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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If I could, I would give this zero stars. I can't even in good conscience call this a book. For something to be a book, you need a plot, and that was entirely absent here! Perhaps the last 15-20% of the book contained some semblance of a plot but that's far too little too late. There were characters introduced that didn't contribute anything at all and too many asides of the radio program that did nothing at all to further any kind of story. Pages and pages of bizarre descriptions that had no point other than to BE bizarre.
Don't get me wrong, I like weird things! I like weird things that lead to interesting characters or plots or situations! I enjoy unusual scenarios that I haven't come across before when they further a story along! Plastic flamingoes that if touched can send you back in time? I'd read that story! A woman who can't turn older than 19? Sign me up! But those examples are not relevant to anything else at all in this book other than to be another example of just how wacky the town is. This was weird just to be weird. Every other sentence here was mired down with a strange thing that virtually had nothing to do with anything other than for the authors to feel pleased with how creative they could be.
And before you ask, no, I haven't listened to the podcast. If it's anything like this mess, I never will.
Don't get me wrong, I like weird things! I like weird things that lead to interesting characters or plots or situations! I enjoy unusual scenarios that I haven't come across before when they further a story along! Plastic flamingoes that if touched can send you back in time? I'd read that story! A woman who can't turn older than 19? Sign me up! But those examples are not relevant to anything else at all in this book other than to be another example of just how wacky the town is. This was weird just to be weird. Every other sentence here was mired down with a strange thing that virtually had nothing to do with anything other than for the authors to feel pleased with how creative they could be.
And before you ask, no, I haven't listened to the podcast. If it's anything like this mess, I never will.
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Actual rating 4.5
There are so many quotes I need to go back and highlight that I probably need to just read it all again.
I really wasn’t able to get into the Night Vale podcasts actually, I probably got about 3 in before I gave up, but I had already been on a wait list for this book. I am so glad I help out and read it. There’s a different narrative style in the book but it still maintains the same voice as the podcasts. It was random and cooky but eventually I started to realize how much social commentary was laced through every page. The awareness and abstract imagery used to accomplish its expression was really enjoyable for me. It requires a level of attention, context, and informal connection to get the messages being given over in Welcome to Night Vale.
Quirky, creepy, and funny.
I recommend to anyone who likes weird.
There are so many quotes I need to go back and highlight that I probably need to just read it all again.
I really wasn’t able to get into the Night Vale podcasts actually, I probably got about 3 in before I gave up, but I had already been on a wait list for this book. I am so glad I help out and read it. There’s a different narrative style in the book but it still maintains the same voice as the podcasts. It was random and cooky but eventually I started to realize how much social commentary was laced through every page. The awareness and abstract imagery used to accomplish its expression was really enjoyable for me. It requires a level of attention, context, and informal connection to get the messages being given over in Welcome to Night Vale.
Quirky, creepy, and funny.
I recommend to anyone who likes weird.
I've been a fan of the podcast for while, so seeing it expanded into a full-length novel is even better. That said, I purposefully listened to the audiobook because Cecil Baldwin's narration is wonderful, and considering he's the voice of the podcast, it's so appropriate for him to be telling you this tale. There are sections where it lapses into second-person, directly addressing you and telling you this story like a chummy confidante. I really recommend it, since some sequences work so much better with the narrator talking, imploring, chiding; and the "voice of Night Vale" sequences with in-universe Cecil Palmer works so well, little echoes and excerpts from the radio show (i.e. the podcast) reflecting the events of the novel. One of my favourite examples of the non-traditional narration:
Which is also a nice segue to discuss the casual, offhand weirdness of Night Vale: Josh is a shapeshifter, and it's whatever. His mom scolds him for not having hands when she's trying to teach him how to drive. Everyone in this town has learned to take its (often lethal) eccentricities unflinchingly, without batting an eye -- and that adaptability even comes up later: "The problem is that people do not multiply. There is never suddenly more of a person." "Of course there is. Look at me. I dunno. Where I'm from, you just kind of roll with things. I guess I assumed this place would be like that too."
People make a ton of comparisons for this series in general, so I'm just going to echo Swankivy's review: it's like Twin Peaks meets Lovecraft meets Douglas Adams, in terms of tongue-in-cheek bizarreness mingled with uncanny horror.
Our two protagonists, Jackie Fierro and Diane Crayton, are fantastic -- and I love seeing a book led by two women of colour(!), one of them explicitly mixed-race. Heteronormativity is never a thing in this universe either; Josh has crushes on boys and girls alike, which is fine, and he considers the possibility that his single mother could date either a man or woman, which is also fine, and there's even a nod to asexuality.
The book is predictably funny: I often found myself barking a laugh while listening to this. And it is genuinely scary: there were a couple scenes, notably the first sightings of the blond man & Jackie's first meeting with her mother, which sent chills down my spine. It evokes the uncanny, that subtle creeping sense of something being wrong (or at least, more wrong than usual in the typical wrongness of NV).
I expected all of that. What I did not expect was the feelsy ruminations on growing up as a mixed-race girl, which knocked me down and had me teary on the subway. (Seriously, props to Fink/Cranor for nailing it. It's not every day a white male author can pinpoint that alienation, the micro-aggressions, the issues with identity and not feeling fully enough of one thing or the other. It touches on female body image as well, and the way others make it their business how you look or what you are, when it is none of their goddamn business.)
I also didn't expect all the parent/child feelings. It turns out the focus, the core, the very heart of this novel is single mothers, parents and children, abandonment, found family, and growing up. It was super poignant.
Relatedly, some ruminations on the ending: The fact that the whole climax turns out to be
Also, Jackie and Diane spend so much time apart in this book, so when they join forces and team up it is so satisfying: this arc of growing from getting on each others' nerves, to supporting one another, saving each others' lives, to becoming family of sorts: but more importantly emotionally validating each other. Jackie→Diane re: being abandoned by her baby-daddy, affirming that that was a shitty thing to do and that is his fault, not Diane's; and Diane→Jackie re: being tough and brave in ways that she herself isn't, having strengths that the adult doesn't, and how she shouldn't be denigrated or condescended to just because she's a teenager.
Also also, I just love Jackie Fierro so much. I can't express it enough. She's resourceful, determined, sarcastic, exasperated by useless adults, and I adore her.
The writing is often simple/conversational, but also surprisingly literary at times. Again, I think it's aided by the audiobook -- having read some of my favourite quotes in text, it's just not the same without the emotion that Baldwin infuses in the words.
Do you need to listen to the podcast beforehand? The novel mostly stands on its own because they contextualise references to characters/locations/past events, but I still say yes -- at least listen to 2-3 episodes first, if only to get the gist of the town of Night Vale & its humour, and encounter its characters before meeting them here (Old Woman Josie, the Erikas, Steve Carlsberg, etc). I think it's more rewarding that way. I fell out of listening to the podcast ages ago, but it still felt like meeting old friends, and I loved seeing them in a wider scope than Cecil's radio show.
In short: Warm, funny, scary, heartwarming, a little gutting. Highly recommended.
I also compared [b:American Elsewhere|14781178|American Elsewhere|Robert Jackson Bennett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340758848s/14781178.jpg|20434248] to WTNV when I first read it, so I'd now like to recommend AE to anyone who likes this book; it's largely to do with motherhood and weirdness in a small, eerie desert town too.
Despite listening to the audiobook, I ALSO bought the ebook so I could nab the quotes more accurately, which is a sign of how much I liked them. So. Favourite quotes below (a lot of them are from the ending, just because I loved it so much):
***
Diane's parents are also two different races. It matters which races, but it matters only to Diane and her parents and their family and friends, not to those who do not know them. Not everyone gets to know everything about everybody.
Growing up in the Southwest, Diane saw a few mixed-race parents, mixed-race children, but she did not always have the opportunity or inclination to befriend these families. When she was a kid, friends were still determined by City Council decree, based on the numerology of each child's name, which had been considered the most solid foundation for a lasting friendship.
Sometimes she was teased, called terrible names by other children. Sometimes, those children were not the same race as one of her parents. Conversely, those same children were often the same race as her other parent.
As Diane became a teenager, she continued to hear not only about her race but also about her body.
She was a girl, not yet a woman. She was fifteen years old.
Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl of mixed-race parents.
That's pretty good. That's very close, she might say to anyone who described what she looked like. Diane didn't know what she looked like. She never cared to know. Many people would tell her anyway.
When her body won the race to womanhood against her person, Diane began to hear that she was tall, short, fat, skinny, ugly, sexy, smiled too much, smiled too little, had bad hair, had beautiful hair, had something in her teeth, dressed nice, dressed cheap, had duck feet, had elegant feet. She was too dark. She was too pale.
She heard a lot of different descriptions of her, and she took them all as truth.
You must never need to get any sun, Diane, a person might say as they playfully (and jealously) batted their sleeved arm at her. You don't look like who you are, Diane, a different person might say as they playfully (and scoldingly) batted their unsleeved arm at her.
Teasing about race came less and less. Or rather, it disguised itself as simple assessment. You sound like a regular person on the phone, someone might say to her on the phone.
***
"I'm not afraid," she declared, and she wasn't. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.
***
A warning to our listeners: There have been reports of counterfeit police officers on the roads, who, instead of looking after our interests, work under arbitrary authority to unfairly target and extort those who are least able, societally, to fight back. If you see one of these FalsePolice, act right away by shrugging and thinking What am I gonna do? and then seeing if anything funny is on Twitter.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: OH MAN. A nice little barbed point about police brutality, just casually slipped in there.]
***
Mostly she contented herself with Josh, who was not a friend, and was often not even friendly, but who filled her life until it couldn't fit much else. She looked with excitement and unease to the day when he would grow old enough that her heart could empty a bit of him and there would be a space left where someone else could fit, although she couldn't imagine who.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: PARENT/CHILD FEELINGS]
***
"I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son.
"Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you."
***
[NOTE FROM JULIE: The below from Jackie's mother is a really really long excerpt, but that's because it wrecked me.]
"Jackie, what I want you to understand, about both me and Diane, is this. It's not easy raising a child in Night Vale. Things go strange often. There are literal monsters here. Most towns don't have literal monsters, I think, but we do.
"You were my baby. But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don't, and anyway they change. They go to high schools, where they learn dangerous things. They grow into adults, and become dangerous things.
"But none of that is as difficult as the main thing. We all know it, but most of you don't spend any time thinking about the consequences of it. Time doesn't work in Night Vale.
"You were a child, and then you were a teenager, and then you were old enough that I thought it might be time for you to run my pawnshop for me. Just some days. Just sometimes. I could use the time off, after running it for years while also raising a child on my own.
"I taught you how pawning an item works. ‘Pawnshops in Night Vale work like this,' I said. I showed you the hand washing, and the chanting, and the dying for a little while, and how to write out a ticket. I showed you how to bury the doors at night so they wouldn't get stolen. I showed you this and then you started running the shop on your own, and I was so proud.
"But time doesn't work in Night Vale. And so one day I woke up to find you had run that shop for decades. Centuries, even. I'm not sure. You held on to the pawnshop but let go of me. I happened to offer eleven dollars to the first customer we helped together, and in the years of being nineteen you forgot that moment between us and only retained the offer of eleven dollars as a meaningless, unchangeable ritual. People in town couldn't remember a time when you weren't the one running the store. But I could. Because, from my point of view, you've only been running it a couple months. It's all so fresh for me. The course of your life is so linear. But meanwhile you. It had been so long for you that you'd forgotten me, and forgotten the house you moved out of last month. Your entire childhood, gone for everyone but me. All those years spent with me. All those years I gave up everything to spend with you."
Her mother was crying. Jackie suddenly remembered that her mother's name was Lucinda. Lucinda was crying. Jackie was crying too, but wiping it away as quickly as it came, even now uncomfortable with the feeling of it.
"Dear, be kind to the mothers of Night Vale. Have pity on us. It'll be no easier for Diane. Things go strange here. Your children forget you, and the courses of their lives get frozen. Or they change shapes every day, and they think that just because they look completely different you won't be able to recognize them. But you always will. You always know your child, even when your child doesn't know you.
"Maybe Josh thinks it's right to run away. Maybe you do too. But all I know is Diane is in the same place I am. We don't have our children. We have the faint, distorted echoes of our children that this town sent back to us."
***
"Troy is my father?"
Jackie perched uneasily in her chair.
Lucinda sighed. "Depends on what you mean by father, dear. He contributed some genetics to you, yes. Never was much good for anything else."
***
"Maybe the problem isn't with Troy. Maybe the problem is with you. Maybe if you were a better mayor, you wouldn't be forgotten. Good deeds don't go unnoticed. If there was an economy and good roads and schools, no one would try to elect a new leader every few months."
The man in the tan jacket's eyes darkened. Jackie saw his eyes. They were unforgettable.
"And maybe, just maybe," Diane said, her hand waving in asynchronous rhythm to her speech, "a good father only has to be a good father, not a good mayor, not a man with a memorable face. Look at yourself, Evan, or whatever the fuck your name is. Josh, I'm sorry I cursed. Evan, be accountable to your wife and family, and they will care enough to know who you are. Govern your city, and you won't have to infect mine. Be a father to your child, and you won't have to steal mine."
***
"This is not about King City and it's not about Troy's children. It's about Troy. He has infected King City with our town's weirdness."
"Asshole."
"Exactly, Jackie. What an asshole. And what an asshole this guy is." She pointed at the asshole in the tan jacket.
***
"You have helped many people with your many skills, but also you're an irresponsible little shit. Both of those are true. Truth can be contradictory. You are not forgiven your lapses by your nonlapses. How many children do you have? How many have you left behind? Forget it, I don't care. What I care about is: What is Jackie's mother's name? How old is Jackie? What does your son look like? Behind all the physical forms, what does your son look like? What's his favorite food? Is he dating? What's the person's name?"
Troy looked at each other. One scratched his head, one burped, one stood straighter, uncertain but willing to give the questions a shot.
"No, don't try to answer. You don't know the answers. Don't waste our time guessing. Here's another question you can't answer: What does a father do? What kind of job is that? In all your infinite incarnations, is there one single good dad or partner in there?"
***
The drunk Troy was back. He nodded at his son. And the Troys, one by one, came out of the bar, a slow, staggering army of them, following the women back home.
***
"Hey," the voice said. It was the man in the tan jacket. "Troy told me that he's leaving for good."
"I don't care," Jackie said. "How do we get back?"
"That's what I was coming to say," he said. "It might be impossible. I'm sor——"
Jackie punched him.
The man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase fell down into a sitting position in the dirt, but said nothing. The flies did nothing.
"I'll let you know when you're sorry enough," she said.
***
"Night Vale has a way of bringing home its own. I think we could drive in any direction and still get home. We live in a weird place."
"Man, we really do."
"It's superweird," said Josh.
"The best kind of weird," said Jackie. She waved to the mayor, who was still sitting in the dirt. "See ya."
[NOTE FROM JULIE: Here's one of those moments where I really miss the audiobook narration; this exchange comes across a little flat in text, but with the narration, you get Diane's thoughtful befuddlement, Josh's chipper delight, and Jackie's wry fondness.]
***
To the family and friends of Intern Sheila, we extend our greatest condolences. Know that she was a good and hardworking intern, and that she died doing what she loved: simultaneously living and dying in infinite, fractal defiance of linear time.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: HAHAHAHAHAH THE SHEILA SUB-PLOT IS ONE OF MY ACTUAL FAVOURITE THINGS FROM THIS BOOK. The way Baldwin read her flat, terse voice and the way she described her horrifying circumstances, and how Cecil nervously called out to her while he was on the air and she was camped outside his recording room... it was fucking hilarious, the end.]
***
Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, has announced that he has found many wonderful things in his most recent sweep of the desert. [...] A rock, but he won't tell us where. A body dressed in a gray, pin-striped suit lying sprawled on a dune. A new way of breathing that he says gives him verve and spunk. He said it just like that, punching at the air in front of him. "Verve and spunk," he shouted. "Verve and spunk." He seemed to have gotten off track from his original plan of listing what he had found in the desert, and ran off down the street, breathing with his new method, punching the air, and shouting, "Verve and spunk!" to passersby.
Another way it is not unlike other houses is that it houses people. It houses a woman, for instance.
Imagine a woman.
Good work.
It also houses a boy, not quite a man. He's fifteen. You know how it is.
Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy.
Nope. That was not right at all. Try again.
No.
No.
Okay, stop.
He is tall. He's skinny, with short hair and long teeth that he deliberately hides when he smiles. He smiles more than he thinks he does.
Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy.
No. Again.
No. Not close.
He has fingers that move like they have no bones. He has eyes that move like he has no patience. He has a tongue that changes shape every day. He has a face that changes shape every day. He has a skeletal structure and coloring and hair that change every day. He seems different than you remember. He is always unlike he was before.
Imagine.
Good. That's actually pretty good.
His name is Josh Crayton.
Which is also a nice segue to discuss the casual, offhand weirdness of Night Vale: Josh is a shapeshifter, and it's whatever. His mom scolds him for not having hands when she's trying to teach him how to drive. Everyone in this town has learned to take its (often lethal) eccentricities unflinchingly, without batting an eye -- and that adaptability even comes up later: "The problem is that people do not multiply. There is never suddenly more of a person." "Of course there is. Look at me. I dunno. Where I'm from, you just kind of roll with things. I guess I assumed this place would be like that too."
People make a ton of comparisons for this series in general, so I'm just going to echo Swankivy's review: it's like Twin Peaks meets Lovecraft meets Douglas Adams, in terms of tongue-in-cheek bizarreness mingled with uncanny horror.
Our two protagonists, Jackie Fierro and Diane Crayton, are fantastic -- and I love seeing a book led by two women of colour(!), one of them explicitly mixed-race. Heteronormativity is never a thing in this universe either; Josh has crushes on boys and girls alike, which is fine, and he considers the possibility that his single mother could date either a man or woman, which is also fine, and there's even a nod to asexuality.
The book is predictably funny: I often found myself barking a laugh while listening to this. And it is genuinely scary: there were a couple scenes, notably the first sightings of the blond man & Jackie's first meeting with her mother, which sent chills down my spine. It evokes the uncanny, that subtle creeping sense of something being wrong (or at least, more wrong than usual in the typical wrongness of NV).
I expected all of that. What I did not expect was the feelsy ruminations on growing up as a mixed-race girl, which knocked me down and had me teary on the subway. (Seriously, props to Fink/Cranor for nailing it. It's not every day a white male author can pinpoint that alienation, the micro-aggressions, the issues with identity and not feeling fully enough of one thing or the other. It touches on female body image as well, and the way others make it their business how you look or what you are, when it is none of their goddamn business.)
I also didn't expect all the parent/child feelings. It turns out the focus, the core, the very heart of this novel is single mothers, parents and children, abandonment, found family, and growing up. It was super poignant.
Relatedly, some ruminations on the ending: The fact that the whole climax turns out to be
Spoiler
two women tearing into an irresponsible man for abandoning his children is so important; taking him to task for being a shitty father and fleeing from his responsibilities, firmly putting him in his place and forcing him to shape up. Considering all the off-the-hook lunacy of Night Vale, the fact that its climax is about something so normal, so quotidian and relatable and real, is what makes this book so great. I was practically punching my fist in the air when they scolded Troy and Evan, and Diane's incredibly well-placed f-bomb was triumphant.Also, Jackie and Diane spend so much time apart in this book, so when they join forces and team up it is so satisfying: this arc of growing from getting on each others' nerves, to supporting one another, saving each others' lives, to becoming family of sorts: but more importantly emotionally validating each other. Jackie→Diane re: being abandoned by her baby-daddy, affirming that that was a shitty thing to do and that is his fault, not Diane's; and Diane→Jackie re: being tough and brave in ways that she herself isn't, having strengths that the adult doesn't, and how she shouldn't be denigrated or condescended to just because she's a teenager.
Also also, I just love Jackie Fierro so much. I can't express it enough. She's resourceful, determined, sarcastic, exasperated by useless adults, and I adore her.
The writing is often simple/conversational, but also surprisingly literary at times. Again, I think it's aided by the audiobook -- having read some of my favourite quotes in text, it's just not the same without the emotion that Baldwin infuses in the words.
Do you need to listen to the podcast beforehand? The novel mostly stands on its own because they contextualise references to characters/locations/past events, but I still say yes -- at least listen to 2-3 episodes first, if only to get the gist of the town of Night Vale & its humour, and encounter its characters before meeting them here (Old Woman Josie, the Erikas, Steve Carlsberg, etc). I think it's more rewarding that way. I fell out of listening to the podcast ages ago, but it still felt like meeting old friends, and I loved seeing them in a wider scope than Cecil's radio show.
In short: Warm, funny, scary, heartwarming, a little gutting. Highly recommended.
I also compared [b:American Elsewhere|14781178|American Elsewhere|Robert Jackson Bennett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340758848s/14781178.jpg|20434248] to WTNV when I first read it, so I'd now like to recommend AE to anyone who likes this book; it's largely to do with motherhood and weirdness in a small, eerie desert town too.
Despite listening to the audiobook, I ALSO bought the ebook so I could nab the quotes more accurately, which is a sign of how much I liked them. So. Favourite quotes below (a lot of them are from the ending, just because I loved it so much):
Spoiler
But this morning she did not ask for the check. She did not pay it or leave. She stared at the paper in her hand and knew that she would not do any of the things she normally did this day. This knowledge came as a pain in her stomach and a fluttering on her neck. It was physical, this knowledge, as a strong knowing always is. It had more to do with an ache in her bones than a notion in her head.***
Diane's parents are also two different races. It matters which races, but it matters only to Diane and her parents and their family and friends, not to those who do not know them. Not everyone gets to know everything about everybody.
Growing up in the Southwest, Diane saw a few mixed-race parents, mixed-race children, but she did not always have the opportunity or inclination to befriend these families. When she was a kid, friends were still determined by City Council decree, based on the numerology of each child's name, which had been considered the most solid foundation for a lasting friendship.
Sometimes she was teased, called terrible names by other children. Sometimes, those children were not the same race as one of her parents. Conversely, those same children were often the same race as her other parent.
As Diane became a teenager, she continued to hear not only about her race but also about her body.
She was a girl, not yet a woman. She was fifteen years old.
Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl of mixed-race parents.
That's pretty good. That's very close, she might say to anyone who described what she looked like. Diane didn't know what she looked like. She never cared to know. Many people would tell her anyway.
When her body won the race to womanhood against her person, Diane began to hear that she was tall, short, fat, skinny, ugly, sexy, smiled too much, smiled too little, had bad hair, had beautiful hair, had something in her teeth, dressed nice, dressed cheap, had duck feet, had elegant feet. She was too dark. She was too pale.
She heard a lot of different descriptions of her, and she took them all as truth.
You must never need to get any sun, Diane, a person might say as they playfully (and jealously) batted their sleeved arm at her. You don't look like who you are, Diane, a different person might say as they playfully (and scoldingly) batted their unsleeved arm at her.
Teasing about race came less and less. Or rather, it disguised itself as simple assessment. You sound like a regular person on the phone, someone might say to her on the phone.
***
"I'm not afraid," she declared, and she wasn't. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.
***
A warning to our listeners: There have been reports of counterfeit police officers on the roads, who, instead of looking after our interests, work under arbitrary authority to unfairly target and extort those who are least able, societally, to fight back. If you see one of these FalsePolice, act right away by shrugging and thinking What am I gonna do? and then seeing if anything funny is on Twitter.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: OH MAN. A nice little barbed point about police brutality, just casually slipped in there.]
***
Mostly she contented herself with Josh, who was not a friend, and was often not even friendly, but who filled her life until it couldn't fit much else. She looked with excitement and unease to the day when he would grow old enough that her heart could empty a bit of him and there would be a space left where someone else could fit, although she couldn't imagine who.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: PARENT/CHILD FEELINGS]
***
"I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son.
"Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you."
***
[NOTE FROM JULIE: The below from Jackie's mother is a really really long excerpt, but that's because it wrecked me.]
"Jackie, what I want you to understand, about both me and Diane, is this. It's not easy raising a child in Night Vale. Things go strange often. There are literal monsters here. Most towns don't have literal monsters, I think, but we do.
"You were my baby. But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don't, and anyway they change. They go to high schools, where they learn dangerous things. They grow into adults, and become dangerous things.
"But none of that is as difficult as the main thing. We all know it, but most of you don't spend any time thinking about the consequences of it. Time doesn't work in Night Vale.
"You were a child, and then you were a teenager, and then you were old enough that I thought it might be time for you to run my pawnshop for me. Just some days. Just sometimes. I could use the time off, after running it for years while also raising a child on my own.
"I taught you how pawning an item works. ‘Pawnshops in Night Vale work like this,' I said. I showed you the hand washing, and the chanting, and the dying for a little while, and how to write out a ticket. I showed you how to bury the doors at night so they wouldn't get stolen. I showed you this and then you started running the shop on your own, and I was so proud.
"But time doesn't work in Night Vale. And so one day I woke up to find you had run that shop for decades. Centuries, even. I'm not sure. You held on to the pawnshop but let go of me. I happened to offer eleven dollars to the first customer we helped together, and in the years of being nineteen you forgot that moment between us and only retained the offer of eleven dollars as a meaningless, unchangeable ritual. People in town couldn't remember a time when you weren't the one running the store. But I could. Because, from my point of view, you've only been running it a couple months. It's all so fresh for me. The course of your life is so linear. But meanwhile you. It had been so long for you that you'd forgotten me, and forgotten the house you moved out of last month. Your entire childhood, gone for everyone but me. All those years spent with me. All those years I gave up everything to spend with you."
Her mother was crying. Jackie suddenly remembered that her mother's name was Lucinda. Lucinda was crying. Jackie was crying too, but wiping it away as quickly as it came, even now uncomfortable with the feeling of it.
"Dear, be kind to the mothers of Night Vale. Have pity on us. It'll be no easier for Diane. Things go strange here. Your children forget you, and the courses of their lives get frozen. Or they change shapes every day, and they think that just because they look completely different you won't be able to recognize them. But you always will. You always know your child, even when your child doesn't know you.
"Maybe Josh thinks it's right to run away. Maybe you do too. But all I know is Diane is in the same place I am. We don't have our children. We have the faint, distorted echoes of our children that this town sent back to us."
***
"Troy is my father?"
Jackie perched uneasily in her chair.
Lucinda sighed. "Depends on what you mean by father, dear. He contributed some genetics to you, yes. Never was much good for anything else."
***
"Maybe the problem isn't with Troy. Maybe the problem is with you. Maybe if you were a better mayor, you wouldn't be forgotten. Good deeds don't go unnoticed. If there was an economy and good roads and schools, no one would try to elect a new leader every few months."
The man in the tan jacket's eyes darkened. Jackie saw his eyes. They were unforgettable.
"And maybe, just maybe," Diane said, her hand waving in asynchronous rhythm to her speech, "a good father only has to be a good father, not a good mayor, not a man with a memorable face. Look at yourself, Evan, or whatever the fuck your name is. Josh, I'm sorry I cursed. Evan, be accountable to your wife and family, and they will care enough to know who you are. Govern your city, and you won't have to infect mine. Be a father to your child, and you won't have to steal mine."
***
"This is not about King City and it's not about Troy's children. It's about Troy. He has infected King City with our town's weirdness."
"Asshole."
"Exactly, Jackie. What an asshole. And what an asshole this guy is." She pointed at the asshole in the tan jacket.
***
"You have helped many people with your many skills, but also you're an irresponsible little shit. Both of those are true. Truth can be contradictory. You are not forgiven your lapses by your nonlapses. How many children do you have? How many have you left behind? Forget it, I don't care. What I care about is: What is Jackie's mother's name? How old is Jackie? What does your son look like? Behind all the physical forms, what does your son look like? What's his favorite food? Is he dating? What's the person's name?"
Troy looked at each other. One scratched his head, one burped, one stood straighter, uncertain but willing to give the questions a shot.
"No, don't try to answer. You don't know the answers. Don't waste our time guessing. Here's another question you can't answer: What does a father do? What kind of job is that? In all your infinite incarnations, is there one single good dad or partner in there?"
***
The drunk Troy was back. He nodded at his son. And the Troys, one by one, came out of the bar, a slow, staggering army of them, following the women back home.
***
"Hey," the voice said. It was the man in the tan jacket. "Troy told me that he's leaving for good."
"I don't care," Jackie said. "How do we get back?"
"That's what I was coming to say," he said. "It might be impossible. I'm sor——"
Jackie punched him.
The man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase fell down into a sitting position in the dirt, but said nothing. The flies did nothing.
"I'll let you know when you're sorry enough," she said.
***
"Night Vale has a way of bringing home its own. I think we could drive in any direction and still get home. We live in a weird place."
"Man, we really do."
"It's superweird," said Josh.
"The best kind of weird," said Jackie. She waved to the mayor, who was still sitting in the dirt. "See ya."
[NOTE FROM JULIE: Here's one of those moments where I really miss the audiobook narration; this exchange comes across a little flat in text, but with the narration, you get Diane's thoughtful befuddlement, Josh's chipper delight, and Jackie's wry fondness.]
***
To the family and friends of Intern Sheila, we extend our greatest condolences. Know that she was a good and hardworking intern, and that she died doing what she loved: simultaneously living and dying in infinite, fractal defiance of linear time.
[NOTE FROM JULIE: HAHAHAHAHAH THE SHEILA SUB-PLOT IS ONE OF MY ACTUAL FAVOURITE THINGS FROM THIS BOOK. The way Baldwin read her flat, terse voice and the way she described her horrifying circumstances, and how Cecil nervously called out to her while he was on the air and she was camped outside his recording room... it was fucking hilarious, the end.]
***
Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, has announced that he has found many wonderful things in his most recent sweep of the desert. [...] A rock, but he won't tell us where. A body dressed in a gray, pin-striped suit lying sprawled on a dune. A new way of breathing that he says gives him verve and spunk. He said it just like that, punching at the air in front of him. "Verve and spunk," he shouted. "Verve and spunk." He seemed to have gotten off track from his original plan of listing what he had found in the desert, and ran off down the street, breathing with his new method, punching the air, and shouting, "Verve and spunk!" to passersby.
This book is strange. It's written in a style completely different from anything I've ever read before and it keep me laughing until the end.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced