Rebecca Dinerstein

Have you bitten into a hamburger, and as the savory flavor hits your taste buds you think, "Wow! This is really good!"? You take another bite and say to yourself, "This is fantastic! It's perfectly grilled with just the right amount of seasoning." You take your third bite, and spit it back out on the plate because you realize the inside of the burger is raw. That's a pretty good summation of "The Sunlit Night"

The book follows the story of two characters from NYC -- Frances and Yasha -- who for different reasons make their way to a Norwegian town within the Arctic Circle. Frances, Yahsa, and their families are wonderfully drawn characters -- quirky, unique, and neurotic in the way that only New Yorkers can be.

While the characters were in New York, I couldn't wait to read more. Once they got to Norway, the author lost me. The Norwegian characters didn't seem distinct. The plot meandered and didn't have much of a point. I was tempted to quit.

The author ultimately pulled it together at the end, but by then I had lost interest. "The Sunlit Night" is the author's debut novel. She had some beautiful turns of phrase and other scenes that were laugh-out-loud funny. I imagine that over time her writing will evolve and I look forward to seeing what else she publishes. 2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (altro)

I keep clicking on four stars, and then five stars, and then four stars...which maybe means that a 4.5 is in order.

I did not realize that this book was funny until about one hour in, and then my experience of it did a 180. It's hilarious, like, almost-did-a-spit-take, chortled-to-myself-on-my-morning-walk hilarious, and the audio is narrated by Jenny Slate, which doesn't hurt at all. (side bar: I found out while poking around that Rebecca Dinerstein Knight is also the author of The Sunlit Night, which was made into a movie. I cried while watching the trailer at least twice; Jenny Slate also stars in that movie.) But, crucially, it's funny in an unexpected way. Usually when books are funny they announce it with their cadence, but here, I wasn't sure if a sentence was going to end with a pang or with a laugh.

I did find there to be a lot of sentences that did so much inverting of words and subverting of expectations that I could see how a reader could get tired of that; I thought the book was just short enough that it didn't matter, and I was always waiting for the next joke so I didn't care. The central relationship is so bizarre that maybe folks didn't find it believable. But I think the book is ultimately about...desire? The fact that I know that it's definitely about something but am not sure what makes it a high-star book in my mind, because I know that I'll be able to keep going back to it and keep thinking about it for a while.… (altro)