I have a serious weakness for hard cover books. It started during my dissertation writing when I wanted to read anything other than those I needed to. I piled up shiny hard covers rather than read another dusty, moldy, ugly book on terrorism from the library. While the buying spree abated after graduation, I still love a hardcover and sometimes find myself buying brand new books just because they are brand new. Occasionally, this pays off.
Day for Night could have been a grand disaster. Each chapter greets the reader with a new narrator, telling his or her story. While those stories are connected and contribute to the whole of the novel, they are not just turns in a linear narrative. Reiken manages to take each person's story and make it individual to that character while weaving a sophisticated, intriguing narrative. The flow of the novel as a whole is effortless as is each chapter and each character.
The highest praise I can give it: at the end I wished for more chapters, not because the end was lacking but because I was invested in these people and their lives.
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