The Sunlt Night

The Sunlit Night, by Rebecca Dinerstein is a quirky first novel.  I must admit to not being sure what I thought of it when I finally finished the last page. 

Frances and Yasha are two young adults, trying to find themselves as they separate from their parents and try to begin life as adults.  We follow both of these characters lives as they work through the frustrations that their parents are going through.  Both Frances and Yasha are living in New York City, unbeknownst to each other. 

Frances lives with her sister and parents in a very small apartment.  They have to climb over each other as they share the space.  this all becomes too much for them all.  Her sister is escaping the claustraphobic life with two Jewish artistic parents, by rebelling in a marriage her parents don't approve of to a computer programmer who is not Jewish.  Her parents finally are in the midst of dissolving their marriage.  Frances is escaping to Lofoten, Norway where the sun never sets for a art internship with a famous artist.

Yasha has lived above a bakery in Brooklyn with his father for ten years since they left Russia.  They have been waiting for his mother to join them, in the naive way his father never wants to face that she has deserted them.  Now Yasha is also heading to Lofoten bring his father to the place he always wanted to be buried, following his directions, "Ommot's route, Lapland, Top of the world, Real peace".

Frances and Yasha come to this barren land,  Lofoten, an archipelago of six tiny islands in the Norwegian Sea, ninety-five miles north of the Arctic Circle, and there they form a bond that fortifies them against the turmoil of their distant homes, offering solace amidst great uncertainty.
Here they find that though they are both looking for solace and answers to their individual questions they find each other.  That in the end love is what everyone needs in their lives.

Frances tells her side of the story in the first person sometimes visualizing her family members there with her in Lofoten in dream like sequences that are deeply reflective, "My sister wearing a Viking sack, stood at the mast. I looked down at the water in  panic. Its water changing, darkening. We were far out at sea in such an old boat. Sarah was far out at sea for such a young girl.  I had to believe she was ready, because she looked me in the face and told me so.  None of us, I saw on the faces of the boys and girls, sitting on the benches, were ready to be where we were, ever farther out in the water..."

Yasha's story is told in the third person by a narrator.  Neither of these styles works to bring the reader closer to the characters.  This writing style does not feel finished, it is written in away that feels like more of an outline that the author would go back and add dialog and more description to in an effort to fill out the plot.  It is very disjointed in its character development.