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The Night Always Comes

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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. 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. I do not travel in intellectual circles and I do not have the opportunity to speak with individuals who have a great interest in reading. Therefore my personal experience may be skewed. However I am beginning to feel that Willie Vlautin is one of the best modern American writers of fiction that I NEVER hear anyone speak about. I accidentally came upon him when reading a novel by George Pelecanos, “The Man Who Came Uptown”.

Author Vlautin is interviewed on the book's release by the Poisoned Pen bookstore YouTube channel here.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.

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. The novel, Vlautin’s sixth, stalls out during its many long monologues spelling out exactly what each character is thinking in clunky detail. Vlautin’s etchings of the city’s poor, white population are at times overwrought, especially around the topic of weight, as are the inner lives of anyone who’s not the main character. That tendency is extra egregious when it comes to Lynette’s mother, a dreary antagonist whose motives no number of monologues manage to three-dimensionalize. 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.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. Most people don't care about doing good. Most people just push you out of the way and grab what they want." Amazing . . . Vlautin hit the nail on the head with this. I could not stop thinking about the characters and where the story would take them.’ Between looking after her brother, working two low-paid jobs, and trying to take part-time college classes, Lynette is dangerously tired. Every penny she's earned for years, she's put into savings, trying to scrape together enough to take out a mortgage on the house she rents with her mother. Finally becoming a homeowner in their rapidly gentrifying Portland neighbourhood could offer Lynette the kind of freedoms she's never had. But, when the plan is derailed, Lynette must embark on a desperate odyssey of hope and anguish. 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.

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