A review by ddejong
The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

4.0

This was a sweet quirky story-- nothing deep, but I enjoyed it. The cover made me nervous- it looks very YAish. And the first couple pages made me nervous- a bad de ja vu from the first episode of Aziz Ansari's show, "Master of None." But I had a good feeling given the Jonathan Safran Foer endorsement on the cover, and the book came through for me. Though the reading is definitely easy, I really thought Dinerstein did a solid job with her character development (particularly, I must say, the very eccentric parents of both main characters), and there were times where her language would cause me to pause, re-read a sentence/paragraph, and savor the unexpected turn of phrase or sharp description. The plot in short: two main characters, Frances (22) and Yasha/Yakov (17-18), both New Yorkers. Both are pushing through very painful but common human experiences-- dissolving marriages, family discord, deaths of loved ones, and uncertainty about the future. Their paths cross in an eccentric Norwegian locale for a summer-- thus the "sunlit night" which is also, I think, an allusion to the "light" that manages to flicker against a backdrop of grief/uncertainty/circumstances that are not ideal for Yasha and Frances. This is Dinerstein's first novel, and I will keep an eye on her future work.