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"Although the narrative ends literally in the air, it has, unlike Pynchon's previous novels, a more complete sense of an ending. Despite the catalogue of problems encountered in the world of the text, this novel does not end as Gravity's Rainbow did with the disintegration of Tyrone Slothrop and an impending nuclear apocalypse. Nor does it close with the random accidental death of Sidney Stencil as in V., or at a nihilistic auction room like Oedipa Maas awaiting The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon appears to have put some faith in the power of family to find a way through —a faith that first surfaced in Vineland and was reiterated as a sub-theme in Mason & Dixon. We know that the 1920s, when Against the Day ends, was only a prosperous calm before the storm of The Depression and of World War II, but for the characters we have come to care for in this text, the skies have cleared and the wind has freshened."

Quoted from: Bernard Duijfhuizen. "'The Exact Degree of Fictitiousness': Thomas Pynchon's Against The Day." Postmodern Culture 17.2 (January 2007): 20 pars. Complete review (text-based version).