The Night Always Comes

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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. 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.

The Delines are a soul country band from Portland, Oregon formed in 2015 with four previous studio albums to their name. Willy Vlautin is the songwriter for the band and previously with Richmond Fontaine with over 15 albums released and UK, European wide fans where they tour regularly. Photograph of the exterior of the Hotcake House in Portland, Oregon, one of the locations in "The Night Always Comes". Image sourced from Wikipedia. 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.Willy 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. 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. Most people don't care about doing good. Most people just push you out of the way and grab what they want." 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.

Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. In his sixth novel, The Night Always Comes, Vlautin explores the idea of the American dream and the impacts of gentrification, greed, and opportunism on ordinary, working class lives. This scorching, noir-ish tale follows a young woman, Lynette, over the course of two days and nights as she endeavors to secure the money needed to buy the house she rents with her mother and developmentally disabled brother. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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?

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. 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?' 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.) Willy Vlautin is not known for happy endings, but there's something here that defies the downward pull. In the end, Lynette is pure life force: fierce and canny and blazing through a city that no longer has space for her, and it's all Portland's loss." -- Portland Monthly Magazine

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.’