The Night Always Comes

Product Information

but other people get to have dreams, too, and her mother suddenly wants to carve out a different future for herself, one that doesn't involve living in a house with so many bad memories, and one that doesn't involve living with lynette anymore. she announces that she's made other arrangements and the rest of the book is a real-time scramble as lynette tries to wrangle enough money to buy the house on her own. Life is beyond tough for Lynette, as she works numerous low-paid jobs while looking after her disabled brother and hapless mother in an impoverished area of Portland, Oregon. She embarks on a desperate and perilous journey of ambition and misery in the hope for a better life. Willy Vlautin is not known for happy endings, but there's something here that defies the downward pull. In the end, Lynette is pure life force: fierce and canny and blazing through a city that no longer has space for her, and it's all Portland's loss." -- Portland Monthly Magazine

This was different than anything I’ve read before. It’s hard for me to explain. It was detailed and interesting and each person was complex. This author showed me so much with his words. How he said them. The way he brought the characters to life. I had to finished it in one day. I was intrigued. I wanted closer and I couldn’t put it down. We get to know a lot about the topography of Portland Oregon, and gig posters for small-time local bands, but very little about Lynette’s logical processes. Perhaps she has none. Obsessed with a desire to move up the social ladder to middle-class home ownership, she is committed to hard work… along with prostitution, grand theft, burglary, drug-dealing, and GBH. Lynette apparently never thinks about consequences but merely reacts impulsively to anything beyond her obsession.His sixth novel to date, published in 2021, The Night Always Comes is arguably his most affecting, and without doubt will leave indelible marks. Audiobook version and it was excellent. Christine Larkin was the narrator and she was very talented and a good choice for this story! Great job Christine. 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. 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?

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. 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.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 has made some serious mistakes in her life, and she has issues that she may or may not be able to control, but she is working as hard as she possibly can. And a large part of that is her love of her brother. She wants to buy the house, not just for herself and her mother, but for Kenny, who needs that stability a lot more than she or her mother does. And when kindness does shine through, from an unexpected source, it is the relief we have been pining for, a beacon in the gloom, a desperately needed recognition in a world of people turning away. But the problem remains. What does gentrification look like for people who are being pushed out, whether they are good people or not? ( For my wife and me, it was being driven out of Brooklyn for affordable housing 125 miles away. No criminality involved, at least none that I will admit to.)