Day For Night

(Paperback)

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Description

Set in London against a backdrop of growing authoritarianism and anxiety, a story of cinema and desire, the mysteries of marriage and creativity, and the often-violent returns and reversals of history.

Richard Cottar is a respected independent film writer and director; his wife, Joanna, is his increasingly successful and wealthy producer. Together they are about to embark on a film about the life of Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish intellectual who killed himself in northern Spain while on the run from the Nazis in 1940. In what looks set to be the last year of Britains membership of the European Union, Benjamins story of exile and statelessness is more relevant than ever. But Richard and Joannas symbiotic life takes a sudden turn when they cast an intelligent, sexually ambiguous young actor in the role of Walter Benjamin. In a climate of fear and a bizarre, superheated year redolent of sex and hidden desire, Richard and Joanna must confront their relationship, Benjamins tragic history, and the future of their country.

Reviews

"Day For Night hooked me from its first gorgeous lines, striking evocative prose, marvellous sentences that swept me along much in the way of Virginia Woolf's Street Haunting ... It's a rich and satisfying project." -- Pickle Me This blog
"Evocatively written ... Taking its title from a cinematic technique in which night scenes can be filmed during daylight, the novel is also acute in its descriptions of films and filmmaking, capturing the intensity and strange intimacy of film shoots." -- Winnipeg Free Press
"In Day for Night, Jean McNeil has written another in a series of powerful novels, one that draws the reader into a world that is at once familiar but rapidly becoming unrecognizable." -- Miramichi Reader
"McNeil's writing is spare and lush at the same time ... the book invites us to look at our darkness and how we can channel it into something that at least mimics lightness to the world watching." -- Quill & Quire, starred
"Set in 2018, on the eve of Brexit, the novel offers a play of light and dark figures as it moves from the art of filmmaking to Benjamin's sense of stateless and impending doom, which finds an echo in Richard and Joanna's foreboding about their marriage and the consequences of Brexit. A captivating mix of angst and wry humor." -- Library Journal

Author Bio

Jean McNeil is the author of 14 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and travel. She has twice been the winner of the PRISM International competition, and her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Journey Prize, the National Magazine awards, and the Pushcart Prize. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Originally from Nova Scotia, she lives in London, England.