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The Night Always Comes
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in this scorching novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family.
Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own their own home—and obtain the security they’ve never had. While she has enough for the down payment, she needs her mother to cover the rest of the asking price. But a week before they’re set to sign the loan papers, her mother gets cold feet and reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need.
Set over two days and two nights, The Night Always Comes follows Lynette’s frantic search—an odyssey of hope and anguish that will bring her face to face with greedy rich men and ambitious hustlers, those benefiting and those left behind by a city in the throes of a transformative boom. As her desperation builds and her pleas for help go unanswered, Lynette makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral. In trying to save her family’s future, she is plunged into the darkness of her past, and forced to confront the reality of her life.
A heart wrenching portrait of a woman hungry for security and a home in a rapidly changing city, The Night Always Comes raises the difficult questions we are often too afraid to ask ourselves: What is the price of gentrification, and how far are we really prepared to go to achieve the American Dream? Is the American dream even attainable for those living at the edges? Or for too many of us, is it only a hollow promise?
Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own their own home—and obtain the security they’ve never had. While she has enough for the down payment, she needs her mother to cover the rest of the asking price. But a week before they’re set to sign the loan papers, her mother gets cold feet and reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need.
Set over two days and two nights, The Night Always Comes follows Lynette’s frantic search—an odyssey of hope and anguish that will bring her face to face with greedy rich men and ambitious hustlers, those benefiting and those left behind by a city in the throes of a transformative boom. As her desperation builds and her pleas for help go unanswered, Lynette makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral. In trying to save her family’s future, she is plunged into the darkness of her past, and forced to confront the reality of her life.
A heart wrenching portrait of a woman hungry for security and a home in a rapidly changing city, The Night Always Comes raises the difficult questions we are often too afraid to ask ourselves: What is the price of gentrification, and how far are we really prepared to go to achieve the American Dream? Is the American dream even attainable for those living at the edges? Or for too many of us, is it only a hollow promise?
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 6, 2021
About the author
Willy Vlautin
20 books858 followersWilly Vlautin (born 1967) is an American author and the lead singer and songwriter of Portland, Oregon band Richmond Fontaine. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, he has released nine studio albums since the late nineties with his band while he has written four novels: The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, and The Free.
Published in the US, several European and Asian countries, Vlautin's first book, The Motel Life was well received. It was an editor's choice in the New York Times Book Review and named one of the top 25 books of the year by the Washington Post.
His second, Northline was also critically hailed, and Vlautin was declared an important new American literary realist. Famed writer George Pelecanos stated that Northline was his favorite book of the decade. The first edition of this novel came with an original instrumental soundtrack performed by Vlautin and longtime bandmate Paul Brainard.
Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete, is the story of a 15-year-old boy who works and lives on a rundown race track in Portland, Oregon and befriends a failed race horse named Lean on Pete. The novel won two Oregon Book Awards: the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the Peoples Choice Award.
As a novelist, Vlautin has cited writers such as John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, Barry Gifford, and William Kennedy as influences. HIs writing is highly evocative of the American West; all three of his novels being set in and around Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico. His books explore the circumstances and relationships of people near the bottom of America's social and economic spectrum, itinerant, and often ailed by alcohol addiction.
Published in the US, several European and Asian countries, Vlautin's first book, The Motel Life was well received. It was an editor's choice in the New York Times Book Review and named one of the top 25 books of the year by the Washington Post.
His second, Northline was also critically hailed, and Vlautin was declared an important new American literary realist. Famed writer George Pelecanos stated that Northline was his favorite book of the decade. The first edition of this novel came with an original instrumental soundtrack performed by Vlautin and longtime bandmate Paul Brainard.
Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete, is the story of a 15-year-old boy who works and lives on a rundown race track in Portland, Oregon and befriends a failed race horse named Lean on Pete. The novel won two Oregon Book Awards: the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the Peoples Choice Award.
As a novelist, Vlautin has cited writers such as John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, Barry Gifford, and William Kennedy as influences. HIs writing is highly evocative of the American West; all three of his novels being set in and around Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico. His books explore the circumstances and relationships of people near the bottom of America's social and economic spectrum, itinerant, and often ailed by alcohol addiction.
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July 4, 2021
For a lot of years the only way I used to know how to get control of my life was to get mad. It was the only way I knew how to stand up for myself.---------------------------------------
--Lynette
The point is you can’t be too greedy.What does gentrification look like for people who are being pushed out?
--The Future 45th President of the United States of America
The foundation of the house was poured in 1922 using faulty concrete. During the winter rains, it leaked in a half-dozen places. Over the years small sections of the concrete wall had grown soft, the cement beginning to crumble. Their first landlord hired a company to patch the foundation, but he had died, and his son, who lived on the coast near Astoria, inherited the house. He hadn’t raised the rent in eleven years with the understanding that they wouldn’t call him for repairs. So they didn’t, and the basement was left to leak.Lynette’s got it tough, but she has a plan. She has been working like a dog at several jobs for the last few years and has squirreled away enough money for a down-payment on the rundown house she has been renting for years, with her mother and developmentally disabled brother. The gentrification that has impacted most cities is making Portland, Oregon a very difficult place to get by in, particularly for folks at the lower edges. It was under $100K some years back, but is now close to $300K, and will only keep rising. If they can buy the house, they can stay in a neighborhood they like, a good thing for Lynette and her mother, but a great thing for Kenny, whose need for familiarity far exceeds theirs.
‘Sometimes reading about loneliness can make you feel less lonely’ ... Willy Vlautin Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Portland is changing so rapidly it’s hard to know what to think. It used to be a haven for artists. When I moved here it was cheap and people would come out to see original music. It was lucky. It’s still great, it’s a great city, but it’s too expensive. I don’t know where all the money’s coming from, but it’s coming and it’s hard on the working class and the artists. The working class people get pushed out to the suburbs and the artists just move to different cheaper cities. - from the Americana UK interviewBut one week from signing for the mortgage, Mom bails, unwilling to take on the debt, and Lynette, who, for a variety of reasons, has bad credit and cannot get a mortgage on her own, is stuck. It will have to be done with Mom, or not at all.
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…You don’t know what it’s like. Other women my age are going on vacations with their grandkids, they’re talking about retirement plans and investments. Me, I haven’t taken a vacation since the time we went to San Francisco, and that was over fifteen years ago…I’ll never retire and that’s just a goddam fact….why do I have to sacrifice more than I already have? Why do I have to have a debt hanging over me for the rest of my life?They will be double-screwed if someone else buys, as they will be evicted and forced to rent somewhere farther out, where they might come close to being able to afford the rent. The owner is giving them a pretty good price, considering the market. What the hell, Mom? You could have said something.
It was January and raining and forty-one degrees when Lynette and her brother walked across the lawn to her red 1992 Nissan Sentra. She opened the passenger-side door and Kenny got in. She put on his seat belt and walked around to the driver’s side. The car started on the second try. The heater hadn’t worked in a year and their breath fogged the windows inside the car. She drove with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a rag she used to wipe the condensation and steam from the windshield.If it were funny, I guess it would be a running joke, but every time Lynette starts her old beater we are given a count on how many tries it takes for her to actually get the motor going. I can relate to Lynette, having driven my ’96 Buick to work for at least a couple of years in the 20-teens with no heat or a/c. I kept a good supply of rags and paper towels in the car, and dressed very warmly in winter. And never left for work without double-checking that I had my inhaler. Maxed out my AAA club allowance for jump-starts in both those years. Wound up having to take the subway, mostly because I was not willing to risk freezing to death on the Kosciuszko Bridge when the car conked out one more time and it might be hours before Triple A could send some help.
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.
She is out of her mind trying to figure a way to deal with this huge setback, so places her hope in being able to convince her mother to take back the brand new Toyota she just bought, and hitting up everyone who owes her money. We follow her through two days and nights in the lowest tiers of Portland life, both physical and moral. Along the way Vlautin takes us on a tour of the city, not the sort of a booking tourists might sign up for, as Lynette fills in pieces of her life and history with each part of town she visits. (I added a map link in EXTRA STUFF)
In her book Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks writes:
poverty is not an island; it is a borderland. There’s quite a lot of movement in the economic fringes, especially across the fuzzy boundary between the poor and the working class. Those who live in the economic borderlands are pitted against one another by policy that squeezes every possible dime from the wallets of the working class at the same time that it cuts social programs for the poor and absolves the professional middle class and wealthy of their social obligations.What Eubanks does not address is that in addition to the gauzy border between working class and poor, there is a pretty thin veil between being poor but legal and stepping through to criminality. One would expect that there is a lot of traffic there, driven by desperation. Lynette steps across the line. Does that make her a bad person? Of course, some criminals, some of the folks Lynette deals with, are just scummy people.
Greed is a central theme here. Sometimes it is unequivocal. Sometimes more nuanced. Lynette’s mother can be seen as greedy for buying herself a new car while bailing on the plan she and Lynette had agreed on to buy their home. Mom has some reasonable gripes about never having had anything for herself, but still, breaking a promise that big way too close to the signing date is just not ok. A little notice would have been nice. The people from whom Lynette tries to retrieve owed money are a motley lot, a woman who clearly can pay her back, but does not want to, a man who does everything in his power to short change her. Even the people she asks for help try to take advantage of her. One actively puts her in harm’s way. Criminals try to steal what she already has. But Lynette’s attempt to bolster her funds is also foolish. She will never be able to gather enough to remove the need for a mortgage, a mortgage she will never get on her own. It will ultimately all come down to her ability to sway her mother.
I just panicked and tried to get all the money that was owed me. I made a lot of mistakes and got greedy.Vlautin writes about people on the edge, working class, desperate people, lonely people, isolated people.
When you look at a person’s life it’s easy to pass judgement if you don’t know them. The more you know the more you understand. Sometimes you find out what a person has gone through and you’re surprised they are even upright. Other times it’s the opposite, some people just seem to invite or continuously stumble into hard times. I always try to show both sides in my songs and novels. I’ve always been interested in how people can get beat up day after day and still get by, often times with great dignity. The struggle to overcome one’s own ditches has always interested me. - from the Americana UK interviewBut there is always strength, hope, and goodness in Vlautin’s writing. In Don’t Skip Out on Me, his prior novel, an older couple try their best to give a leg up to a troubled young man. In The Free, Pauline, a nurse, is taking care of her father, and trying to help a troubled teen runaway, while Freddie, working in a long-term care facility, tries to help out as many residents as he can, a veteran suffering severe head trauma chief among these.
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.)
Vlautin offers a peering light in a dark place, looking at how poor and working-class folks cope, or don’t, with the challenges of life in the 21st century. When he was much younger, he used to have hanging in his room a portrait of John Steinbeck, a writer who also wrote extensively about life for folks on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. I expect he would be very impressed at the body of work Vlautin has produced. Like Steinbeck, Vlautin is one of the best writers of his generation, someone who cares about working people, and is able to powerfully dramatize the struggles they endure. The Night Always Comes. Yes it does, and it gets plenty dark. But Willy will leave a light on for you.
Review posted – September 18, 2020
Publication date – April 6, 2021
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages, and a Wiki page entry for good measure.
Prior books by Vlautin I have reviewed
-----2018 - Don't Skip Out on Me
-----2014 - The Free
-----2008 - Northline
This is Vlautin’s sixth novel
Interviews
-----Americana UK - Interview: Willy Vlautin by Del Dey
-----Lake Oswego Library - Lake Oswego Library Presents: Willy Vlautin - with Bill Kenower – on The Free and Don’t Skip Out on Me – video - 34:42
-----Deschutes Library - Author Willy Vlautin
-----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
-----The Guardian - Willy Vlautin: 'I think my mother was ashamed that I was a novelist' by Ryan Gilbey
-----Little White Lies - Willy Vlautin on the art of working class storytelling by Ian Gilchrist
Items of Interest
-----The Delines - The Imperial
-----My review of Automating Inequality
-----Portland Locations in the novel - I made a Google map to show some of the places Lynette travels in her odyssey. Still fiddling with this. Hope I got them all correct. Please let me know if (when) you spot errors, so I can make necessary repairs. I did not specify a location for Lynette’s home or for the 9th Street Bakery, although I have my suspicions. For best results, click on the View in Google Maps option for each entry. From there, you might want to poke around a bit , clicking on the images that are offered on the left part of the window.
August 29, 2021
'I would have paid the rent if I could!'
- Fidlar
Through most of my 20’s I was working three jobs. One full time job as a delivery driver that didn’t offer benefits and two part time jobs on top of being a single dad. After grueling weeks I’d spend short amounts of time in my tiny one-room apartment of a split-level house (my daughter got the room, I had a cot in the corner) and wonder, what am I even working for if this is all I have? I mean, my child was taken care of, I wasn’t in fear of being thrown out, but I’d be at work watching customers throw my weekly paycheck’s worth of money around without batting an eye and that will start to drain on you. Especially watching the family homes on my street get foreclosed and slowly turn into college housing and wondering where these families were off to and hoping they were alright. I thought about these times a lot while reading Vlautin’s The Night Always Comes, a gritty neo-noir where the missing person is affordable housing in an ever-gentrifying present day Portland. This wild ride of working-class strife and shady dealings packs a hard punch with Vlautin’s direct prose as he moralizes over poverty, labor conditions, gentrification and mental health in this scream-until-your-voice-is-raw plea for humanity being pulverized in the gears of capitalism.
‘Isn’t that the American dream? Fuck over whoever is in your way and get what you want.’
The Night Always Comes follows 30 year old Lynette over the course of two days, from her double-job shifts that start at 4am while caring for her slightly older brother with developmental disabilities to a long, dangerous night on a hunt for money by any means necessary. Lynette has been planning to buy the home she lives in with her mother—needing the mother to get the loan to cover the other $200k on top of the $80k she has already saved due to bad credit from her very tortured past—when her mom suddenly backs out of the deal. Lynette plunges into the darkness beset by crooked deals and the men driven by desperation to stab her in the back. The plot is simple and this book comes crashing out the gates already gripping your throat and forcing you to see the grimy parts of life many turn their nose up at in order to pretend they aren’t complicit in it’s existence.
I was particularly drawn to this book from Matt’s review and when David’s review referred to the writing as ‘noir writing from Dostoevsky’ and, honestly, that is the best description. There is a strong moral undercurrent here on poverty conditions and those who’s happiness relies on the creation of these conditions all told in the style of a hard-boiled noir. Cigarette smoke in hard contrast in every scene, seedy back alley deals, rich dudes getting their sexual kicks at the expense of poverty stricken women...this novel is a gritty thriller with a very literary heart. In the first few pages there is tons of exposition, but it is all done as a shouting match between mother and daughter and really works without feeling heavy handed. The noir style also makes the frequent monologuing in the novel work without feeling like the pace has slowed down because there is so much frustrated tension dripping off every word.
‘For a lot of years the only way I used to know how to get control of my life was to get mad. It was the only way I knew how to stand up for myself.’
Lynette is a hell of a heroine and readers will quickly be drawn to her and root for her as if she was our Virgil taking us with her through the murky underworlds of Portland. Much of this reads like a white-knuckle redemption story, with Lynette so desperate to regain control over a life she watched spiral into near oblivion in her youth. Yet the scars of her former rage still linger in those she knew. Vlautin looks at the ways mental health struggle are only compounded in situations of poverty where there is not only a lack of a safety net and support system but how can one focus on their own care when constantly working to serve others needs (not to mention these jobs tend to require taking a lot of shit from customers and recognizing you are just a replaceable body in the profit-making machine). How can you rise above when so much of your energy is already expended surviving between shifts and then be expected to give your all at an exhausting job?
Through the long night in search of money, Lynette meets many people who might seem helpful at first but tend to give in to greed and turn against her. While the epigraph of the book quotes a failed politician, I’d prefer to not dignify him with a nod and instead quote Daniel Craig’s nameless character in Layer Cake: ‘But never get too greedy.’ Lynette’s actions feel justifiable to some extent, particularly as much of the money was owed her or she is acting in response to violence against her, whereas the other characters seem to act out of greed. Like a spaghetti-western film, those who violate justified morals or break their convictions tend to get their come-uppin’s, and fast.
Reading Lynette take a bat to an attacker is pretty satisfying, but the point isn’t some quick thrills. Vlautin probes at the conditions that make these people so desperate they’ll betray someone if they think they can get a little leg up or relief, even if only temporary (also everyone seems to ‘know a guy’ who can sell something). Which is the pulse of this novel: addressing gentrification. In 2017, Portland was named the 4th fasted gentrifying city in the United States. ‘Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement,’ writes Emily Chong in Georgetown Law magazine, ‘a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.’ Vlautin’s cast is entirely white, which is quite unfortunate, but he does engage in the realities of those being forced out of their own homes by the rising cost of living. Lynette’s falling down home, for example, is going for $300k and she’s constantly told that is incredibly cheap.
‘Sometimes all you can do in life is have another bowl of ice cream. Sometimes that’s the only move you can make to keep yourself from going completely nuts.’
While the sketchy men that make up this novel are shown to be driven into desperation and violence through poverty (there are, to be fair, also the rich men in the novel who satisfy their carnal lusts on the poor which is even worse), the mother represents those who are crushed under the weight of futility. ‘Why should they bust their asses all day when they know no matter what they do they’ll never get ahead,’ she says of people facing the harsh realities of life. She is a prime example of a worker given just enough hours to make finding another job hard yet not enough hours to survive, and at an age where finding a new job is difficult when there are so many young people to fill the type of jobs she is qualified for. The people this country is definitely failing. She is a character that is so close to understanding, but in her rage against those who only look out for themselves she gives in to that same temptation. Yet still, she hits many good points on the way.
A friend of mine once said we should replace the stars on the American flag with the words ‘fuck you, I got mine,’ and that sentiment is alive and well in this novel. This is a story of someone trying so hard to do the right thing being constantly punched down at by those content to float by on success at the expense of others. Lynette is a reminder of the bigger picture that we must work together to achieve. There is a plea for class solidarity in this book, as all these characters struggling against each other to survive will eventually be forced out by the rising tide of gentrification when instead they should have worked together to ensure they all would have a space in the coming world.
On a quick side-note, I was getting some real Raymond Carver vibes from this book which was only amplified by the cover. Then I realized its because the editions of Carver I've read and this book all feature photography by Todd Hido.
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.
4/5
‘[I]f I remember anything about history, it’s that. The people who are written about are the ones taking. They don’t care who they hurt doing it, they really don’t, and I’m starting to understand why. Because it’s all bullshit. The land of the free and that whole crock of shit. It’s just men taking what they want and justifying it any way they need so they can get up in the morning and take more and...push people out of their homes so they can make more money.’
- Fidlar
Through most of my 20’s I was working three jobs. One full time job as a delivery driver that didn’t offer benefits and two part time jobs on top of being a single dad. After grueling weeks I’d spend short amounts of time in my tiny one-room apartment of a split-level house (my daughter got the room, I had a cot in the corner) and wonder, what am I even working for if this is all I have? I mean, my child was taken care of, I wasn’t in fear of being thrown out, but I’d be at work watching customers throw my weekly paycheck’s worth of money around without batting an eye and that will start to drain on you. Especially watching the family homes on my street get foreclosed and slowly turn into college housing and wondering where these families were off to and hoping they were alright. I thought about these times a lot while reading Vlautin’s The Night Always Comes, a gritty neo-noir where the missing person is affordable housing in an ever-gentrifying present day Portland. This wild ride of working-class strife and shady dealings packs a hard punch with Vlautin’s direct prose as he moralizes over poverty, labor conditions, gentrification and mental health in this scream-until-your-voice-is-raw plea for humanity being pulverized in the gears of capitalism.
‘Isn’t that the American dream? Fuck over whoever is in your way and get what you want.’
The Night Always Comes follows 30 year old Lynette over the course of two days, from her double-job shifts that start at 4am while caring for her slightly older brother with developmental disabilities to a long, dangerous night on a hunt for money by any means necessary. Lynette has been planning to buy the home she lives in with her mother—needing the mother to get the loan to cover the other $200k on top of the $80k she has already saved due to bad credit from her very tortured past—when her mom suddenly backs out of the deal. Lynette plunges into the darkness beset by crooked deals and the men driven by desperation to stab her in the back. The plot is simple and this book comes crashing out the gates already gripping your throat and forcing you to see the grimy parts of life many turn their nose up at in order to pretend they aren’t complicit in it’s existence.
I was particularly drawn to this book from Matt’s review and when David’s review referred to the writing as ‘noir writing from Dostoevsky’ and, honestly, that is the best description. There is a strong moral undercurrent here on poverty conditions and those who’s happiness relies on the creation of these conditions all told in the style of a hard-boiled noir. Cigarette smoke in hard contrast in every scene, seedy back alley deals, rich dudes getting their sexual kicks at the expense of poverty stricken women...this novel is a gritty thriller with a very literary heart. In the first few pages there is tons of exposition, but it is all done as a shouting match between mother and daughter and really works without feeling heavy handed. The noir style also makes the frequent monologuing in the novel work without feeling like the pace has slowed down because there is so much frustrated tension dripping off every word.
‘For a lot of years the only way I used to know how to get control of my life was to get mad. It was the only way I knew how to stand up for myself.’
Lynette is a hell of a heroine and readers will quickly be drawn to her and root for her as if she was our Virgil taking us with her through the murky underworlds of Portland. Much of this reads like a white-knuckle redemption story, with Lynette so desperate to regain control over a life she watched spiral into near oblivion in her youth. Yet the scars of her former rage still linger in those she knew. Vlautin looks at the ways mental health struggle are only compounded in situations of poverty where there is not only a lack of a safety net and support system but how can one focus on their own care when constantly working to serve others needs (not to mention these jobs tend to require taking a lot of shit from customers and recognizing you are just a replaceable body in the profit-making machine). How can you rise above when so much of your energy is already expended surviving between shifts and then be expected to give your all at an exhausting job?
Through the long night in search of money, Lynette meets many people who might seem helpful at first but tend to give in to greed and turn against her. While the epigraph of the book quotes a failed politician, I’d prefer to not dignify him with a nod and instead quote Daniel Craig’s nameless character in Layer Cake: ‘But never get too greedy.’ Lynette’s actions feel justifiable to some extent, particularly as much of the money was owed her or she is acting in response to violence against her, whereas the other characters seem to act out of greed. Like a spaghetti-western film, those who violate justified morals or break their convictions tend to get their come-uppin’s, and fast.
Reading Lynette take a bat to an attacker is pretty satisfying, but the point isn’t some quick thrills. Vlautin probes at the conditions that make these people so desperate they’ll betray someone if they think they can get a little leg up or relief, even if only temporary (also everyone seems to ‘know a guy’ who can sell something). Which is the pulse of this novel: addressing gentrification. In 2017, Portland was named the 4th fasted gentrifying city in the United States. ‘Gentrification usually leads to negative impacts such as forced displacement,’ writes Emily Chong in Georgetown Law magazine, ‘a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.’ Vlautin’s cast is entirely white, which is quite unfortunate, but he does engage in the realities of those being forced out of their own homes by the rising cost of living. Lynette’s falling down home, for example, is going for $300k and she’s constantly told that is incredibly cheap.
‘Sometimes all you can do in life is have another bowl of ice cream. Sometimes that’s the only move you can make to keep yourself from going completely nuts.’
While the sketchy men that make up this novel are shown to be driven into desperation and violence through poverty (there are, to be fair, also the rich men in the novel who satisfy their carnal lusts on the poor which is even worse), the mother represents those who are crushed under the weight of futility. ‘Why should they bust their asses all day when they know no matter what they do they’ll never get ahead,’ she says of people facing the harsh realities of life. She is a prime example of a worker given just enough hours to make finding another job hard yet not enough hours to survive, and at an age where finding a new job is difficult when there are so many young people to fill the type of jobs she is qualified for. The people this country is definitely failing. She is a character that is so close to understanding, but in her rage against those who only look out for themselves she gives in to that same temptation. Yet still, she hits many good points on the way.
‘Now it’s all fancy buildings and skinny people who look like they’re in magazines.’ ‘They whole time we’re wondering who can afford to live in these fancy new high-rises and where do they get the money to eat in all these new restaurants...for the life of me, I just don’t understand where so many people get their money.’
A friend of mine once said we should replace the stars on the American flag with the words ‘fuck you, I got mine,’ and that sentiment is alive and well in this novel. This is a story of someone trying so hard to do the right thing being constantly punched down at by those content to float by on success at the expense of others. Lynette is a reminder of the bigger picture that we must work together to achieve. There is a plea for class solidarity in this book, as all these characters struggling against each other to survive will eventually be forced out by the rising tide of gentrification when instead they should have worked together to ensure they all would have a space in the coming world.
On a quick side-note, I was getting some real Raymond Carver vibes from this book which was only amplified by the cover. Then I realized its because the editions of Carver I've read and this book all feature photography by Todd Hido.
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.
4/5
‘[I]f I remember anything about history, it’s that. The people who are written about are the ones taking. They don’t care who they hurt doing it, they really don’t, and I’m starting to understand why. Because it’s all bullshit. The land of the free and that whole crock of shit. It’s just men taking what they want and justifying it any way they need so they can get up in the morning and take more and...push people out of their homes so they can make more money.’
June 11, 2021
fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i have never read despite owning more than one of their books.
jesus, this was good.
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.
and it TEEMS.
it's very small in scope, a coupla days—maybe 24-36 hours, but so much happens. part of the reason it feels so packed is that lynette's life; her daily schedule, is exhausting: going to school in between her morning shift at a bakery and her evening shift bartending, taking care of her special needs brother, occasionally turning tricks at night, all to save enough money so she can go in with her mother to buy the rundown house they have been renting for years, working herself to the bone just to be able to live where she's always lived, as people all around them are being priced out of their neighborhoods in a city she barely recognizes anymore.
it's a modest dream, but to her it represents stability, which she has had precious little of in her thirty years.
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.
it's a tautly coiled plot, and there's something almost noir about it as lynette spends the night-into-early-morning driven by her mounting desperation into a series of increasingly dangerous situations as she calls in her chits and faces the demons of her past, burning bridges all the way down.
the story is tight cutting perfection, and it keeps the reader very close; i felt lynette's exhaustion and frustration deep in my bones, and the smallness of her asks—that debts be repaid, that promises be kept, that hard work and sacrifice count for something—was heartbreakingly real.
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.
short, but substantial, and i'm a dummy for waiting so long to read him.
come to my blog!!
"I'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."
jesus, this was good.
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.
and it TEEMS.
it's very small in scope, a coupla days—maybe 24-36 hours, but so much happens. part of the reason it feels so packed is that lynette's life; her daily schedule, is exhausting: going to school in between her morning shift at a bakery and her evening shift bartending, taking care of her special needs brother, occasionally turning tricks at night, all to save enough money so she can go in with her mother to buy the rundown house they have been renting for years, working herself to the bone just to be able to live where she's always lived, as people all around them are being priced out of their neighborhoods in a city she barely recognizes anymore.
it's a modest dream, but to her it represents stability, which she has had precious little of in her thirty years.
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.
it's a tautly coiled plot, and there's something almost noir about it as lynette spends the night-into-early-morning driven by her mounting desperation into a series of increasingly dangerous situations as she calls in her chits and faces the demons of her past, burning bridges all the way down.
the story is tight cutting perfection, and it keeps the reader very close; i felt lynette's exhaustion and frustration deep in my bones, and the smallness of her asks—that debts be repaid, that promises be kept, that hard work and sacrifice count for something—was heartbreakingly real.
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.
short, but substantial, and i'm a dummy for waiting so long to read him.
come to my blog!!
November 27, 2022
Trudna historia. Z tych, które wyciągają na wierzch największe brudy.
April 17, 2022
For the love of humanity, this was a hard, emotional read. I applaud Willy Vlautin, which could possibly be one of my new faves. He captures the hope of the American people, but the unattainable goal for many. Lynette is trying to find her place in the world with her hard work ethics. With so much at stake at only 30 years old, she provides for her special needs brother. Hoping to save enough money for a down payment on a home that they have been renting. Praying for her mom's help with the money, instead she spends the money on a new car.
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.
Depression sets in as her world becomes bleak with desperation to make unwise decisions. She could settle for less than safe neighborhoods she could afford, but not what they want to do. With a fine line drawn in the community with poverty and criminalization, some find themselves crossing it just to survive. This book captures her bleak life and the working people and their economic struggles.
"You cease to distinguish between right and wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and what is bad."
Good job, Willy Vlautin. I can't do this book justice.
Thank you,NetGalley & Harper for this incredible ARC for exchange of my honest opinion.
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.
Depression sets in as her world becomes bleak with desperation to make unwise decisions. She could settle for less than safe neighborhoods she could afford, but not what they want to do. With a fine line drawn in the community with poverty and criminalization, some find themselves crossing it just to survive. This book captures her bleak life and the working people and their economic struggles.
"You cease to distinguish between right and wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and what is bad."
Good job, Willy Vlautin. I can't do this book justice.
Thank you,NetGalley & Harper for this incredible ARC for exchange of my honest opinion.
February 22, 2021
Be prepared - this book is dark and depressing. I don’t know when I’ve heard a story this bleak. Lynette’s life is really not going well. She’s working several jobs, one of which is illegal. Her brother is developmentally challenged with the mind of a three year old. She’s managed to save the money needed for the downpayment to buy their home, but her mom reneges on her willingness to take in the mortgage. When she tries to start collecting the money she’s owed from various people, things get even worse. I definitely wanted to find out whether things would eventually work out for her.
Vlautin provides flashbacks to Lynette’s life as the story progresses, so we learn more and more about what damaged her.
The book covers those that live paycheck to paycheck, the ones that have been left behind as the world moves forward. It also deals with mental illness, especially those that can’t get help.
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.
My thanks to netgalley and Harper Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook.
Be prepared - this book is dark and depressing. I don’t know when I’ve heard a story this bleak. Lynette’s life is really not going well. She’s working several jobs, one of which is illegal. Her brother is developmentally challenged with the mind of a three year old. She’s managed to save the money needed for the downpayment to buy their home, but her mom reneges on her willingness to take in the mortgage. When she tries to start collecting the money she’s owed from various people, things get even worse. I definitely wanted to find out whether things would eventually work out for her.
Vlautin provides flashbacks to Lynette’s life as the story progresses, so we learn more and more about what damaged her.
The book covers those that live paycheck to paycheck, the ones that have been left behind as the world moves forward. It also deals with mental illness, especially those that can’t get help.
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.
My thanks to netgalley and Harper Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook.
Vlautin provides flashbacks to Lynette’s life as the story progresses, so we learn more and more about what damaged her.
The book covers those that live paycheck to paycheck, the ones that have been left behind as the world moves forward. It also deals with mental illness, especially those that can’t get help.
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.
My thanks to netgalley and Harper Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook.
Be prepared - this book is dark and depressing. I don’t know when I’ve heard a story this bleak. Lynette’s life is really not going well. She’s working several jobs, one of which is illegal. Her brother is developmentally challenged with the mind of a three year old. She’s managed to save the money needed for the downpayment to buy their home, but her mom reneges on her willingness to take in the mortgage. When she tries to start collecting the money she’s owed from various people, things get even worse. I definitely wanted to find out whether things would eventually work out for her.
Vlautin provides flashbacks to Lynette’s life as the story progresses, so we learn more and more about what damaged her.
The book covers those that live paycheck to paycheck, the ones that have been left behind as the world moves forward. It also deals with mental illness, especially those that can’t get help.
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.
My thanks to netgalley and Harper Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook.
August 19, 2021
"The point is you can’t be too greedy."
--The 45th President of the United States of America, and the quotation that frames this book
This is Willy Vlautin's sixth novel, but my first experience reading him, though I also have owned The Free since it came out. I'll read that soon, too, after reading this book, but The Night Always Comes is one beautifully written book about human misery, about how working class folks cope or fail to in the twenty-first century. We're in rapidly gentrifying Portland, and our main character is Lynette, who royally screwed up her life a few years ago, but she has since been working a crappy job to save the down payment for a house for her, her developmentally disabled brother Kenny, and her mother, who has just basically given up as they are about to sign the lease. She's 57, has only ever worn clothes purchased at Goodwill, and she has just had it. She does what some people in despair do when they have a bit of money saved; she buys a car she can't really afford instead of buying the house. Buying a house--I was reminded of Loraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and how that symbolizes the American Dream for so many people.
Housing prices have quadrupled in Portland in something like the past twenty years, so you need to be almost rich to own even a decent house, and this house they want was never a decent house, but it can be theirs. Lynette, in addition to working her low-paying day job, some years ago began working for an escort service--sleeping with rich men for a thousand dollars a night, building up a pot of some 80,000 dollars. You say you wouldn't do something like that? I have a developmentally delayed son who just turned 25--I won't say what I would or would not do to make sure he is safe when I die. But things get particularly desperate for Lynette when her mother appears to back out of signing a lease for the crappy, broken down house they could have bought for a quarter of the price twenty years ago. Lynette gets even more desperate as she gets involved with a range of also desperate and now violent people. Everyone in the book is desperate and we don't know what the limits are for what they might do to make enough money to live on.
The Night Always Comes is a standard noir title for this twenty-first century noir portrait of economic inequality and despair for our times. There are no laughs in it, and almost all misery, but also some grim admiration and sympathy for Lynette and some other people in this book. You think you wouldn't "go there," seeing what some of these people will do for money? How close have you been to homelessness and sleepless anxiety about money? How close would just one experience of serious illness, or adult care needs (such as Kenny) given our crappy health care system, bring you to desperate acts? We see Lynette's long history of suicidal depression and bad decisions and being dumped on has always been tied to money in some way, and Vlautin helps us see that there, but for the grace of God, or luck, go any of us.
And money sets us against each other rather than brings us together to fight for a common good. Vlautin tells us a story of late-capitalism, in all its ugliness and cruelty, eating us alive. A powerful, sad book, beautifully written, in the rich vein of noir writing from Dostoevsky onward.
PS: If I had to nitpick, I'd say I was thrown off in the first third of the book by all the backstory revealed exclusively in dialogue. It's telling the story rather than showing it, among characters that go into detail about stuff they have all known for years. Do people complain about the past with each other? Sure, but not quite in this kind of detailed, articulate way, especially among folks that are riding a kind of persistent anguish. But I got over those early concerns and it doesn't happen so much later. It's powerful, over all.
--The 45th President of the United States of America, and the quotation that frames this book
This is Willy Vlautin's sixth novel, but my first experience reading him, though I also have owned The Free since it came out. I'll read that soon, too, after reading this book, but The Night Always Comes is one beautifully written book about human misery, about how working class folks cope or fail to in the twenty-first century. We're in rapidly gentrifying Portland, and our main character is Lynette, who royally screwed up her life a few years ago, but she has since been working a crappy job to save the down payment for a house for her, her developmentally disabled brother Kenny, and her mother, who has just basically given up as they are about to sign the lease. She's 57, has only ever worn clothes purchased at Goodwill, and she has just had it. She does what some people in despair do when they have a bit of money saved; she buys a car she can't really afford instead of buying the house. Buying a house--I was reminded of Loraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and how that symbolizes the American Dream for so many people.
Housing prices have quadrupled in Portland in something like the past twenty years, so you need to be almost rich to own even a decent house, and this house they want was never a decent house, but it can be theirs. Lynette, in addition to working her low-paying day job, some years ago began working for an escort service--sleeping with rich men for a thousand dollars a night, building up a pot of some 80,000 dollars. You say you wouldn't do something like that? I have a developmentally delayed son who just turned 25--I won't say what I would or would not do to make sure he is safe when I die. But things get particularly desperate for Lynette when her mother appears to back out of signing a lease for the crappy, broken down house they could have bought for a quarter of the price twenty years ago. Lynette gets even more desperate as she gets involved with a range of also desperate and now violent people. Everyone in the book is desperate and we don't know what the limits are for what they might do to make enough money to live on.
The Night Always Comes is a standard noir title for this twenty-first century noir portrait of economic inequality and despair for our times. There are no laughs in it, and almost all misery, but also some grim admiration and sympathy for Lynette and some other people in this book. You think you wouldn't "go there," seeing what some of these people will do for money? How close have you been to homelessness and sleepless anxiety about money? How close would just one experience of serious illness, or adult care needs (such as Kenny) given our crappy health care system, bring you to desperate acts? We see Lynette's long history of suicidal depression and bad decisions and being dumped on has always been tied to money in some way, and Vlautin helps us see that there, but for the grace of God, or luck, go any of us.
And money sets us against each other rather than brings us together to fight for a common good. Vlautin tells us a story of late-capitalism, in all its ugliness and cruelty, eating us alive. A powerful, sad book, beautifully written, in the rich vein of noir writing from Dostoevsky onward.
PS: If I had to nitpick, I'd say I was thrown off in the first third of the book by all the backstory revealed exclusively in dialogue. It's telling the story rather than showing it, among characters that go into detail about stuff they have all known for years. Do people complain about the past with each other? Sure, but not quite in this kind of detailed, articulate way, especially among folks that are riding a kind of persistent anguish. But I got over those early concerns and it doesn't happen so much later. It's powerful, over all.
September 17, 2020
"Most people don't care about doing good. Most people just push you out of the way and grab what they want."
I first read Willy Vlautin back in 2008. NORTHLINE had just come out. I bought it and THE MOTEL LIFE based on the blurbs from Tom Franklin and George Pelecanos, two writers I love. I went home and read both over a few days. Since then, I've called Willy Vlautin my favorite writer. One of the reasons I say this is I don't think there's anybody else out there with such a raw, honest voice. With so many folks, even the greats, you can feel the artifice or the tricks or whatever. With Vlautin, you're just there, living life with the characters, struggling, scraping by, fighting, failing, hoping. Another reason is no writer I can think of makes me feel emotion the way Vlautin does. I guess it comes down to that rawness and honesty again. His books wreck me in the best way.
THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is his new one. It comes out in April 2021. I got an ARC a few days ago, and I had to stop myself from burning through it in one sitting. Instead, I read it over three days. It's a short book, 206 pages, and it's everything I've come to expect from Vlautin. I feel like a chump because I say the same thing every time I read a new book of his, that it's his best yet, my new favorite, but I think that's a good way to be with an artist. I love all of his books and records. That said, I do think this is his best yet.
With publication so far off, I won't say much about the plot of the book that you can't read in the copy. Lynette is the main character here. She's scraping by with three jobs, living with her mother and developmentally disabled brother in a Portland they barely recognize anymore. Rents are out of control. Affluence has come to town. They've been living in the same shitty house forever. The landlord is finally letting it go, agreeing to sell it to them for a decent price. Lynette has bad credit and has to rely on her mother for the loan. When her mother backs out at the last second, Lynette's sent into a desperate spiral, digging up old ghosts, hunting for hope, seeking salvage in a city that wants to spit her out.
I love all of Vlautin's main characters--the Flannigan Brothers in THE MOTEL LIFE; Allison Johnson in NORTHLINE; Charley Thompson in LEAN ON PETE; Leroy, Freddie, and Pauline in THE FREE; and Horace Hopper in DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME--but Lynette is definitely my favorite since Allison. She's sad and tough, broken and hopeful, as true on the page as a character can get. I worried for her, I cheered for her, I felt the kind of love for her I feel for friends and family.
I've long thought Kelly Reichardt would be the perfect director to adapt one of Vlautin's books. I think she might've even been attached to NORTHLINE or LEAN ON PETE at some point. But, man, if ever one of his books was tailor made for her, it's this one. Tonally, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES doesn't feel that different than Reichardt's recent masterpiece, FIRST COW, which also concerns itself with goodness and greed.
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.
Vlautin's always a great place writer, and this is no exception. It immediately joins the list of best novels set in Portland, Oregon, right up there at the top with Don Carpenter's HARD RAIN FALLING and Kent Anderson's NIGHT DOGS. There's also lots to say about how this book tackles the way affluence is ruining so many American cities, about class and wealth inequality, and about the death of the American Dream, the notion that owning something matters, that working hard enough means you can live honestly and be fulfilled. What happens when people see that this isn't true, that there's an elaborate con at work, that the rich just keep getting richer and the poor get chased into bad deals and bad loans and bad houses and bad lives until they disappear? Lynette is one of those people and, through her, we see exactly what happens. The story of her and her family and the people she knows is the story of people buying into being fed a lie until there's no lie left to believe.
Still, ultimately, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is a novel about goodness, about living with a code of decency as notions of decency and kindness crumble all around us. Vlautin brings the hope like only he can. I'm truly thankful to have read it, and I can't wait to read it again.
I first read Willy Vlautin back in 2008. NORTHLINE had just come out. I bought it and THE MOTEL LIFE based on the blurbs from Tom Franklin and George Pelecanos, two writers I love. I went home and read both over a few days. Since then, I've called Willy Vlautin my favorite writer. One of the reasons I say this is I don't think there's anybody else out there with such a raw, honest voice. With so many folks, even the greats, you can feel the artifice or the tricks or whatever. With Vlautin, you're just there, living life with the characters, struggling, scraping by, fighting, failing, hoping. Another reason is no writer I can think of makes me feel emotion the way Vlautin does. I guess it comes down to that rawness and honesty again. His books wreck me in the best way.
THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is his new one. It comes out in April 2021. I got an ARC a few days ago, and I had to stop myself from burning through it in one sitting. Instead, I read it over three days. It's a short book, 206 pages, and it's everything I've come to expect from Vlautin. I feel like a chump because I say the same thing every time I read a new book of his, that it's his best yet, my new favorite, but I think that's a good way to be with an artist. I love all of his books and records. That said, I do think this is his best yet.
With publication so far off, I won't say much about the plot of the book that you can't read in the copy. Lynette is the main character here. She's scraping by with three jobs, living with her mother and developmentally disabled brother in a Portland they barely recognize anymore. Rents are out of control. Affluence has come to town. They've been living in the same shitty house forever. The landlord is finally letting it go, agreeing to sell it to them for a decent price. Lynette has bad credit and has to rely on her mother for the loan. When her mother backs out at the last second, Lynette's sent into a desperate spiral, digging up old ghosts, hunting for hope, seeking salvage in a city that wants to spit her out.
I love all of Vlautin's main characters--the Flannigan Brothers in THE MOTEL LIFE; Allison Johnson in NORTHLINE; Charley Thompson in LEAN ON PETE; Leroy, Freddie, and Pauline in THE FREE; and Horace Hopper in DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME--but Lynette is definitely my favorite since Allison. She's sad and tough, broken and hopeful, as true on the page as a character can get. I worried for her, I cheered for her, I felt the kind of love for her I feel for friends and family.
I've long thought Kelly Reichardt would be the perfect director to adapt one of Vlautin's books. I think she might've even been attached to NORTHLINE or LEAN ON PETE at some point. But, man, if ever one of his books was tailor made for her, it's this one. Tonally, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES doesn't feel that different than Reichardt's recent masterpiece, FIRST COW, which also concerns itself with goodness and greed.
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.
Vlautin's always a great place writer, and this is no exception. It immediately joins the list of best novels set in Portland, Oregon, right up there at the top with Don Carpenter's HARD RAIN FALLING and Kent Anderson's NIGHT DOGS. There's also lots to say about how this book tackles the way affluence is ruining so many American cities, about class and wealth inequality, and about the death of the American Dream, the notion that owning something matters, that working hard enough means you can live honestly and be fulfilled. What happens when people see that this isn't true, that there's an elaborate con at work, that the rich just keep getting richer and the poor get chased into bad deals and bad loans and bad houses and bad lives until they disappear? Lynette is one of those people and, through her, we see exactly what happens. The story of her and her family and the people she knows is the story of people buying into being fed a lie until there's no lie left to believe.
Still, ultimately, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is a novel about goodness, about living with a code of decency as notions of decency and kindness crumble all around us. Vlautin brings the hope like only he can. I'm truly thankful to have read it, and I can't wait to read it again.
February 20, 2021
My favourite writer. The literary event of my year. And it delivers handsomely.
No-one chronicles the failure of the American Dream like Willy. He creates characters who have been chewed up and spat out by a capitalist system designed to keep them striving but never making it.
Never more so than with Lynette, whose fragile existence crumbles around her over two defining days. Stuck in a cycle of work, sleep, work, work, look after her disabled brother, sleep, repeat.... Lynette sees her only way out as buying the decrepit house she shares with her brother and mother. But, when those meager prospects come under threat, she goes to ever greater - and more dangerous - lengths to chase her losses.
A devastating, heart-wrenching demolition of modern America by a genuinely great writer.
No-one chronicles the failure of the American Dream like Willy. He creates characters who have been chewed up and spat out by a capitalist system designed to keep them striving but never making it.
Never more so than with Lynette, whose fragile existence crumbles around her over two defining days. Stuck in a cycle of work, sleep, work, work, look after her disabled brother, sleep, repeat.... Lynette sees her only way out as buying the decrepit house she shares with her brother and mother. But, when those meager prospects come under threat, she goes to ever greater - and more dangerous - lengths to chase her losses.
A devastating, heart-wrenching demolition of modern America by a genuinely great writer.
August 19, 2021
Failure To Launch
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?
Lynette is most certainly unlucky. A narcissistic mother, exploitative father, severely mentally disabled brother, as well as several frenemies who try to do her in one way or another constitute her social milieu. She’s like the Peanuts cartoon character, Pigpen, raising the dust of chaos wherever she goes.
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.
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.
By then the reader is forced to recognise the truth: Lynette is basically stupid - not just uneducated but really thick. Perhaps everything else in her life is a consequence of that. No one with any common sense would do or agree to the things she does after being betrayed by everyone she knows. Whether this stupidity is a result of genetics, environment of the frequent shots of Jägermeister is unclear. But she leaves home with a piece of homely advice from mom who seems to come to the same conclusion and is tired of having her around: “Isn’t that the American dream? Fuck over whoever is in your way and get what you want.”
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?
Lynette is most certainly unlucky. A narcissistic mother, exploitative father, severely mentally disabled brother, as well as several frenemies who try to do her in one way or another constitute her social milieu. She’s like the Peanuts cartoon character, Pigpen, raising the dust of chaos wherever she goes.
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.
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.
By then the reader is forced to recognise the truth: Lynette is basically stupid - not just uneducated but really thick. Perhaps everything else in her life is a consequence of that. No one with any common sense would do or agree to the things she does after being betrayed by everyone she knows. Whether this stupidity is a result of genetics, environment of the frequent shots of Jägermeister is unclear. But she leaves home with a piece of homely advice from mom who seems to come to the same conclusion and is tired of having her around: “Isn’t that the American dream? Fuck over whoever is in your way and get what you want.”
September 29, 2020
Remarkable, real, and tender, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is a story of America, of the disenfranchised and the still hopeful, of a world littered with artifacts and so little opportunity. Willy Vlautin's characters blaze with honesty, fighting for their slim chance at the American dream, leaving us all to wonder by the end if it is just a charade. This book is an amazing achievement. I highly recommend.
September 27, 2022
4.5 stars
First of all: every last speck of praise for this novel is 100% warranted. It's one of those rare works you can truly call a "gem of a novel."
Are there some really violent scenes? Yes.
Is there an intense focus on a character with mental health issues who honestly can't always control herself and makes some highly questionable moves? Yes. (And don't expect her to explain to you why she made them.)
Is almost every other character a greedy, selfish, lying scumbag who paints themselves as the victim whenever they can to weasel out of anything they can? Yes.
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.
Even our mentally troubled hero, Lynette.
But it all has the ring of truth to it. An incredibly real ring.
Because this is exactly what desperate people DO. They aren't cunning. They aren't smart. They make split second decisions. They hit. They pull a knife. They grab what they can. They run.
They don't think, they ACT.
Sometimes it works out, other times it almost gets them killed. But does that matter when you're desperate and debts are racking up?
If the characters are carved from real life, then the close-to-the-bone, gut-punch dialogue is even more so. For my taste, some of the conversation scenes got *too* verbose and long winded with extraneous detail, but all of it is skillfully delivered to paint a picture of down-and-out America. An America that is coming to realise things will never get better for it and those who should care about what happens to the little guy don't, and haven't for a long time.
You're on your own, friend.
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.
A truly remarkable read.
First of all: every last speck of praise for this novel is 100% warranted. It's one of those rare works you can truly call a "gem of a novel."
Are there some really violent scenes? Yes.
Is there an intense focus on a character with mental health issues who honestly can't always control herself and makes some highly questionable moves? Yes. (And don't expect her to explain to you why she made them.)
Is almost every other character a greedy, selfish, lying scumbag who paints themselves as the victim whenever they can to weasel out of anything they can? Yes.
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.
Even our mentally troubled hero, Lynette.
But it all has the ring of truth to it. An incredibly real ring.
Because this is exactly what desperate people DO. They aren't cunning. They aren't smart. They make split second decisions. They hit. They pull a knife. They grab what they can. They run.
They don't think, they ACT.
Sometimes it works out, other times it almost gets them killed. But does that matter when you're desperate and debts are racking up?
If the characters are carved from real life, then the close-to-the-bone, gut-punch dialogue is even more so. For my taste, some of the conversation scenes got *too* verbose and long winded with extraneous detail, but all of it is skillfully delivered to paint a picture of down-and-out America. An America that is coming to realise things will never get better for it and those who should care about what happens to the little guy don't, and haven't for a long time.
You're on your own, friend.
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.
A truly remarkable read.
September 8, 2021
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.
1) The main character stays paper thin. I never really felt like I understood her or her motivations. Who is she besides someone with mental health issues and a tragic past? She wants to buy a house and help her disables brother.... and? What kind of person is she? What does she like? She is way too trusting, and not very smart. She makes the same mistake over and over again. I literally found myself cursing at her out loud at some point.
2) The tone and pace was uneven. 2/3 of the novel are so action-filled that it's like reading a thriller. The melancholic and slower pace I normally appreciate about Vlautin only appear in the rest of the novel. All the parts about the main character's earlier life, especially the love story, were so much better than the rest. I wanted to read a whole novel about that tragic love story; I found it so moving.
3) Vlautin is great at showing-not-telling when it comes to descriptions, but the dialogue is a little overloaded at times. These really long expository rants took me out of the story a lot.
4) This is a thesis novel about the plight of the poor and working class people and about gentrification. I agree with the thesis, I just don't like thesis novels when the characterisation suffers. At points, this almost veered a little into the 'misery porn' category for me. There's approx. one person in this novel who is good to the main character and doesn't completely fuck her over.
This is a good but very uneven novel. I liked it. At some points it moved me. But I wanted it to be better. I wanted to believe the people in the novel existed, and I didn't.
1) The main character stays paper thin. I never really felt like I understood her or her motivations. Who is she besides someone with mental health issues and a tragic past? She wants to buy a house and help her disables brother.... and? What kind of person is she? What does she like? She is way too trusting, and not very smart. She makes the same mistake over and over again. I literally found myself cursing at her out loud at some point.
2) The tone and pace was uneven. 2/3 of the novel are so action-filled that it's like reading a thriller. The melancholic and slower pace I normally appreciate about Vlautin only appear in the rest of the novel. All the parts about the main character's earlier life, especially the love story, were so much better than the rest. I wanted to read a whole novel about that tragic love story; I found it so moving.
3) Vlautin is great at showing-not-telling when it comes to descriptions, but the dialogue is a little overloaded at times. These really long expository rants took me out of the story a lot.
4) This is a thesis novel about the plight of the poor and working class people and about gentrification. I agree with the thesis, I just don't like thesis novels when the characterisation suffers. At points, this almost veered a little into the 'misery porn' category for me. There's approx. one person in this novel who is good to the main character and doesn't completely fuck her over.
This is a good but very uneven novel. I liked it. At some points it moved me. But I wanted it to be better. I wanted to believe the people in the novel existed, and I didn't.
September 21, 2021
You could say this is a novel about housing affordability in Portland, a story of economic disparity and the graft required to eke out a living. But that might be to sell this story short, it is also a propulsive, noir-ish tale, with some truly memorable characters. It made me want to go out and immerse myself in everything Willy Vlautin has written.
The American dream of homeownership seems particularly unreachable for 30-year-old Lynette. Her troubled teenaged years have left her with bad credit, an anger problem and a mother who has long since given up hope. In between working two jobs and studying at community college Lynette also cares for her developmentally disabled brother. The race to pull together enough money to buy their house before gentrification puts it out of reach, forces Lynette on a journey of the soul. Over two gloomy days, we tour the seedier side of Portland, (no cute food trucks on this excursion), with Lynette in her 1992 Nissan Sentra reclaiming debts and revisiting her troubled past.
Willy Vlautin writes in a refreshingly plain, unsentimental style. The influence of Steinbeck and Carver is clear. Yet there remains the wisp of the crime novel here, with lots of rain, dodgy dealings in the small hours, some kicky action sequences. All in all, it's a tricky novel to categorise.
The only source of brow-furrowing is an unfortunate tendency to impart backstory in longish monologues. However, this niggle is beaten back by an overwhelming sense of authenticity. Is there another author that gives such a convincing voice to those who struggle to pull themselves up from a mire of part-time jobs, exorbitant rents, and seek to take ownership of their own home?
It's a damn fine bit of writing this, staving off the potential to slide into a tale of abject hopelessness by giving the reader just a glimpse of a life with redemptive possibilities.
The American dream of homeownership seems particularly unreachable for 30-year-old Lynette. Her troubled teenaged years have left her with bad credit, an anger problem and a mother who has long since given up hope. In between working two jobs and studying at community college Lynette also cares for her developmentally disabled brother. The race to pull together enough money to buy their house before gentrification puts it out of reach, forces Lynette on a journey of the soul. Over two gloomy days, we tour the seedier side of Portland, (no cute food trucks on this excursion), with Lynette in her 1992 Nissan Sentra reclaiming debts and revisiting her troubled past.
Willy Vlautin writes in a refreshingly plain, unsentimental style. The influence of Steinbeck and Carver is clear. Yet there remains the wisp of the crime novel here, with lots of rain, dodgy dealings in the small hours, some kicky action sequences. All in all, it's a tricky novel to categorise.
The only source of brow-furrowing is an unfortunate tendency to impart backstory in longish monologues. However, this niggle is beaten back by an overwhelming sense of authenticity. Is there another author that gives such a convincing voice to those who struggle to pull themselves up from a mire of part-time jobs, exorbitant rents, and seek to take ownership of their own home?
It's a damn fine bit of writing this, staving off the potential to slide into a tale of abject hopelessness by giving the reader just a glimpse of a life with redemptive possibilities.
May 8, 2022
'I used to always ask myself, Why would a man in his twenties want to live on the street when he could work? The answer is: why not? Why should they bust their ass all day when they know no matter what they do they'll never get ahead?'
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.
His sixth novel to date, published in 2021, The Night Always Comes is arguably his most affecting, and without doubt will leave indelible marks.
Not dissimilar to his previous five novels, Vlautin's deftness in making his characters so impacting is remarkable. Just as in Lean on Pete, in which we become impassioned with the vulnerable Charley, or the tragedy surrounding Horace in Don't Skip Out on Me, here our central character Lynette is equally ineffaceable.
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.
Compelling, bullish and ever tender, an absolute must read.
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.
His sixth novel to date, published in 2021, The Night Always Comes is arguably his most affecting, and without doubt will leave indelible marks.
Not dissimilar to his previous five novels, Vlautin's deftness in making his characters so impacting is remarkable. Just as in Lean on Pete, in which we become impassioned with the vulnerable Charley, or the tragedy surrounding Horace in Don't Skip Out on Me, here our central character Lynette is equally ineffaceable.
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.
Compelling, bullish and ever tender, an absolute must read.
August 30, 2021
Grubby, grotty, and completely mesmerising from start to finish. A truly great crime thriller destined for cult classic status.
January 27, 2023
Noir Was The Night
Review of the Harper Perennial paperback edition (May 17, 2022) of the original Harper hardcover (April 6, 2021)
This book has a deceptive opening but very soon it plunges into a maelstrom of desperation and crime (not all of which is initiated by the protagonist) as she makes a last ditch attempt to salvage a home purchase for her family of a mother and developmentally challenged brother. Lynette is leading a hard scrabble existence with two shift jobs as a baker and a bartender, working to save money towards what she sees as a longed for mark of stability in the fast growing housing market in Portland, Oregon, USA.
When her mother reneges on a deal to make a house loan, Lynette tries to call in all possible debts to make up further funding for the purchase of their rundown house. The overnight attempt takes her on a harrowing journey through sex work, car theft, burglary, safe cracking, and drug dealing, not to mention being the potential victim of two attempted murderous assaults.
Photograph of the exterior of the Hotcake House in Portland, Oregon, one of the locations in "The Night Always Comes". Image sourced from Wikipedia.
This was a compulsively readable thriller which has you rooting for the underdog protagonist all the way, even when she may not be the most likeable character or the maker of the best decisions. Normally the tags of 'noir' and 'hardboiled' are used for the detective genre, but they are completely appropriate for this domestic family drama. My thanks to GR Friend Berengaria's 4.5-5 star review which alerted me to this book.
Soundtrack, Trivia and Links
As author Willy Vlautin is also a musician and songwriter for the band The Delines, the group released a limited edition album as the soundtrack for The Night Always Comes which is freely available for download through a QR code printed on the back of the Harper Perennial paperback. The full track listing can be seen on Discogs and a video single was released as Don't Think Less of Me.
A book trailer which shows some of the locations mentioned in The Night Always Comes can be seen here.
Author Vlautin is interviewed on the book's release by the Poisoned Pen bookstore YouTube channel here.
Author Vlautin is interviewed on the book's release by Oregon Public Broadcasting and you can read the interview at Willy Vlautin’s new novel is a melancholic love letter to working-class Portland.
Review of the Harper Perennial paperback edition (May 17, 2022) of the original Harper hardcover (April 6, 2021)
This book has a deceptive opening but very soon it plunges into a maelstrom of desperation and crime (not all of which is initiated by the protagonist) as she makes a last ditch attempt to salvage a home purchase for her family of a mother and developmentally challenged brother. Lynette is leading a hard scrabble existence with two shift jobs as a baker and a bartender, working to save money towards what she sees as a longed for mark of stability in the fast growing housing market in Portland, Oregon, USA.
When her mother reneges on a deal to make a house loan, Lynette tries to call in all possible debts to make up further funding for the purchase of their rundown house. The overnight attempt takes her on a harrowing journey through sex work, car theft, burglary, safe cracking, and drug dealing, not to mention being the potential victim of two attempted murderous assaults.
Photograph of the exterior of the Hotcake House in Portland, Oregon, one of the locations in "The Night Always Comes". Image sourced from Wikipedia.
This was a compulsively readable thriller which has you rooting for the underdog protagonist all the way, even when she may not be the most likeable character or the maker of the best decisions. Normally the tags of 'noir' and 'hardboiled' are used for the detective genre, but they are completely appropriate for this domestic family drama. My thanks to GR Friend Berengaria's 4.5-5 star review which alerted me to this book.
Soundtrack, Trivia and Links
As author Willy Vlautin is also a musician and songwriter for the band The Delines, the group released a limited edition album as the soundtrack for The Night Always Comes which is freely available for download through a QR code printed on the back of the Harper Perennial paperback. The full track listing can be seen on Discogs and a video single was released as Don't Think Less of Me.
A book trailer which shows some of the locations mentioned in The Night Always Comes can be seen here.
Author Vlautin is interviewed on the book's release by the Poisoned Pen bookstore YouTube channel here.
Author Vlautin is interviewed on the book's release by Oregon Public Broadcasting and you can read the interview at Willy Vlautin’s new novel is a melancholic love letter to working-class Portland.
June 29, 2021
4.5 rounded up
This was one of those books which - whilst not perfect - was the exact thing I wanted to read (and what I wanted it to be) when I picked it up, and put me in one of those predicaments where you don't want to put it down but you also want to make the book last as long as possible so it doesn't have to end and things don't reach the inevitable conclusion (which is maybe not so great for the main character).
I won't go over the plot as the blurb tells you just enough about that, but the book is a literary tour de force, and a portrait of contemporary America and the financial and personal dilemmas many face.
Highly recommended, and I'm excited to check out more of Vlautin's novels. (Side note: I did read Don't Skip Out on Me a year or so ago which I didn't particularly care for, but this felt totally different.)
This was one of those books which - whilst not perfect - was the exact thing I wanted to read (and what I wanted it to be) when I picked it up, and put me in one of those predicaments where you don't want to put it down but you also want to make the book last as long as possible so it doesn't have to end and things don't reach the inevitable conclusion (which is maybe not so great for the main character).
I won't go over the plot as the blurb tells you just enough about that, but the book is a literary tour de force, and a portrait of contemporary America and the financial and personal dilemmas many face.
Highly recommended, and I'm excited to check out more of Vlautin's novels. (Side note: I did read Don't Skip Out on Me a year or so ago which I didn't particularly care for, but this felt totally different.)
December 27, 2021
What I love here is the story's crackling energy — like the thick and expectant air before a storm — the spare but natural prose, the mother, daughter/sister, son/brother trio who break your heart over and over, and the revelation that after years of hipster celebrity and mindless gentrification, Portland has utterly lost its soul. What sits awkwardly for me are the long, explanatory monologues that are hurried substitutes for story and character development, the head-scratching decision to make the protagonist breathtakingly beautiful, as if this would make the reader more sympathetic to her plight, and the nearly over-the-top catastrophes of these lives. I think of Daniel Woodrell's Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone and there was just more time to understand how things got so bad and how Ree was able to pound her way through to survival, in a book at least as bleak and violent. Here, in the urban version, the connections are less well developed and we're told how things were in Lynette's past, expected just to accept.
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.
The structure is a classic quest story: Lynette has just a couple of days to come up with enough money for a down payment on the ramshackle house where she lives with her mom and developmentally disabled brother. Owning this home in overpriced Portland is the one shot they have at escaping the grinding poverty that's ruled their lives. Lynette can't qualify for a mortgage because of bad credit, so the loan is on their mom, who works at a Fred Meyer and is sliding into obesity and alcoholism. Lynette has already saved $80,000 from working multiple jobs, including as an escort. But Mom, in a desperate move to have something nice of her own for the first time in her life, comes home with a brand-new car, blowing apart their barely-held together home loan.
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.
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.
Soulful and gritty, The Night Always Comes is not easy to read, but it's even harder to put down.
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.
The structure is a classic quest story: Lynette has just a couple of days to come up with enough money for a down payment on the ramshackle house where she lives with her mom and developmentally disabled brother. Owning this home in overpriced Portland is the one shot they have at escaping the grinding poverty that's ruled their lives. Lynette can't qualify for a mortgage because of bad credit, so the loan is on their mom, who works at a Fred Meyer and is sliding into obesity and alcoholism. Lynette has already saved $80,000 from working multiple jobs, including as an escort. But Mom, in a desperate move to have something nice of her own for the first time in her life, comes home with a brand-new car, blowing apart their barely-held together home loan.
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.
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.
Soulful and gritty, The Night Always Comes is not easy to read, but it's even harder to put down.
December 20, 2021
I think it is better not to read the synopsis for The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin if you can possibly help it, as it gives away A LOT of what this book is about without leaving much to the imagination. It is a very hard read and in general rather depressing. I couldn't believe the things that were happening to Lynette and my heart was just breaking for her throughout the entire book. It is a really short novel, and the audiobook comes in at a whopping 6-ish hours, but boy does it pack an emotional punch. My mouth dropped open multiple times at the various things Lynette faces, and it was shocking in a very raw sort of way. I am honestly surprised I wasn't in tears for any of this book, but it hit me in other sorts of ways and Vlautin explores greed and desperation to a full extent.
I did listen to the audio which is narrated by Christine Lakin and man was she good. She was the perfect person to be the voice of Lynette and she definitely did a fantastic job of getting the emotion of the story across. This is straight-up literary fiction to me, and there is no mystery, but it did feel very suspenseful since you never know what will happen next. Even though it is basically one bad thing after another and it feels like Lynette will never catch a break, the end does leave the reader feeling hopeful. It left me wishing there was more to the story since the whole thing was so sad, but I am glad it left us with some hope, or I really would have been depressed! I would recommend The Night Always Comes if you are a fan of gritty, emotional reads and don't mind if they have a gloomy/ominous feeling throughout.
I received a complimentary digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
I did listen to the audio which is narrated by Christine Lakin and man was she good. She was the perfect person to be the voice of Lynette and she definitely did a fantastic job of getting the emotion of the story across. This is straight-up literary fiction to me, and there is no mystery, but it did feel very suspenseful since you never know what will happen next. Even though it is basically one bad thing after another and it feels like Lynette will never catch a break, the end does leave the reader feeling hopeful. It left me wishing there was more to the story since the whole thing was so sad, but I am glad it left us with some hope, or I really would have been depressed! I would recommend The Night Always Comes if you are a fan of gritty, emotional reads and don't mind if they have a gloomy/ominous feeling throughout.
I received a complimentary digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Read
July 30, 2022Compelling and well-written, but characters' propensity to say exactly what they think in countless multi-page monologues eventually wore me out.
July 7, 2021
This may be the worst book I've ever read. It's definitely the worst book I've read this year. Besides the plot being terribly unoriginal and extremely depressing, the writing is just not good. All of the characters speak exactly the same way and they all monologue for paragraphs or even pages. Every one of the characters tells someone else to "just listen" and then rants for a page, telling their entire life story over and over again. The dialog is just so ridiculous that it ruins whatever story is trying to be told. It's just really, really bad all around.
December 15, 2021
4.5. Absolutely harrowing and tragic. Very dialogue heavy and melodramatic in a deeply realistic way. This novel follows a mentally ill but hard working woman named Lynnette coping with crime and violence and family issues and working class struggling folks in Portland.
April 28, 2021
Have you ever loved a novel so much and so hard that you are literally at a loss for words when it comes time to say why? (And I make my living with them.) Have you ever loved a novel so much that you're literally afraid to keep turning pages because you're terrified of running out of pages?
That's my experience with THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES. (And, really, every work by Willy Vlautin.) On one level, it's the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Lynette, a woman in her mid-thirties trying frantically to raise the cash she needs to put a down payment on her home in a rapidly gentrifying of Portland, and all the extreme and terrifying things she's forced to go at every step of the way. On another level, it's the most American story of all: a person figuring out what they really want, what they're willing to do to get it, and what illusions they're willing to forgo along the way.
The real genius of Vlautin is that he is so honest, so authentic, that you see nary a whisper of "writing craft" in his work. The prose is there to serve the story; it never lays flat on the page, but it never calls attention to itself through zingy similes or arty metaphor. There's no tweetyworthy zeitgeistiness to it. There's just a great story, and Vlautin's genius is simply this: he rolls it out, and lets it keep rolling and rolling, lets it push itself along on a tide of talk and travel and timely decisions and tortured reflections, and does so utterly without writerly affect. This is pure naturalistic storytelling at its finest, the artist in complete command but never letting it show. That's tougher to do than it looks, but Willy Vlautin is an absolute master of it.
In the end, all I can say is that I'm confident you'll finish this novel and sit back and feel pleasantly stunned, as if you've been hit in the head by the love of your life. In THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is the entirety of human experience — rich and poor, dark and bright, brave and weak, fortunate and not, smart and stupid, awake and stuporous — in a page-turning package that sacrifices no depth in the service of substantive sleekness. It's a damn miracle is what it is.
That's my experience with THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES. (And, really, every work by Willy Vlautin.) On one level, it's the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Lynette, a woman in her mid-thirties trying frantically to raise the cash she needs to put a down payment on her home in a rapidly gentrifying of Portland, and all the extreme and terrifying things she's forced to go at every step of the way. On another level, it's the most American story of all: a person figuring out what they really want, what they're willing to do to get it, and what illusions they're willing to forgo along the way.
The real genius of Vlautin is that he is so honest, so authentic, that you see nary a whisper of "writing craft" in his work. The prose is there to serve the story; it never lays flat on the page, but it never calls attention to itself through zingy similes or arty metaphor. There's no tweetyworthy zeitgeistiness to it. There's just a great story, and Vlautin's genius is simply this: he rolls it out, and lets it keep rolling and rolling, lets it push itself along on a tide of talk and travel and timely decisions and tortured reflections, and does so utterly without writerly affect. This is pure naturalistic storytelling at its finest, the artist in complete command but never letting it show. That's tougher to do than it looks, but Willy Vlautin is an absolute master of it.
In the end, all I can say is that I'm confident you'll finish this novel and sit back and feel pleasantly stunned, as if you've been hit in the head by the love of your life. In THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES is the entirety of human experience — rich and poor, dark and bright, brave and weak, fortunate and not, smart and stupid, awake and stuporous — in a page-turning package that sacrifices no depth in the service of substantive sleekness. It's a damn miracle is what it is.
December 11, 2023
This book is ready-made for film. Maybe Tarantino can adapt it for movie number 10? Dare to dream...
A bleak and haunting tale with a pretty twisted version of a happy ending. Scummy characters abound, looking out for only themselves (even our scrappy protagonist has her moments) and they're willing to hurt/kill/ruin anyone at anytime for any reason; sometimes for no reason at all.
A solid read...but you might need a long, scalding hot shower after the book's final page.
3 1/2 Slimy Stars
A bleak and haunting tale with a pretty twisted version of a happy ending. Scummy characters abound, looking out for only themselves (even our scrappy protagonist has her moments) and they're willing to hurt/kill/ruin anyone at anytime for any reason; sometimes for no reason at all.
A solid read...but you might need a long, scalding hot shower after the book's final page.
3 1/2 Slimy Stars
April 20, 2021
A few hours since I've finished this now, and I have been trying to find reasons not to give it 5 stars.. but I give in.
There are signs of Vlautin's writing maturing, in that the plot is less important to the benefit of time he invests with his characters; that was usually the case, but it is more noticeable here. Also, I think there is a stronger push of the subliminal political message here. Also, I think there is a stronger push of the subliminal political message here. In his afterword he talks of how as a young man he himself saved hard for a deposit on a Portland house ($72,000), how such property used to be affordable to working class people such as he (..was then..), and how the purchase changed his life, he rues that this is no longer possible.
In common though with Vlautin's other work, this is a story about working class people. But whereas other writers may focus on a courageous warm-hearted protagonist who just needs a chance to shine, or a troubled person whose morals have been worn away through unfortunate circumstances, Vlautin uses a different and refreshing approach. As the novel opens, Lynette the protagonist, who lives with her mother and developmentally disabled adult brother, is cobbling together savings and debts, in an effort to buy the house they currently rent, for a little less than market value. A week away from closing the deal, her mother announces she doesn't want to buy at all. What may seem a mundane premise, comes alive as Lynette sets out to rectify the situation, swanning around the city over a weekend looking for money.
As often with Vlautin's writing, it is some of the diversions from the main plot that are highlights.
Its great, and typical Vlautin, who is very much at home writing about impoverished folk and Portland. I would really like to read him, even if only just once, do something quite different. He is such a good writer, I am sure it would be as compelling.
There are signs of Vlautin's writing maturing, in that the plot is less important to the benefit of time he invests with his characters; that was usually the case, but it is more noticeable here. Also, I think there is a stronger push of the subliminal political message here. Also, I think there is a stronger push of the subliminal political message here. In his afterword he talks of how as a young man he himself saved hard for a deposit on a Portland house ($72,000), how such property used to be affordable to working class people such as he (..was then..), and how the purchase changed his life, he rues that this is no longer possible.
In common though with Vlautin's other work, this is a story about working class people. But whereas other writers may focus on a courageous warm-hearted protagonist who just needs a chance to shine, or a troubled person whose morals have been worn away through unfortunate circumstances, Vlautin uses a different and refreshing approach. As the novel opens, Lynette the protagonist, who lives with her mother and developmentally disabled adult brother, is cobbling together savings and debts, in an effort to buy the house they currently rent, for a little less than market value. A week away from closing the deal, her mother announces she doesn't want to buy at all. What may seem a mundane premise, comes alive as Lynette sets out to rectify the situation, swanning around the city over a weekend looking for money.
As often with Vlautin's writing, it is some of the diversions from the main plot that are highlights.
Its great, and typical Vlautin, who is very much at home writing about impoverished folk and Portland. I would really like to read him, even if only just once, do something quite different. He is such a good writer, I am sure it would be as compelling.
June 30, 2021
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.
First, the story: which in some ways, albeit a different continent and different issues, has an uncanny resemblance to Unsettled Ground. (Willy and I did an online event together around this subject.) Lynette lives with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. She struggles to make enough money, saving up so they can buy the house they all live in together. She's made some bad choices in the past and she makes some bad choices in the two days and two nights that the book is set over.
The odd narrative decisions are when back story is told through the dialogue between two characters who already know the back story, or when one character talks for a very long time about what they're thinking, or when Lynette does things - brilliantly described (I love the details around objects especially) - but without any indication of what she's thinking or feeling. So all that was odd, but clearly deliberate.
Still, highly recommended.
First, the story: which in some ways, albeit a different continent and different issues, has an uncanny resemblance to Unsettled Ground. (Willy and I did an online event together around this subject.) Lynette lives with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. She struggles to make enough money, saving up so they can buy the house they all live in together. She's made some bad choices in the past and she makes some bad choices in the two days and two nights that the book is set over.
The odd narrative decisions are when back story is told through the dialogue between two characters who already know the back story, or when one character talks for a very long time about what they're thinking, or when Lynette does things - brilliantly described (I love the details around objects especially) - but without any indication of what she's thinking or feeling. So all that was odd, but clearly deliberate.
Still, highly recommended.
May 1, 2021
For those reading now, 2 stars was generous. I struggled through because I felt it was my penance for having read three FIVE stars stories in a row.
I’m going to have to go for a run to get this negative energy out of my brain.
Suggest: move on.
I’m going to have to go for a run to get this negative energy out of my brain.
Suggest: move on.
May 18, 2021
Thoughts sure.
January 29, 2021
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.
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.
When I finished I was like:
• Is there a book two?
• What the heck did I just read?
• Why haven’t I heard of this author before?
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.
But I only have one question. Where’s my ending????
Thanks to Harper Audio via Netgalley for this audiobook. I’ve voluntarily written this review. All opinions are my own.
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.
When I finished I was like:
• Is there a book two?
• What the heck did I just read?
• Why haven’t I heard of this author before?
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.
But I only have one question. Where’s my ending????
Thanks to Harper Audio via Netgalley for this audiobook. I’ve voluntarily written this review. All opinions are my own.
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