Overview

"This photography-driven fiction about coming of age in the creep show of south Florida's swamps and strip malls is ""unlike any book I've ever read . . . A completely original and clearheaded voice"" (Ira Glass, host of This American Life) Out of South Florida's lush and decaying suburban landscape bloom the delinquent magic and chaotic adolescence of And Every Day Was Overcast. Paul Kwiatkowski's arresting photographs amplify a novel of profound vision and vulnerability. Drugs, teenage cruelty, wonder, and the screen-flickering worlds of Predator and Married . . . With Children shape and warp the narrator's developing sense of self as he navigates adventures and misadventures, from an ill-fated LSD trip on an island of castaway rabbits to the devastating specter of HIV and AIDS. This alchemy of photography and fiction gracefully illuminates the travesties and triumphs of the narrator's quest to forge emotional connections and fulfill his brutal longings for love."

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9781936787074

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Reviews

And Every Day Was Overcast [is] unlike any book I've ever read. [It's] a mix of this clean, spare, unaffected prose about growing up near the swamps of South Florida--plus these incredible photos [Paul has] taken of the area.... A completely original and clearheaded voice. --Ira Glass, host of This American Life We finish And Every Day Was Overcast in a delirious state of disassociation, not unlike the kids whose lives it seeks to evoke. This, of course, is why we turn to books--or one reason, anyway--to see the world as we have not before. The shabby suburbs of And Every Day Was Overcast may not be unknown to us, but Kwiatkowski's ruthless excavation give us a new language by which we hear stories that might otherwise go unheard. --David L. Ulin, The Los Angeles Times Kwiatkowski's language is harsh and direct, and his stories are compelling in their sadness and brutality. . . the photographs serve to confirm the reality of these stories. We look at them and can see the people and landscape Kwiatkowski describes. Whether this means these stories are largely autobiographical, or are simply of a piece with the author's experience, matters little, and is part of what grips us. Kwiatkowski has produced an illustrated novel that shows what the form can do. -- PDN Magazine Kwiatkowski's novel succeeds in doing much more than simply conveying the isolated experiences of one idle teenager with a penchant for drugs, pornography and reckless sexual encounters. Through a marriage of images and words, the novel illustrates the result of adolescent malaise against Florida's eerie, subtropical backdrop. Perhaps less noticeably, And Every Day Was Overcast is also the story of a man fortunate enough to have actually made it out. -- Fault Magazine The aire of documentary aids Kwiatkowski in his style. It keeps the prose direct, simple, and free of clogging metaphor. As a result his prose scans more similar to a journal entry than it do

Author Information

Paul Kwiatkowski is a New York-based writer and photographer. This is his first novel. His work has appeared in numerous outlets, including Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay, Dazed and Confused, Fault, Dust, and American Suburb X.

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