Lauren, a writing teacher just outside Washington D.C, is drifting through life, still grieving the sudden loss of her parents years earlier. An attentive, engaged teacher and friend to everyone in class, outside class she is unanchored and alone. While teaching her international class, she meets a kindred spirit in Siri, a young, charismatic Swedish student who, it transpires, has also lost both her parents. Lauren marvels at Siri’s joy in life despite this heavy loss, and a bond develops as Siri embodies the adolescent Lauren wishes she could have been; leading to Lauren spending the following summer in Sweden with Siri, her siblings and her tight-knit group of girlfriends in the lead up to Midsommar, with tragic consequences. 

This slow building, poignant story explores the ways we handle the trauma of loss, the reliability of memory and narration, the consequences of denial and self-deceit as we navigate these dark times, and the power of the written word as a form of catharsis and in expressing indirectly to others what we are feeling. As the novel unfolds, we get a sense that things are not as they seem, and we are never sure how exactly things unfolded; what is the truth and what is how a protagonist wishes things had happened. The story, relayed in a soft, dreamlike narrative often on the cusp of cracking with emotion, is permeated by Lauren’s deep loneliness in life, and need for connection, while also at times being an ode of sorts to the reckless passion of youth in all its deep-feeling ecstasy, sorrow and anger, versus the numbness that can ensue as we navigate grief into adulthood. Zinna’s deft character building, the immersive scene-setting through Sweden’s landscape and folklore, and the dive into the deep, raw and unsettling emotions around grief, make this a powerful debut. 

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The All-Night Sun was published by Penguin Random House in 2020.

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Diane Zinna is originally from Long Island, New York. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and has taught writing workshops for more than a decade. She formerly worked at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and in 2014, Diane created the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons. Diane has become well-known for her popular, online grief writing sessions that have grown each Sunday since the start of the pandemic. Diane lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband and daughter. The All-Night Sun is her first novel.