ECW Press 

Jean McNeil

IT’S NEVER EASY to examine why we love whom we love and what happens when that love changes – or is transferred. Nor is it easy to live with ghosts of any kind hooked over your shoulder, watching your every move. Jean McNeil’s for Night takes these subjects and dissects them with a delicate hand, language that sings, and a critical eye that appreciates beauty in both its glory and wretchedness.

Somewhat reminiscent of Lauren Groff ’s F Furies, although much less fraught, for Night is told from the perspectives of a husband and wife and weaves together narratives within narratives. Through the eyes of Richard Cottar, a British film writer and director, we see the emotional fallout of the Brexit vote alongside glimpses of the life story of his new film’s subject: Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish literary critic, essayist, and philosopher living in Germany and subsequently other parts of Europe during the turbulent years prior to the Second World War. Richard and his producer wife, Joanna, believe Brexit will be of similar magnitude to the displacement seen during those wars; they worry about having to leave Britain, having to pack into trains, having to bid everything they know goodbye at the drop of a hat. Walter is that ghost hovering over Richard’s shoulder, reminding him of the what-could-be, of the true horror of human displacement that occurs when people have no other choice.