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A Novel
by Lydia Fitzpatrick
A gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging, Lights All Night Long is a dazzling debut novel from an acclaimed young writer
Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. The abundance of his new world--the Super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions--is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents. And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him.
But all is not right in Ilya's world: he's consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town's seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.
With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir's descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him--a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind.
A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.
"Starred Review. Beyond the brothers' crystalline characterizations, Fitzpatrick gifts her intriguing debut with elegant prose, affecting images, and rich settings." - Booklist
"This is a heartbreaking novel about the lengths to which people go to escape their own pain, and the prices people are willing to pay to alleviate the suffering of their loved ones." - Publishers Weekly
"An absorbing tale imparted with tenderness and compassion." - Kirkus Reviews
"This vivid coming-of-age novel spools out an engrossing mystery amid a tender story about family ties and adopted homes." - Esquire
"Lights All Night Long is as delicious as it is dazzling—a mystery I was tempted to read in one sitting as well as a startling, clear-eyed exploration of what holds us together, regardless of location or distance. Brilliantly conceived and exquisitely observed, Lydia Fitzpatrick's debut shines as brightly as its title." - Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists
"For readers drawn to literary thrills, Lights All Night Long offers drugs, sex, and murder, but this supple, sparkling novel is really about tender souls navigating unfamiliar terrain and human bonds warm enough to thaw snowbanks. The indecipherable language of loss, love, and longing is normally impossible to understand. At last, thankfully, we have Lydia Fitzpatrick to interpret it." - Adam Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Orphan Master's Son
"Lights All Night Long is utterly brilliant and completely captivating. Lydia Fitzpatrick writes with cinematic clarity about life on margins of contemporary Russia and America. The result is one of the most propulsive, un-put-downable literary novels I've read in ages." - Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
"This intricate, capacious, startlingly inventive novel is so vivid, and rings so true, that its characters have taken up permanent residence in my imagination. What an accomplishment." - R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
"A cross-cultural coming-of-age story that breaks your heart in the best way. Full of tender hopes and hard truths, Lydia Fitzpatrick's first novel marks the debut of a gifted storyteller." - Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements
This information about Lights All Night Long was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lydia Fitzpatrick's work has appeared in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. She graduated from Princeton University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.
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