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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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A NIGHT TWICE AS LONG

Andrew Simonet

What do you call the difference between what you should feel and what you do feel? Life?
The blackout has been going on for three weeks. But Alex feels like she's been living in the dark for a year, ever since her brother, who has autism, was removed from the house, something Alex blames herself for. So when her best friend, Anthony, asks her to trek to another town to figure out the truth about the blackout, Alex says yes.

On a journey that ultimately takes all day and night, Alex's relationships with Anthony, her brother, and herself will transform in ways that change them all forever.

In this honest and gripping young adult novel, Andrew Simonet spins a propulsive tale about what it means to turn on the lights and look at what's real.

Andrew Simonet is a choreographer and writer in Philadelphia. His first novel, Wilder, published in 2018. He co-directed Headlong Dance Theater for twenty years and founded Artists U, an incubator for helping artists make sustainable lives. He lives in West Philadelphia with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two sons.
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Published 2021-06-01 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Comments

Simonet (author of Wilder, BCCB 11/18) writes with fierce, compact lyricism of the intimacy of such a sibling relationship and the understanding that Alex's familiarity with Georgie and his cohort brings her about the world ("Normies live in a gated cognitive community"), making it a loving challenge to the medical model of disability. Readers emerging from the pandemic's darkest shadows will empathize with Alex's experience, and they'll appreciate her philosophy: "You're not like everybody else. But neither is everybody else."

A journey imbued with emotion and worth every step.

Simonet illustrates the tenuous line between hope and despair that Alex walks as she makes pivotal choices in a world turned inside out.