The Great Night: A Novel

by Chris Adrian

Overview

Acclaimed as a "gifted, courageous writer"(The New York Times), Chris Adrian brings all his extraordinary talents to bear in The Great Night—a brilliant and mesmerizing retelling of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
On Midsummer Eve 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, become trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park, the secret home of Titania, Oberon, and their court. On this night, something awful is happening in the faerie kingdom: in a fit of sadness over the end of her marriage, which broke up in the wake of the death of her adopted son, Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos that ensues will threaten the lives of immortals and mortals alike.
Selected by The New Yorker as one the best young writers in America, Adrian has created a singularly playful, heartbreaking, and humorous novel—a story that charts the borders between reality and dreams, love and magic, and mortality and immortality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429961004
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/16/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	316
File size:	770 KB

About the Author

Chris Adrian is the author of Gob's Grief, The Children's Hospital, and A Better Angel. Selected by The New Yorker as one of their "20 Under 40," he lives in San Francisco, where he is a fellow in pediatric hematology-oncology.

Read an Excerpt

One night in the middle of June three broken-hearted people walked into Buena Vista Park at nearly the same time, just after dark. One came from the north, out of the Haight, another climbed up out of the Castro from the east, and the last came from the west, out of the Sunset and Cole Valley: this one was already going in the wrong direction, and shortly all three of them would be lost. They were going to a seasonal party of the famously convivial Jordan Sasscock, at his home at 88 Buena Vista West (Molly was headed, mistakenly, to 88 Buena Vista East.) Jordan’s parties were as famously convivial as he was, and the invitations, while prized, were not exactly exclusive, because it was in the nature of his conviviality never to leave anyone feeling left out. There were swarms of people who trudged up the hill in the middle of every summer to drink Jordan’s beer and wine and stand on his roof and dance in his expansive garden. He was a lowly resident at the hospital nearby, but his grandmother had died five years before when he was still a medical student, leaving him the house and the garden and all the treasures and garbage she had stuffed into it in the eighty-nine years she had lived there: ruined priceless furniture and money under the mattresses and case after case of fancy cat food in the basement, and fifteen cats, only five of which were still alive on the night of the party, because affable as he was, Jordan didn’t much like cats, and he didn’t take very good care of them.

Reading Group Guide

Chris Adrian's fiction has been hailed for its startling originality and provocative meditations on life and mortality. Inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Great Night infuses Adrian's storytelling with new levels of creative genius, bringing the imaginary kingdom of Titania and Oberon to San Francisco's Buena Vista Park.

Midsummer's Eve, 2008. Molly, Henry, and Will, each of them reeling from the loss of a love, set out for a party but become trapped in the park, which has become the home in exile for a madcap faerie court. Like the three mortals who are ensnared in her world that night, Queen Titania is mourning too: her adopted son has died of leukemia, a disease that defied the most potent magic. The queen's grief has turned to rage, and on this night she unleashes an ancient beast, along with the fearsome might of her tiny Puckish followers.

As their stories unfold, the cast of characters proves to have surprising shared histories, blurring the line between memory and hope at every turn. For some, retracing the past becomes a way of flirting with immortality. For others, it's only a reminder of how dark the mortal world can be. Culminating in a staging of the 1970s cult classic Soylent Green—indirectly produced by Titania via a homeless man who wants to bring down a seemingly sinister mayor—the novel unfolds as an unforgettable homage to the power of the imagination.

The following questions and discussion topics are designed to enhance your reading group's experience of The Great Night. We hope this guide enriches your fantastic journey.

Editorial Reviews

Adrian takes great imaginative risks in his writing....He clearly knows the sorrow of the human comedy and what fools we mortals be. Brush aside your Shakespeare, and you will find the same in The Great Night.” —The Washington Post

“A touching human story of ‘mortal sadness'…interweaving stories and situations that are in turn kitsch, camp, wry, and heartbreaking. Adrian balances seemingly incongruous elements to form a profoundly humane and moving work.” —The Telegraph (London)

“As moving as it is imaginative...Amid the magical romp, Adrian...manages to grapple with the problems and joys of the most human of emotions: love.” —GQ

“Whimsical, very sad, wonderful...At age forty, Adrian ranks among the best novelists of his generation, a moralist of a very high order....He has taken the scaffolding of Shakespeare's play to build a cautionary tale about the dangers lurking in all of us.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

From the Publisher