From the author of 'Black Bread White Beer' The East Coast of America, 1980. Anna Brown, a dying artist, works on her final portrait. Obsessive and secretive, it is a righting of her past failures; her final statement. John Brown, her husband and life-long muse, has left; walked out of their home one morning to travel cross-country in search of the paintings he has sat for. As their stories unfold - independently, for the first time in many years - a passionate unconventional relationship is revealed, between two people living through the most tumultuous decades of modern history. All the Days and Nights is the story of an art hunt during a twilight period of painting. It lays bare two relationships that are ever changing and incomparable: of the artist and the muse, and of lovers. It is an exploration of what it means to create, what it means to inspire, what it means to live.
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[WHERE WERE YOU when the sky collapsed; rain falling in pinched sheets, but constant, and the mist descending as if gravity was its master, until it settled on the front step and the path?]***
(The Friday Project, 25 September 2014, 177 pages, e-book, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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There's something I really enjoyed about this short novel (or novella). First off, it's mostly written in the second person (you etc), a point of view rarely used in fiction which works really well when used in the right way and context. It's the perfect POV for this book. I was drawn in from the opening line and the book held my attention until the end, mostly because of the style created by using the second person POV. This created a sense of intimacy with the characters and events. So much happens in such a short space of time. This is the kind of book you need to work to fully understand and you need to take your time with it. This is very enjoyable.
