A man is involved in a car accident and hospitalised. While recovering, he muses on god, religion, the meaning of life, and his relationships, with a variety of (mostly doctor) characters. Also the Holocaust is mentioned.
Elie Wiesel’s final book in his Night Trilogy, The Accident (later retitled “Day” to fit in with the other two titles, Night and Dawn), is definitely the weakest of the three and pretty much superfluous - like it got added in to make up the numbers.
There’s barely any story - after the inciting incident, nothing more happens - and I wasn’t taken with either the main character or his girlfriend, with whom we spend the majority of this novel. Similarly to Dawn, The Accident/Day is a novel, whereas Night, the first book, is a memoir.
Towards the end, there are some references to the Holocaust, in keeping with the Trilogy’s theme - the story of Sarah the prostitute is very powerful - and Wiesel was a fine writer with the pages flowing effortlessly.
But I didn’t get much out of The Accident besides a lot of forgettable pontificating on miserable people’s miserable experiences. I feel like the point of this book was to highlight the legacy that the Holocaust left on its survivors - Wiesel feels like the deeply wounded main character bedridden throughout - although that seems like a banal and obvious thing to underline.
Having read the whole Trilogy now, I can see why Dawn and The Accident/Day are rarely mentioned alongside Elie Wiesel’s name - Night is the major work and the only book really worth reading; you’re not missing anything by skipping the other two.
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