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Day for Night

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

From the author of Ice Diaries, winner of the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival Grand Prize, praised by the New York Times as “stunningly written” and a Guardian Best Book of 2018.

An unflinching exploration of love and boundaries in Brexit-crazed London.

Richard Cottar is a respected independent film writer and director; his wife, Joanna, is his increasingly successful and wealthy producer. Together they are about to embark on a film about the life of Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish intellectual who killed himself in northern Spain while on the run from the Nazis in 1940. In what looks set to be the last year of Britain’s membership of the European Union, Benjamin’s story of exile and statelessness is more relevant than ever. But Richard and Joanna’s symbiotic life takes a sudden turn when they cast an intelligent, sexually ambiguous young actor in the role of Walter Benjamin. In a climate of fear and a bizarre, superheated year redolent of sex and hidden desire, Richard and Joanna must confront their relationship, Benjamin’s tragic history, and the future of their country.

Taking its cue from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Day for Night is an unsettling, riveting story of reversals — of gender, power, and history.

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    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2021

      Taking its title from the 1973 film by Fran�ois Truffaut, this new novel from award winner McNeil (Ice Diaries)--like Truffaut's Day for Night--chronicles the making of a film. Richard Cottar is a middle-aged British director of art house films; he's married to Joanna, a successful producer. Approaching 50, he feels compelled to make a film about the German Jewish intellectual and writer Walter Benjamin, who took his own life in Spain in 1940 while fleeing the Nazis. During casting, Richard finds himself taken with (professionally and otherwise) the charismatic, sexually fluid Elliot, a young actor recommended for the role of Benjamin; their growing relationship soon drives his marriage to the breaking point. When Richard suddenly dies at his 50th birthday party, Joanna decides to finish his film. She soon forms her own relationship with Elliot as the pair travel across Europe while filming. VERDICT Set in 2018, on the eve of Brexit, the novel offers a play of light and dark figures as it moves from the art of filmmaking to Benjamin's sense of stateless and impending doom, which finds an echo in Richard and Joanna's foreboding about their marriage and the consequences of Brexit. A captivating mix of angst and wry humor.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

      Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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  • English

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