The Night Child

Quinn, Anna

ISBN 10: 168324740X ISBN 13: 9781683247401

Publisher: Platinum Spotlight Series, 2018

Synopsis

Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl’s face appears above the students’ desks — “a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora’s body — the kind of raw terror you feel when there’s no way out, when every cell in your body, your entire body, is on fire — when you think you might die.”

About this title

About the Author

Anna Quinn owns the Writers' Workshoppe and Imprint Bookstore in Port Townsend, Washington, where she has been named the city's Patron of the Arts. She is a published poet and essayist with twenty-six years of experience teaching and leading writing workshops across the country.

Review

''A powerful, beautifully written, transformative novel...'Must-read' is not a phrase I use often; I am using it now: you must read this book!'' --Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

''What I had not expected was the surprise of being so completely in character with someone experiencing the kind of disassociation Quinn portrays. I don't think I have ever read such a strong rendition from the inside of such a dilemma, and more complexly, she made me care about Nora and identify with her. That's a very wonderful and difficult accomplishment.'' --Dorothy Allison, New York Times bestselling author

''I loved this book so much...I entered Quinn's book and lost myself and exited her book changed. She is hanging with the big dogs with this work...like Jodi Picoult and Ann Patchett. For me this book is about destruction and creation. It revolves around the early destruction of a child and her recreation (survival) as an adult, the destruction of an adult once her past explodes into her present tense and her recreation -- tenuous but real -- into the next chapter of her life...Readers will love it.'' --Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Book of Joan

''Packed with riveting detail and radical emotional honesty, motored by a powerful (what I think of as a 'life depends upon it') authorial voice, this book does at least fifteen things novels are not supposed to be able to do. I won't name them, but I will tell you that it will stand you up against yourself in all the best ways possible. You will love this night child, and she will remind you to love the night child inside you. I can't remember a novel in which I have been more deeply emotionally invested.'' --Pam Houston, #1 Los Angeles Times bestselling author

''A flat-out page-turner that will have readers riveted as Quinn seamlessly, breathlessly, explores the result of an identity irrevocably fractured in childhood and one woman's struggle to ease the girl she once was, protect her own young daughter, and reclaim sanity.'' --Adrianne Harun, author of A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain

''Stay with this book, this author. She will tell you the galvanizing story of how the world ends and how it begins again: child by child.'' --Sonya Lea, author of Wondering Who You Are

About this edition

• Publisher: Platinum Spotlight Series
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 168324740X
• ISBN 13: 9781683247401
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 500