ride!

I also love when an author can get across a deeper message or make you think but manage to do it in a way where you’re having so much fun with the text, you don’t even fully realize or mind that beneath it you’re also thinking about those deeper issues. There’s a really timely aspect of that happening here. This feels a bit like a near future where we’ve pushed and stretched the idea of truth and listening to both sides so far that it has all begun to lose meaning. And as heavy as that may sound, the sheer talent of Hugo’s storytelling and writing means it doesn’t feel that way. It grounded this story a bit for me but I was so wrapped up in chasing these characters forward too. It straddles this fantastic line of giving me plenty to think about but secondary to just having a ton of fun with this.

I bet you never thought reading a pandemic novel during an actual pandemic could be fun, right? It is with this one. I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed this book plenty had I read it pre-Coronavirus but I’m so glad I read it now. More than any other book, this will be the one I most remember and connect to this wild and weird time in our real world.

Sick of being stuck at home & yearning for an adventure? You’ll get that here and so much more. And did I mention that hyena? The mysterious diary? That underground library?! This book candy, a delicious treat, unexpectedly exactly the book I needed right now and I strongly suspect it may be just the adventure you need now as well. Let this be *the* pandemic novel you read right now!

It has taken me an abnormal (for me) amount of time to finish this book. Like, several weeks. And it isn’t because it’s a bad book – it certainly isn’t. It’s very well written. Unfortunately, reading a book about the aftermath of a pandemic (or maybe an epidemic, I’m actually not sure, but either way, this thought process stands) during…an actual pandemic…is horrible. It is thoroughly un-fun.

While the sickness in the story is mass hysteria, it still causes mass death in the end. The parallels with the current COVID-19 situation were too much for me – as far as the amount of damage done, the questionable governmental responses, etc. I just couldn’t lose myself in the story.I thought maybe the release on this one would be postponed, but apparently not – although I feel like at one point I looked at it in Net Galley and it had been changed to August, but then I went back a few days later and it was back to May, so maybe I just saw what I wanted to see.

There was a lot going on in this story which I appreciated, and the multiple narrators were surprisingly easy to follow. Everyone had a distinct voice, which meant that I never had to go back and double check whose perspective I was supposed to be getting – that was nice because I feel like I tend to struggle with that a lot where multiple narratives are involved.

There are also a lot of interesting thematic elements woven throughout as well – there are government conspiracies, shades of truth, fear, hope, elements of the supernatural, lore, and illegal trade. There’s a sin-eater, hair trade, loads of ghosts, hyenas, virus patrols, and black market nuns. And at least it offers some hope – so, there’s that.

There are definite shades of Orwell here, but, (and I don’t know if this is just because one is familiar and the other isn’t) where I find comfort in reading 1984, (and I really do), I didn’t get that same feeling from The Down Days. This one really wasn’t playing well with my admittedly already ratcheted up anxiety.

Normally bleak stuff is my jam during tough times. I like to wallow, I guess. But this one is just a little too on the nose for me right now.
This is definitely a well-written story, but ultimately now doesn’t feel like quite the right time to be reading a book about a pandemic of any kind. I’ll definitely be picking this one up to give it another shot sometime in the future.

If you're looking for a book to shine a light on what our world could be if this pandemic a little bit different and how everything could be much much worse -- look no further than The Down Days. The Down Days is set in a world we could imagine if this virus were faster and more aggressive, if this pandemic were handled worse by our governments, and if whole countries were cordoned off from each other, their citizens left to fend for themselves without aid from the outside world. Suffice to say, the setting and near-future world building of The Down Days is deep and extremely realistic in our current climate.

However, the one thing that held me up and made The Down Days difficult for me to get into was the short chapters from a variety of POV characters. I gravitate toward character-driven stories and am grabbed most by the character motivations, which I found lacking and at times intentionally obscured by too-vague references to characters we've already met. As I was able to better grasp the characters, the story came to life more for me, so I would have loved that to come a bit sooner.

*eARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*