The Night Always Comes: a novel

Product Information

Hard-hitting, fast paced, this is such an enjoyable book even in all its grime and grit. Vlautin has an important message and Lynette’s story is certainly an effective way to deliver it. This is also a novel that shows even when things don’t work out there may still be more paths to take forward, which is a type of ending I quite enjoy. This is a thrill-a-minute ride with a lot of heart. Oh, and for those wondering, my old apartment still stands. The homeowner passed away and it was bought by a group who turned the building into temporary housing for people in need. I’m glad to know the space where so many memories were made is now a space keeping safe people who need it most. Between looking after her brother, attending night classes, and the combination of jobs she juggles, Lynette is dangerously tired. And when, after years of trying to scrape together enough for a mortgage, her plan is derailed, she must embark on a desperate odyssey through a city of greed. it's a compact and affecting book about gentrification's effect on portland's working poor and one woman's attempt to hold on to what little she has.

This is a novel that lives firmly in the melancholia of the city's gentrification, hurtling readers through one woman's desperation to keep her life afloat in a city that's pushing its working class out, one razed lot at a time.' - New York Times 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.

Book Summary

I’m not sure how author/songwriter/bandleader, Willy Vlautin, wants us to perceive his protagonist, Lynette, an early thirties three-job hustler. Courageous? Hapless? Victim? Self-sacrificing? Psychotic? Or a representative of a class that is systematically being ground down by the success of others?

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.

And are they victims? In a way. In that they are all victims of being losers in the American dream who see no other option but screwing anybody and everybody however they can to (in their eyes) even the scales with fate.