BOOKS FROM MOLDOVAAll-Night Pharmacy : A Novel
Description:
Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears. Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics. With prose pulsing like a neon sign, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.
Reviews:
(5 months ago) |
03 May, 2025
I did not really care for this book, maybe because the narrator (unnamed) evokes no feelings of compassion from me. In the first part of the book she is a typical addict (single-minded, self-centred, and feeling like no one in the world has been through as much bad stuff as she has). In the second part of the book her blind and unquestioning attitude towards Sasha is off-putting, as is Sasha herself (she is mentally and emotionally abusive in my opinion). I’ll mention the conclusion of the book below so as to avoid spoilers in the main body of my review. The “messed-up person trying to cope with life and find themself” genre is popular now, but this book doesn’t stand out as anything special, it’s just one of the millions of others like it. The only things that really kept me hooked was the mystery of what happened to Debbie.
SPOILER ALERT! The final part of the book is unsatisfying as Debbie has become as irritating as Sasha was, both going through the world thinking they have some special insight on life, which neither actually possess. It would have been better to end the book with no solid conclusion about Debbie’s fate. |
(3 months ago) |
01 Jul, 2025
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be. It's certainly a solid read. That said, it's a bit weirder than I thought going in. I especially enjoyed the writing style though. The description didn't do it justice.
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