Megan Tady’s “Bluebird Day” - A Review

The other day, I had to fly from Denver back home to Boston. My flight (DL499) was delayed by a whopping twenty minutes, so it occurred to me to head into the airport’s bookstore and find a new novel to read. And wouldn’t you know it, the airport in Colorado had a novel about skiing.

Megan Tady wasn’t really on my radar until I set my eyes on the paperback and knew I had to read it. Knowing that this novel was published in December 2024 (in other words, quite recently) gives me hope. Maybe AI isn’t going to make us lose our humanity and desire to produce art. As an avid skier in real life, this title jumped out to me, as the term “bluebird day” is part of skiing lingo. It basically refers to a day when the sky is deep blue and there are zero clouds, preferably with copious snow having recently fallen.

Cover of Bluebird Day by Megan Tady as I held it on my lap.

The novel centers around Claudine Potts and her daughter Wylie. Claudine is a former alpine skiing legend who won several gold medals before her career ended due to an untimely injury in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Wylie dreamed of following in her mother’s footsteps, but her severe anxiety put an end to that dream before her career really began. Without skiing to bond them together, Claudine and Wylie have drifted apart, and don’t speak to one another for two years prior to the time period in which the main story takes place.

The “inciting incident” of the novel is when Wylie’s boyfriend Dan, who’s planned to pair up with Wylie in a fitness competition in Berlin, suffers a debilitating injury that prevents him from doing so. As such, Wylie asks her mother to be her partner instead, and they travel to Switzerland because…well, I’m not going to spoil it. I will, however, say that family drama is a focal point of Bluebird Day, which explores the timeless theme of an estranged parent-child relationship. 

Bluebird Day is set in Zermatt, a luxurious Swiss town at the base of the world-famous Matterhorn. I’ve personally never been to Zermatt, though I’ve been to another town close to it - Verbier. In any case, the Matterhorn is often referred to as a “living” mountain within the book, like it’s a major character in the novel. To some extent, it is such a character, even if it never has any dialogue.

The Matterhorn overlooking the resort town of Zermatt, Switzerland. Image taken from Tom Archer’s website.

Of course, the elephant in the room for any work of fiction involving skiing, or any other snow sport really, is climate change. As sobering a reminder as it is that climate change threatens the sport many of us love, I appreciated that the author talked about real life. This is not a purely escapist novel - it should make readers think.

 Given that the climate crisis has been in the public consciousness with events like the fires in Los Angeles, Bluebird Day felt quite timely and not just what some call a “popcorn read.” Several characters in the novel mention how the warming planet is causing glaciers to recede, and it plays more of a role in the story than I anticipated. When fictional characters take climate change more seriously than the President-elect of the United States, you know the world’s in trouble.

Putting aside climate denial, there’s a more subtle aspect of American culture that I feel the book criticizes. As stated above, Claudine is a former Olympic medalist. She’s extremely competitive - some might use the word hardcore, given how she endlessly travels the world in search of snow. She kept competing even as a 24-year-old mother to a toddler Wylie. As a 24-year-old myself, such a life seems unthinkable.

We see such themes in real life too. American society, at least from a worker’s point of view, is highly competitive. If you invent something ground-breaking, you might become a billionaire; fail to prove your worth, and you may well end up destitute on the streets. Admission to the “best” universities, like Yale or Harvard, is often reserved for either those who get the highest SAT scores or whose parents also attended those universities. 

You and I can debate all day about unearned advantages and whatnot, but competition is a constant in both real-life America and Bluebird Day. The common refrain is “If you ain’t first, you’re last”, and it’s that mindset which motivates many of the decisions Claudine and Wylie make in the novel.

When unforeseen circumstances jeopardize Wylie’s ability to partake in the aforementioned fitness competition, she is devastated. She and her mother go to extraordinary lengths to be able to reach Berlin in time. Additionally, there are several points in the story where Wylie feels guilty about eating anything that doesn’t conform to a perfect keto diet, leading to a tension between her moral “obligation” to compete and her desire to take things less seriously at least temporarily.

Although the book tackles some serious and important topics, both those that existed since time immemorial (like healthy family relationships and how to maintain them) and those that are more associated with the last few decades (like climate change and the effects of social media on mental health), it’s also very funny. On more than a few occasions, I literally laughed out loud reading Bluebird Day.

 Some books about climate change lack any comic relief whatsoever. This is understandable, given that it’s a serious, complex topic. But this was not one of them. Just because it wasn’t a totally escapist novel doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good way to distract oneself from doomscrolling. (And by the way, the word “doomscrolling” does make an appearance in the book.)

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Bluebird Day and would recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in skiing, or even if you just want a fairly quick read that’s still thought-provoking. It certainly kept me from doomscrolling as much as I might otherwise have the last few days. 

A cursory Google search tells me that Bluebird Day currently has about 3.9 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. While it’s not the most amazing Great American Novel that’s ever been written, and there have been books with more suspense, I still think it deserves better. I’d probably give it a 9 out of 10; if I do future book reviews, I’ll probably come up with a more precise scale.

Thank you, Megan Tady. You gave me several hours of enjoyment that I might otherwise have spent in front of my computer reading about Trump threatening to invade Canada.