Crawling At Night

Aug 23, 2025 4:13 PM

Author:Nani Power

Crawling At Night

Newly arrived in New York, Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labours over restaurant shopping-lists. Alone in his apartment at night, he reads pornographic comics, dreaming of Mariane, a lost, alcoholic waitress who works with him at a Chelsea sushi bar. Across town, Mariane lies in her bath with a drink in her hand, longing for the baby girl she abandoned almost fifteen years before. As Ito and Mariane attempt to make sense of their lives and their memories, they encounter immigrants from across the entire world, each of them bringing their very varied cuisines, histories and expectations to new lives in the New World. Crawling at Night brilliantly reveals the cityscape of today's global city and makes visible the people often condemned to its shadows: in the late night Chinatown clubs; in the downtown restaurants after the CLOSED sign goes up; and behind the closed doors of the studio apartments in Manhattan's high-rises and walk ups.

Reviews

Power's writing is stellar, her sentences popping like fireworks into gorgeous explosions of evocation, visceral, crisp and unexpected

—— Observer

Complex and daring, its firework prose illuminating the darkness of the ordinary

—— Independent on Sunday

A formidable young writer... Power unpacks her character's emotions with a firm, graceful hand

—— New York Times

A passionate, intelligent, and piercingly beautiful. It is an altogether striking debut

—— Mary Gaitskill

With a sushi-chef hero, a waitress heroine and a cast of hungry-for-love characters, this novel is flavoursome and fulfilling

—— Harpers & Queen

Surprising and poignant

—— Entertainment Weekly

A fun romp

—— Good Housekeeping

Devour it

—— Marie Claire

First-rate fiction . . . sharp, with great empathy

—— San Francisco Weekly

Funny, heart-hammering, wise...superb entertainment

—— New York Times Book Review

A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life

—— Anna Chancellor

A classic of contemporary Americana... variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving

—— Los Angeles Times

A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read

—— Boston Globe

A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well

—— Newsweek

In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power

—— The New Yorker

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