Little Night: A Novel [Kindle Edition]

Luanne Rice is a capable writer who specializes in telling stories about family dynamics. The bare bones of a good story are buried deep within Little Night. Sadly, a determined reader will need to dig through contrived situations and weakly developed characters to find it.

The prologue begins in 1993 with the arrest of Clare Burke after she smashes Frederik Rasmussen's face with a burning log. After years of estrangement from her sister Anne caused by Anne's controlling husband Frederik, Clare had noticed Anne's injuries during a visit. Clare was convincing Anne to flee to a place of safety when Frederik came home and began to choke Anne. The police do not believe Clare was protecting Anne when Anne refuses to contradict her domineering husband, who accuses Clare of attempting to murder him.

In 2011, Anne's daughter Grit visits Clare in New York City. Grit is a follower of Clare's bird blog. She shares Clare's animosity toward Frederik. Grit also has issues surrounding her mother's uncaring behavior and her brother's apparent death in a bog. Grit and Clare nonetheless bond over the fact that they both miss Anne. Before she fled home, Grit stole Anne's diary which Clare reads to gain insight into Anne's personality.

Part two begins with a posting on Anne's blog that (with good reason) questions her parenting of Grit. Reading it together (as well as subsequent entries) gives Clare and Grit another bonding opportunity.

Other events are scattered through this mostly uneventful novel. Grit behaves in a self-destructive way. She gets tattoos from an artist named Dennis. She earns a little money by cooking for pretentious people. Clare examines her feelings for a bird enthusiast named Paul. Yet most of the novel's drama is reserved for the last couple of chapters, which I thought were entirely unbelievable.

In fact, I didn't believe much of the story at all, beginning with the setup. I doubt Clare would have been prosecuted, much less convicted and sentenced to prison, given the fairly obvious evidence of Frederick's abusive nature (Anne's loyalty to her husband notwithstanding). The subplot involving Grit's brother is similarly contrived.

Neither did I believe that the characters were real. Frederik is too over-the-top to be convincing. Sure, there are people in the world who are as evil as Frederik, but Rice fails to develop Frederik in sufficient depth to make his personality ring true. Anne is subservient because Rice needs her to be that way to make the story work, but we never learn why such a seemingly strong-willed girl changes so dramatically that later in life she betrays both her sister and her daughter for the sake of a man she doesn't seem to like. Dennis is improbably attuned to Grit from the instant they meet. His perfect sensitivity makes him seem more like an illusion than a real person. Neither Paul nor Dennis is a fully realized character. They are empty vessels, existing only to spice the story by giving Clare and Grit the opportunity for love.

Some aspects of Little Night are hokey: a bartender's intuitive knowledge that Clare had served prison time (a mere two years) because of her "blank stare"; the upscale soap opera that was Anne's life before Frederik came along (fate's punishment for her wanton ways?); Dennis feeling moved to kiss Grit while giving her a tattoo, apparently because he senses her tortured soul. Clare's childhood discovery that her perfect father was a less-than-perfect husband -- a realization that "broke Anne in a way that changed her forever" -- is trite. Scenes of family drama are robbed of their potential power by cheesy, melodramatic writing (Grit "missed her mother so much she thought her head would explode"). The characters engage in so much hand-wringing about their family problems that the narrative becomes emotionally deadening.

Rice presents some interesting information about birds and bogs. She draws interesting parallels between nature and families, both of which are filled with beauty and brutality. Unfortunately, Rice feels a need to explain her metaphors, as if she thinks her readers are too dim to grasp them without assistance. That's the fundamental problem with this uneven novel: sometimes Rice tells us too much, other times not enough. Rice's failure to find the right balance makes Little Night a novel of limited appeal.

Having read a number of books by Luanne Rice, beginning with Cloud Nine (1999), I was expecting more than was delivered. I found this to be by far the darkest book I have read by Ms. Rice, as well as disappointingly unbelievable, both in characterization and plot. The story is that of two sisters, Clare and Anne, who grew up very close, presumably as they were mostly shut out of their parents' lives during their childhood. Anne, the older sister, marries Frederik, a controlling, narcissistic European glassblower who effectively removes her from the lives of her family, both physically and emotionally. Frederik is the personification of evil, yet we are given no insight as to the reason. No insight into the character, really. Clare remains devoted to Anne, despite not being able to see her or her two children for several years, and one day she takes it upon herself to visit. On seeing that Anne is obviously an abused wife, Clare convinces her to leave Frederik, but alas, it is at this point that, predictably, Frederik returns home and immediately upon hearing Anne agree to go away with Clare, he begins choking Anne. Clare grabs a burning log from the fireplace and hits Frederik in the face with it to get him away from Anne, but once the police arrive, Anne agrees with her husband that Clare intended to murder Frederik and thus the stage is set ... Clare goes to prison while Anne, Frederik and the children (who have the unlikely names of Gilly and Grit) move to Europe, completing the separation of the sisters. Note that this is not a spoiler, as all this takes place during the first few pages of the book.

Sometimes we need to be disturbed, shaken out of our own peaceful, secure lives and made to look around us in order to realize that there is despair and hopelessness in the world. And this book is certainly disturbing, but my two main complaints are that it is fairly unrealistic and that despair seems to be the main theme. At one point, it is implied that the theme is redemption, which is the opposite of despair, but I failed to see where redemption came into play. I will not go into detail, as I don't like to write spoilers into my reviews, but suffice it to say that what little happiness is found in these character's lives is similar to what they say about one-horse towns: don't blink or you'll miss it.

Aside from my complaints about the sense of doom, anger and evil that comprise the plot, I was also disappointed in the development of the characters. None seemed real to me, and although Clare and Grit are sympathetic characters, I was not able to connect to them as I would have liked. The character of Anne vacillated between pitiable, despicable and just plain crazy, while the character of Frederik was consistently evil, but as mentioned above, with no insight as to the roots of his persona. Had the characters been more three-dimensional, it might have saved this book despite the deficiencies in plot. I rarely read a book that I regret having read, though some are certainly better than others, but I must say I wish I had not wasted the time on this one, as it left me feeling disturbed and angry. That said, I have enjoyed other books by this author and will not let my disappointment in this book turn me away from reading more by her.

I've read several of Luanne Rice's book but this one was very hard to follow. It has too much description about things that are not important to the story. I felt that there was more non fiction material than necessary. And then her fictional story was just thrown in between it all. I felt nothing for the characters and felt cheated by the weirdness of it and the awful ending.