L, a forty-two-year-old woman with two young children, is wakened in the middle of the night by a crash in the bedroom. It must be my husband having insomnia again, she thinks. But after the sound of footsteps comes a thud: R has fallen to the ground. What seems at first like an isolated scene – a moment of terrible stress triggered by the news that her father-in-law is succumbing to covid – will become hell on earth, a movie no one would want to star in. After long hours of waiting amid fluorescent lights and sterile halls, the medical staff will confirm the worst: R has had a stroke, and his chances of survival are slim. 

So begins The Night of Nevermore, an unclassifiable book that marks the debut of Chilean journalist Lyuba Yez. Both delicate and painful, this story – breaking with the sentimentalism of set phrases and clichés – recounts the grief, rage, and contradictions of a woman confronting the void. Heir to the analytical acuity of Joan Didion and the art of making life into literature as exemplified by Annie Ernaux and Piedad Bonnet, the author finds refuge in books, film, and music – and discovers a candid way of enduring pain, uncertainty, and the ripple effects of the accident that has endangered her marriage.