The Night Always Comes: a novel

Product Information

The Irish Times - Willy Vlautin: ‘You try to make something that is a story, and is about life, but also says something that matter - by Ellen Battersby In The Night Always Comes, Lynette is chasing a dream. An All-American goal. She wants to stop paying rent and buy the house—even with its issues—where she lives. To do this, she needs her mother Doreen’s help to qualify for the loan. And right when the plan is coming together, Doreen changes her mind and spends cash on a new car. “I’m fifty-seven years old and I still buy my clothes at Goodwill. It’s a little late for me to care about building a future,” says Doreen.

SIDE A 1. Lynette 2. Broken Heart 3. Driving WIth the Safe 4.Leaving JJ’s 5. Walking To Tell Jake 6.Shirley & Lynette Vlautin is a master at showing, taking us through the events of a harrowing few days in Lynette’s life. What he chooses to show, and how clearly he shows it, gives us a very vibrant, if dark, picture of her life, and the limitations and challenges she faces from the outside world. One running comment is on the mass of construction underway. This place sold its parking lot for an apartment development. Another condo-building is going up here, more over there. Formerly recognizable neighborhoods have been transformed into yuppie-vortex. Vlautin's finest work to date, marrying his typical deep empathy for troubled characters with a robust and dynamic plot reminiscent of classic American noir crime fiction . . . All of this is done with a prose style that sings with simple clarity, like an arrow straight at the reader's heart. Extraordinary stuff.' - Big Issue I thought of another film a lot, too. TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT by the Dardenne Brothers. In fact, watching that film was probably the last time I cried as hard as I did reading THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES. Sandra, played by Marion Cotillard, has a lot in common with Vlautin's Lynette. They're both trying to survive. They're both treading water in a world that seems content to let them drown. They're both on an odyssey--Sandra takes two days and one night to try to convince her coworkers to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job, while Lynette takes two days and two nights to scrape dirt out of the darkest corners of her past. Both the film and book are rooted in concepts of compassion and forgiveness. They're both beautiful in their sympathetic portraits of shattered women trying to piece themselves together again.Amazing . . . Vlautin hit the nail on the head with this. I could not stop thinking about the characters and where the story would take them.’

I loved the writing style and understood the characters so well. Lots of this reminded me of my old life. I want to mention that this isn’t a feel good book. But it was good. And I will definitely read another by this talented author. Great job. Lynette clearly suffers from depression, probably drug and alcohol-induced. Her obsession is a kind of therapy, I suppose, that keeps her mind off her condition… until it doesn’t. Unaccountably, at that point she decides to do a clear out of her house before skipping town ahead of a posse of folk who’d like to string her up. Willy Vlautin has a wonderfully fresh and naive style which does take a bit of getting used to. While The Night Always Comes follows a conventional chronological structure, he makes some unusual narrative decisions, and for a while I battled against those, until I came to accept them and just enjoy the ride. To celebrate the publication of Willy Vlautin’s new novel The Night Always Comes (3rd June), Faber has announced a bonus CD for Rough Trade customers. Lake Oswego Library - Lake Oswego Library Presents: Willy Vlautin - with Bill Kenower – on The Free and Don’t Skip Out on Me – video - 34:42I'm starting to think that some people are just born to sink. Born to fail. And I'm beginning to realize that I'm one of those people, and you have no idea what that's like. How truly awful it is to know that about yourself." Between looking after her brother, working two low-paid jobs, and trying to take part-time college classes, Lynette is dangerously tired. Every penny she's earned for years, she's put into savings, trying to scrape together enough to take out a mortgage on the house she rents with her mother. Finally becoming a homeowner in their rapidly gentrifying Portland neighbourhood could offer Lynette the kind of freedoms she's never had. But, when the plan is derailed, Lynette must embark on a desperate odyssey of hope and anguish.

This book surprised me, mostly in a bad way. I'm a big fan of Willy Vlautin's novels. I love his unflinching look at the underbelly of the USA. His protagonists always have been dealt a hard hand, and his writing style is clear, sparse and concise. To a degree, all of this is true for "The Night Always Comes" too, but something's missing. I think this book might work better as a book to be read rather than listen to. I felt for Lynette and it was very well written, but it was a depressing book to listen to. That’s not to say Christine Larkin isn’t a strong narrator. She imparts all the necessary emotion. Despite my frustrations, this is an exceptional and gripping read. The author's anger at watching his city shit on the vulnerable is palpable, and for this Northwest resident who has witnessed both her former home of Seattle and its beloved kid sister, Portland, become insufferably sanctimonious, impossibly expensive, and unrecognizably gentrified, it's sadly real. In a neighborhood that once was labeled as a poor urban area, has been changed through gentrification. A very controversial topic with the influx of more affluent residents and businesses changing the facade of the area and displacing many of the ones that were already having a difficult time surviving. The main issue with a Willy Vlautin novel is that it has to end. Here is another phenomenal book that unnerves, disquiets and makes you wince as his prose stabs at you violently with unhinged fervour.

Notes

The Night Always Comes is a rare example of art that matters-a rare example of a novel that is heartbreaking, but also a combative condemnation of American injustice, while also a love letter to the beleaguered working class, and still damn fun to read.' - CrimeReads

Whether or not that dream is worth the risk and if it's even the right dream to nurture is the novel's central mystery. The combination of fate and circumstance that hurtle Lynette to the book's wrenching, breathless end will keep you on the edge of your seat. In his sixth novel, The Night Always Comes, Vlautin explores the idea of the American dream and the impacts of gentrification, greed, and opportunism on ordinary, working class lives. This scorching, noir-ish tale follows a young woman, Lynette, over the course of two days and nights as she endeavors to secure the money needed to buy the house she rents with her mother and developmentally disabled brother. a lot of it, particularly the scenes between lynette and her mother, reads like a play, their dialogue unfurling in long alternating speeches dredging up all the old grievances of the past; fraught and emotional but also expositionally resonant. this would be a powerhouse drama if anyone ever took it upon themselves to stage this. The Night Always Comes” is a taut Modern American Noir Fiction set in the modern American West. The author is Willie Vlautin. This is the second novel of his that I have read, the first being “Northline”. Both of these novels are excellent but dark. The novel under review can be a tough emotional experience. I really like this novel and the author, but this is not a light fun read. It is the kind of novel of which, I hesitate to use the word “enjoy”. It is excellent but intense, at times, very intense. This isn't a fairy tale. Things aren't suddenly all sunshine and roses for Lynette at the end. But there is hope. The hope that the violent, nightmarish death of so many dreams is opening the way for newer, and hopefully better, ones.Over the course of two days, Lynette goes about collecting debts she's owed from the sketchiest of characters, risking her life to salvage a dream.