The Night Always Comes: a novel

Review 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 [Vlautin] has particular eye for setpieces... his hardscrabble characters and their vanishing dreams have the tang of authenticity. ― Daily Mail 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 It's propulsive, moving, dark and full of hope and heart. He's a genius. My book of the year. -- Craig Silvey ― Sydney Morning Herald 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 A tear-struck revelation - both epic and timely, intimate and clear-eyed ... Lynette will have you from the first page and put you to the test a hundred times before the last. You'll finish knowing you'll never forget her. -- Megan Abbott Remarkable, real, and tender. Willy Vlautin's characters blaze with honesty, fighting for their slim chance at the American dream, leaving us to wonder if it was all a charade. An amazing achievement. -- Rene Denfield I can't remember the last time I worried myself sick about a fictional character the way I did about Lynette in Willy Vlautin's terrific, big-hearted new novel The Night Always Comes. You won't soon forget either her or the fraught world she so courageously navigates. -- Richard Russo His stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer. -- Cheryl Strayed The straightforward beauty of Vlautin's writing, and the tender care he shows his characters, turns a story of struggle into indispensable reading. -- Ann Patchett One of America's great writers. -- Roddy Doyle One of the bravest novelists writing . An unsentimental Steinbeck, a heartbroken Haruf. -- Ursula K. Le Guin I finished reading this novel dripping with admiration for Willy Vlautin and the tough wonder he has brought forth. THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES hits the high-water mark; there is skillful and beautiful objectivity to the writing, characters so real that when they bleed you get a few drops on your sleeve, and a story of economic want and desperation and heart. -- Daniel Woodrell He is as far reaching as he is precise. He writes hard, delicate stories about things that are true. His characters cut me so close to the bone, I feel like they peel a layer of skin off me and I walk around after reading Willy Vlautin, more vulnerable, more open than I was before. And all the tougher for it. -- Kae Tempest A masterclass of scope and scale - a nail-biting novel of everyday survival. Relatable, terrifying, impassioned, and compassionate, Vlautin's latest will elevate you on one page and tear your heart out on the next. A marvelous novel that bleeds real, cuts deep, and offers just the right dose of hope. -- Ivy Pochoda Product Description 'Pacey and visceral.' Sunday Times 'Imbued with the noirish urgency of a page-turning thriller.' Irish Times 'A tear-struck revelation.' MEGAN ABBOTT 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 ody