River City Reading

Up Nights begins with Francis knocking on the door of his friend Arthur's hotel room in Portland. The pair grew up together in the Midwest and spent their early twenties bouncing in and out of college and various cities. Arthur has just returned from a time spent in Mexico, where he left their friend Bill behind. Fueled by confusion, desire and dejection, the group travels throughout the country, weaving relationships with one another and a patchwork of people they meet along the way.

Unlike the impassioned desire of the New Adult genre, these are the themes I saw in so many of my friends in our early to mid twenties. It could have more to do with the time period and location, but reaching that age in the early 2000's in Detroit had most of us scrambling to leave the Midwest, much like Kine's characters. At the same time, however, I saw that same sense of procrastination. People wanted to go, but very few wanted to stay in the place they went.

Kine has a writing style that is well matched for this type of narration; short and choppy in dialogue, with more lyrical first person thoughts. Much of what Arthur concludes is quite poetic and shouldn't be overlooked by the meandering details of the group's journey, particularly in the beautiful ending paragraphs.

-full review at rivercityreading.blogspot.com