book cover of All Day Is a Long Time
 

All Day Is a Long Time

(2022)
A novel by

 
 
"David Sanchez's first novel—brilliant, lyrical, hilarious, heartbreaking—is the definitive handbook to hell and back . . . A stunning debut."
—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban


For fans of Denis Johnson and Ocean Vuong: A captivating, searing, and ultimately redemptive debut novel about coming of age on Florida’s drug-riddled Gulf Coast and the enigmatic connection between memory and self

David has a mind that never stops running. He reads Dante and Moby Dick, he sinks into Hemingway and battles with Milton. But on Florida’s Gulf Coast, one can slip into deep water unconsciously; at the age of fourteen, David runs away from home to pursue a girl and, on his journey, tries crack cocaine for the first time. He’s hooked instantly. Over the course of the next decade, he fights his way out of jail and rehab, trying to make sense of the world around him—a sunken world where faith in anything is a privilege. He makes his way to a tenuous sobriety, but it isn't until he takes a literature class at a community college that something within him ignites.
 
All Day is a Long Time is a spectacular, raw account of growing up and managing, against every expectation, to carve out a place for hope. We see what it means, and what it takes, to come back from a place of little control—to map ourselves on the world around, and beyond, us. David Sanchez’s debut resounds with real force and demonstrates the redemptive power of the written word.  
 



Genre: Literary Fiction

Praise for this book

"With unflinching, razor-sharp precision, David Sanchez guides us through the labyrinthine heart of addiction and recovery. Wild, brutal, and tender, All Day is a Long Time is a novel of devastating truth and beauty." - Patricia Engel

"David Sanchez's first novel - brilliant, lyrical, hilarious, heartbreaking - is the definitive handbook to hell and back . . . A stunning debut." - Cristina García

"All Day is a Long Time is the most terrifying and beautiful exploration of how addiction is made. David Sanchez has written a gulf coast classic." - Kiese Laymon

"David Sanchez has poured all of himself into this debut, a terrifying, moving, and profound exploration of the liminal space between addiction and connection. He evokes the minute-to-minute suspense of early sobriety unlike anyone I've ever read, with an extraordinary honesty and poetry. Sanchez is a literary cartographer, mapping an intricate overlay of his young narrator's psychological states and Florida's real beaches and swamps, those coastlines in continuous revision." - Karen Russell

"This book has it all, not only does the harrowing story grip you from the start, but the voice is so insightful, so poetic, so absolutely alive to the world, that you won't be able to put it down. David Sanchez is a wonder, an important, essential new voice." - Justin Torres


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