Each Night Was Illuminated by Jodi Lynn Anderson

With writing that sparks off the page, New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson tells a story of saints and floods, secrets and truths, rage and love—and the bravery it takes to bet your whole life on a new kind of hope.

The day the train fell in the lake, Cassie stopped believing in much of anything, despite growing up in a devout Catholic family. Then she set her mind to forgetting the strange boy named Elias who was with her when it happened.

When Elias comes back to town after many years away, Cassie finds herself talked into sneaking out at night to follow him ghost-hunting—though she knows better than to believe they will find any spirits.

Still, the more time she spends with Elias—with his questions, his rebelliousness, his imagination that is so much bigger than the box she has made for herself—the more Cassie thinks that even in a world that seems broken beyond repair, there just may be something worth believing in.

Why I Picked It Up

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Jodi Lynn Anderson is one of my favorite writers, and is so significantly underrated. Tiger Lily and Midnight at the Electric hit me differently with each reread, so I’ll devour whatever she writes: the epitome of complex, take-what-you-need, effortless beauty.

Each Night Was Illuminated felt like an even quieter in the vein of The Vanishing Season (which is also great) in that it’s more about theme than plot.

It might not immediately make sense to the reader how polarization, environmentalism, and the subtle disintegration of belief — not solely in religion but in absolutely anything — tie together, but Anderson combines and connects them elegantly. You can absolutely read into layers and parallels to our current climate, whether through the intensified hurricanes (a personal ouch of mine lately) or the charged political speech.

The Storm Connection

I’m typing up this review much later than I initially wrote it, but in my longhand draft, I noted that I reviewed it directly after waking up from one of the worst nightmares I’d ever had (because “apparently altitude can do that to you” and I was in Park City for work at the time.)

In my nightmare, everything flooded, which sounds pretty standard. But maybe because of the personal effects—or rather, the intensity of my terror—re: the hurricanes of the fall had on me, I woke up viscerally horrified. Probably because the storm braced for Tampa got so close.

The subtlety of this book makes a lot of sense having witnessed it personally too: the gradual ways in which belief, politics, change vs. sameness, all of it impacted our experience of the hurricanes this time around versus in the hunkering-down of my childhood.

It’s not just the hurricane that affects you; it’s how a storm or significant disaster—as those in L.A. can attest—can so suddenly alter your sense of permanence, safety, or even gratitude. (There's another great book about this: This Is the Story of You by Beth Kephart. But I want to reread it before reviewing, since it's been a solid five years.) Hometowns, especially, can be tricky, no matter how detached you might feel.

What It's About

Admittedly, I think it’s a little tricky to tell from the jacket copy what exactly this book is about—at least in how it hit for me. I love Jodi Lynn Anderson, but otherwise might have found the plot too abstract in the description. Basically, Cassie witnesses an accident and loses her belief. That impacts her lens in her teen years.

“'You'd be good at being angry,' he said. 'You'd get it right.'”

When a neighbor friend Elias returns to town, so does a charismatic preacher who starts to lock the town into his warping ideology—and brilliantly turns the town against any dissenters. It’s all very “frog in the boiling pot” as a metaphor and very true to how genuine indoctrination (in anything) happens. This book isn’t in-your-face, but I think many will recognize the sensation: the particular isolation of sudden, fundamental difference, especially as it bleeds into other domains of life. That loneliness and awareness of change is so beautifully articulated.

She can't sleep. (Or he can't sleep? I can't quite remember?) And she ends up seeing Elias leaving his place at night, and eventually joining him. He's decoding some mystery at the abandoned mansion in town, not so much because she believes in what he's doing but for the company.

“Studying him, I had time to realize I was scared of him. Spending time with him was like opening a window to get air. I didn't know why he chose me to share his blood with when we were kids. And I supposed that's what happens when someone who awes you also chooses to be interested in you. You can't help but fear it, and you don't want to let it disappear, and you want to be enough to deserve it. I guessed that was a story as old as time.”

If the jacket copy doesn't share the rest of the book, I won't. There's not a particularly clear way to review it. But overall, Each Night Was Illuminated is classic Jodi Lynn Anderson—a little weird and a lot thoughtful. Not for everyone, but will resonate if you're listening. It's meditative, and short enough that it's worth the try if you're unsure.

Overall Thoughts

The book itself is a little dreamy, floating above the rest of us. It’s poignant and a little weird, which is very in line with my taste. Her neighbor friend goes ghost-hunting, insomnia is prevalent, allure escapes reason, etc,.

I think frequently about how people shift so infinitesimally that one day, you look up and everything might be different. Change can happen in such small increments that you either can’t recognize it or you can’t call it out if it’s in a worrying direction. Like I said in my Tiger Lily review: all moments are just moments, at the time; they only become symbols or catalysts in hindsight, when they’re stitching together a pattern based on outcome.

How do minds change?

What about is it about someone—or in this case, a place—remains the same?

Although I keep reaching for descriptors like quiet or subtle, you feel the undercurrent of distress and urgency in this recognition, although the overall mood and atmosphere is poetic and almost tranquil in a way I crave from Jodi Lynn Anderson’s reads. She works gracefully with the unspoken and the unsaid, pushing you right up to the edge so you can see for yourself, and that’s such an impressive skill in storytelling. It’s abstract in some ways, but depicts the realism of how you encounter these kinds of moments, changes, and combinations in life: messily.

Overall, Each Night Was Illuminated is beautiful and gripping. It’s slow, muted, and layered. It may be too subtle for some, but I would love to book club it with someone. Another win from Jodi Lynn Anderson, for sure.

For fans of:

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson; Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff; Midnight Mass (TV); This Is the Story of You by Beth Kephart; Bone Gap by Laura Ruby; Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma; the rest of Jodi Lynn Anderson’s work; When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead; Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta; Nina LaCour.