THE SUNLIT NIGHT

Narrator Julie McKay strikes just the right tone--languid with an edge of sarcasm--to suit this offbeat coming-of-age romance between two New Yorkers in a Norwegian landscape filled with perpetual light. Frances is fleeing a college relationship and her parents' unraveling marriage, and Yasha is burying his Russian father at the top of the world. McKay rolls with the Norwegian words and Yiddish blessings and successfully distinguishes the first-person viewpoint of Frances's story (while Yasha's is in third person). The novel is stuffed overfull with quirkiness, detracting from its believability--Frances's father eats only ketchup and her mother only apples, Yasha hides under a sculpture of a tree with a goat carved out of brown cheese, and Frances is on an art fellowship to paint a barn in multiple shades of yellow. A.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2015]