All Day Is a Long Time

One of The Millions' ""Most Anticipated Books of 2022""

One of PureWow’s ""10 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in January""

One of BookShop.org's ""Notable New Releases""

One of The New York Times Book Review’s ""16 New Books Coming in January""

One of Poets & Writers' ""New and Noteworthy Books”

""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.

© 2022 Harper (Audiobook): 9780358605119

Release date

Audiobook: 18 January 2022