The Night Always Comes: A Novel

by Willy Vlautin

Hardcover, 2021

Call number

FIC VLA

Collection

Fiction

Genres

General Fiction

Publication

Harper (2021), 224 pages

Description

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 has 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. The story 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. This heart wrenching portrait 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?… (more)

Member reviews

LibraryThing member arubabookwoman

If you've read Willy Vlautin you know he writes of society's downtrodden, those living on the underbelly, usually working hard scraping together a living, but unable to make ends meet, unable to catch a break, but decent, kind human beings. The characters in this, his latest novel fit that mold.

Lynette lives with her mother and her older brother who is mentally disabled in a rundown house in Portland. Their landlord has decided to sell, and has offered to sell to them at an unbelievably low price since the house is in such poor shape. Lynette can just afford it if her mother chips in, and her mother has promised to jointly purchase the house with her. Then at the last minute, her mother reneges and Lynette spends the next 2 nights and days desparately attempting to pull together the funds to salvage the deal.
While this is a typical Vlautin set up, I found that as a whole the book did not achieve the standards of the previous books I have read by this author. The characters did not come to life. Instead of dialogue among the characters, the characters make speeches delineating the ills of society that Vlautin is attempting to expose. This makes for a very weak, and frequently boring novel.
While I cared for Lynette, and there's a strong story here, this is just not Vlautin's best work. He's trying too hard to make a point, rather than tell a story.

2 stars

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LibraryThing member lauralkeet

Lynette’s life has been one struggle after another, but finally she sees a light at the end of the tunnel: after three years working two jobs, she has saved enough money to join her mother in buying the house they currently rent. Stability is a top concern, especially due to the care needs of

Lynette’s developmentally disabled brother Kenny. But then her mother backs out of the deal, setting Lynette off on a manic attempt to amass more funds of her own. Over the course of one long night she tracks down previous “benefactors”, demands repayment of loans made to friends, and tries to make money off of a couple of unexpected finds. Each encounter reveals more of Lynette’s back story, a tale of family instability, financial hardship, and mental illness. As the night wears on Lynette becomes increasingly desperate, putting herself in danger more than once.

Set in Portland, Oregon, Willy Vlautin shows the dark side of rapid gentrification: the displacement of an economic class that was already struggling. Survival requires working multiple jobs, some of which are illegal. Housing is substandard and living arrangements are often temporary, pieced together with friends or even mere acquaintances.

Although the pacing and suspense drew me in from the start, this book was by no means an easy read and left me with a lot to think about.

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LibraryThing member davidroche

Discovering Willy Vlautin’s books a couple of years ago was one of those fantastic things that makes you wonder how you did without him before. His latest book, The Night Always Comes (Faber) is a hard-hitting story of Lynette, who lives with her chain smoking in front of the TV mother and looks

after her brother who is grown up but with the mental ability of a three year old. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel but it never seems within reach. It’s grim, occasionally shocking, but also uplifting in places with amazing resilience on show. As always, the author’s writing is wonderful and the tale totally absorbing. If you haven’t discovered Willy Vlautin yet, dive in!

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LibraryThing member AMKitty

Touted as the example of capitalism as the problem with our society, this novella is a better example of the envious and “poor me” mindset that is the problem with our society.

The characters make bad decisions and then whine about their crappy lives, never taking responsibility for their own

choices. The MC is a troubled 30 y/o living in her mother’s rented home after blowing up a good relationship. Her developmentally disabled brother is still at home when he would do better and be less burden on her mother if he were in a group home with appropriate support.

When the mother backs out of helping buy the rental from their landlord, the MC dithers about trying to figure out what to do about losing her living space. She can’t afford to live in Portland. For pity’s sake, she saved nearly $100k over three years by prostituting herself. Her skill set includes baking - not exactly a non-portable skill.

It takes someone outside her circle of loser, drugged-out “friends” to tell her to leave the city for a place where she can live on her income. If this story is typical of the attitude and outlook of big city dwellers, I’ve never been happier that I escaped that mindset (and environment) years ago.

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LibraryThing member brangwinn

Desperation seeps through the words of Vlautin’s work. Like so many growing urban areas, Portland Oregon’s working class is being forced out by gentrification. I felt like in a Tennessee Williams story not set in the south. Lynette, is trying to attend community college, care for her disabled

older brother and pay the rent on their falling down house. Her mother seems to have given up and Lynette finds herself caught in a position where she can make the down payment on their and makes some either stupid or courageous decisions on how to get the money. And as the title indicates, this is not a happy story. At the end, the reader is left to decide what will happen to Lynette. Do you see her glass as half empty or half full? I listened to the audiobook narrated by Christine Lakin and highly recommend it, but I suggestion you choose a time when you can dedicate to listening to the book. Once started, the mental picture created by the narration and the author’s descriptions will make it hard to put down.

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LibraryThing member Beth.Clarke

Although very different than Don't Skip Out on Me, I loved this Vlautin book, too. It is set in present day Portland and shows a broken protagonist going after her American Dream. The characters are deep and the plot is full of conflict. It's short and just impeccable storytelling.

LibraryThing member jgcorrea

Plotted in a very American, down-and-out milieu, handsomely made but tediously plotted, with Vanessa Kirby in every frame, Night Always Comes sunsets long before we get there. Prolific TV director Benjamin Caron‘s self-serious movie keeps digging itself into a hole, first with its narrative, then

with its heroine’s increasingly lurid backstory, until, like the anti-heroine, it can’t claw its way out. Night Always Comes tries to be both seat-edge action thriller and searing social issue drama and while Caron is able to squeeze suspense out of the early, frenetic moments, there’s not enough emotional weight to the more human final act.

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LibraryThing member datrappert

I hope Vlautin didn't have to live through this to write it! This is a harrowing story of survival in post-boom Portland, Oregon. At first, we side with the 30-year protagonist, saddled with a older brother with severe mental disabilities and a mother who seems to do nothing but smoke, complain,

and buy stuff she can't afford. But then comes a scene between the mother and daughter where the truth about the daughter comes out. Wow. It's as good as the scene in Mike Leigh's movie Life is Sweet. The novel then takes a more melodramatic turn and lots of things happen that aren't so good, but the daughter doesn't give up as she struggles to overcome past failures and find a future for herself. This is powerful powerful stuff. Vlautin isn't just a musician who writes novels. He's a novelist of the first rank.

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