All-Night Pharmacy

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 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. As time passes, the nature of this relationship evolves and blurs.

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.

About the Author

Ruth Madievsky's writing appears in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Harper's Bazaar, The Cut, GQ, Guernica, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry collection, Emergency Brake, and a Tin House Summer Workshop scholar. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

"Witty, poignant, and darkly funny, All-Night Pharmacy is a vibrant debut about longing, identity, and the wild, unbreakable bonds of family. In prose that is sharp, exuberant, wry, and smart, Madievsky conjures an affecting, utterly unforgettable tale of two tempestuous sisters." —Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

"A tender and hilarious coming-of-age story of two sisters." —Betsy Bonner, The New York Times Book Review

"All-Night Pharmacy is a kind of California neo-neo-noir, rebooting the genre's saturated nightmares for the 21st century ... Gorgeously rendered." —Zoe Hu, The Washington Post

"All-Night Pharmacy is an old-school LA novel in the best way, a total fever dream of lingering violence and lost souls." —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"A gripping, surrealist portrait of a toxic sibling relationship ... Madievsky's lyrical-prose style and arresting imagery create a book that is far more than an everyday romp through the Los Angeles underbelly. This is a startling story of a young woman consumed by the urge to do right." —Isle McElroy, Vulture