Guest review by Doug Johnstone: THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES by Willy Vlautin

 

"Even as a writer in a similar genre I couldn’t predict how Vlautin would end this beautiful but excruciating tale. But when it comes, the ending is just perfect."

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Photograph by Duncan McGlynn

Doug Johnstone is the author of thirteen novels, most recently The Great Silence. His previous book, The Big Chill was longlisted for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and three, A Dark Matter, Breakers and The Jump, were shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions over the last two decades including festivals, libraries, universities, schools, prisons and a funeral directors.

Doug is a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow and works as a mentor and manuscript assessor for many organisations, including The Literary Consultancy, Scottish Book Trust and New Writing North. He’s been an arts journalist for over twenty years and has also written many short stories and screenplays. He is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club.

Willy Vlautin is something of a hidden gem of American fiction. He is occasionally blessed (and maybe cursed) by that phrase ‘a writer’s writer’, but that might give the wrong impression of him as someone who is showy and flamboyant in his writing style. Nothing could be further from the truth – Vlautin’s novels contain the cleanest and clearest prose around, simple yet devastatingly effective. He brings to mind the words of Orwell, that good writing should be like a windowpane. It feels as if you can see straight through Willy’s words to the story, the characters and the pain he puts them through.

The Night Always Comes is Vlautin’s sixth novel. His previous outings have all been heartfelt examinations of the dark underbelly of the American dream – stories that look at the downtrodden and hard-done-by people at the bottom of that country’s society, and how they cope with the hardships that their situations throw at them. This latest book sees him finessing this formula masterfully, while also marrying it to a breathless thriller plot that feels like it owes a debt to the classic American noir canon.

The beating heart of the book is Lynette, a thirty-year-old with a troubled past, currently working three jobs, living with her mother and caring for her older brother who has learning difficulties. The book is set in Portland in the recent past, as the city is being rapidly gentrified, pricing people like Lynette out of the housing market and forcing them out of the city.

Lynette’s plans to scrape together enough cash to buy the house she rents are scuppered when her mother gets cold feet. Because of her dubious history, Lynette has no credit rating and needs her mother on board. She is left trying to claw back money that she’s owed from various less than savoury people, taking her on a long dark night of the soul as she travels across the changing city getting deeper and deeper into trouble.

The whole book takes place over two nights, as Lynette is forced to make hard decisions, then is forced to deal with the consequences of those decisions. One of her jobs is as a part-time sex-worker, and when she asks a rich returning client for a loan, his disgusted reaction forces her to take matters into her own hands for once. From there it’s a classic noir trajectory, as the momentum of her actions becomes impossible to resist.

From the opening few pages this is a heart-in-the-mouth read, both in terms of the action and the depth of empathy that Vlautin conjures up for Lynette. It’s impossible not to care about what happens to her even as she makes terrible mistakes, and even as a writer in a similar genre I couldn’t predict how Vlautin would end this beautiful but excruciating tale. But when it comes, the ending is just perfect.

The framing of Lynette’s story against the backdrop of rampant commercialism and consumerism in a modern American city allows Vlautin some social commentary, but it’s handled deftly and never polemical, always in service of his story.

This is a short novel, but one that takes structural and stylistic risks too. There are elements here that go against the standard creative writing lessons, things that shouldn’t work but just do because of Vlautin’s care and attention to the words on the page. There’s a large section of Lynette’s backstory inserted later on, not something I usually care for but it works brilliantly here. Then there is a lengthy discussion near the end between Lynette and her mother that by rights should bore the reader at a time when action is required, but which actually becomes a profound treatise on how we live our lives and relate to others.

As a writer, it can become harder to be blown away by others’ work when you can see the nuts and bolts of what they’re doing. But sometimes a book is just so good that you’re blown away. This is just such a book.

The Night Always Comes is published by Faber.

Doug Johnstone's  A Dark Matter was the choice of our birthday guest Val McDermid. Read her review here.

Fifth Anniversary special guest: VAL McDERMID and A DARK MATTER by Doug Johnstone

 

"The set-up sounded like a delicious prospect ... And so it proved. It had me at the first line."

Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books to date across the globe and has been translated into more than 40 languages. She is perhaps best known for her Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. Her most recent TV series Traces aired in a BBC1 primetime slot in January of this year, and a second series is currently in production, as is ITV’s adaptation of Karen Pirie, based on Val’s cold case detective of the same name.

1979, the beginning of a new series for Val, featuring journalist Allie Burns, is published on 19th August. She has also published Resistance, a graphic novelisation of her critically acclaimed radio drama, illustrated by Kathryn Briggs, this May.

Val was chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017 and has served as a judge for both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2018 Man Booker Prize. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She is Visiting Professor in the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She is an experienced broadcaster and much sought-after columnist and commentator across print media.

Val is also lead vocalist with The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, possibly the only band made up of crime writers ever to play at Glastonbury!   

McDermid fans - what's your favourite title? Tell us in the comments!

When I first heard about Doug Johnstone’s proposed trilogy of novels about three generations of women running a funeral home and a private eye agency, I couldn’t wait to read it. I’ve long been an admirer of his spare and insightful prose, and the set-up sounded like a delicious prospect.

And so it proved. It had me at the first line: ‘Her Dad took much longer to burn than she expected.’ Not, it turns out, the aftermath of a murder, but the garden funeral pyre of undertaker Jim Skelf.

A Dark Matter has its origins in the six months Johnstone spend as writer in residence in a funeral home in Edinburgh, where this book is set. He spoke to as wide a range of employees and employers as possible, and that gives the book its authenticity and authority. There’s nothing gruesome or voyeuristic here; but we never doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s emotionally intelligent and it’s a page-turner too.

The triple-stranded plot revolves around the three women of the Skelf family. (‘Skelf’ is a Scots word that means either a thin splinter of wood or a troublesome person.) Dorothy, the matriarch, is a transplant from California who married Jim, the owner of the long-established family business. A healthy 70-year-old, she deals with her grief and stress behind her attic drum kit or on her yoga mat.

For her daughter Jenny, Jim’s death feels very close to the final straw. She’s lost her job as a journalist and her marriage imploded afer she discovered husband Craig was cheating on her. She can’t afford the rent so she has no choice but to move back home and take over her dad’s role in the business, nursing her bitterness to keep it warm.

The youngest Skelf woman is Hannah, 20 years old, studying quantum physics at Edinburgh University, in a lesbian relationship with Indy who works in the funeral home. Bright and sparky, her light has been dimmed by her grandfather’s death.

Of course, in fiction, a death in the family always opens the door on secrets and lies. Jim’s ashes are barely cold when Dorothy is stricken by the discovery that her late husband had been making secret payments to another woman for years. It’s hard to resist the conclusion that her happy marriage was nothing more than an edifice, but she’s determined to get to the truth.

Jenny meanwhile has taken on what appears at first to be a straightforward PI case of establishing adultery, an investigation that has painful undertones every step of the way.

And Hannah’s grief is made all the sharper when her best friend disappears. As she tries to unravel what happened to Mel, she finds a shocking trail of dark revelations.

The three narrative strands are expertly woven, building tension that never lets up on a journey of discovery that’s as much about three women learning about themselves and each other. The dynamic between the three generations is all too credible and never sentimental. Few male authors write women really well, but Doug Johnstone has created three very different but credible female characters who all resonated with me in their very different ways.

The final plum in the pudding for me is the setting. This is not the Edinburgh the tourist sees – it’s a living variegated city and Doug Johnstone opens doors and windows on a capital we don’t always see. He’s a writer whose books always have a strong sense of place, but never more than in this trilogy. The good news is that the second book in the series, The Big Chill, is already out, and the third, The Great Silence, will be published in August 2021.

A Dark Matter is published by Orenda Books.