A review by flogigyahoo
The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

4.0

The Sunlit Night, Rebecca Dinerstein's debut novel is a fun book. The blurbs on the back and beginning say it is lyrical, observant, witty, dreamy, luminous,psychologically rich. Well, I don't know about these, but it is well written and enjoyable. It starts with 21 year old Frances, an art major, who is dumped by the boyfriend she was hoping to marry and accepts an assistant's job for with an artist in far off North Norway. We then meet Yasha, 17 almost 18, who helps in his father's bakery in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and has promised his father, Vassily, to bury him when he dies, "at the top of the world." Yasha's mother appears after 10 years waving divorce papers. So powerful and poignant is Yasha's love for his father, he cannot break this news to him even when Vassily insists on flying to Russia to get his wife. Yasha and Francis meet in Norway and fall in love of course, but this is not a banal chick-lit love story. I found myself returning to it again and again to find out what happens to Yasha with whom I too fell in love. An entertaining, sometimes weird tale. I liked Dinerstein's writing a lot.