Ruth Madievsky

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 sensual and 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. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics. 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. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.

A Novel

All-Night Pharmacy

Lindsay

Spending time with my sister, Debbie, was like buying acid off a guy you met on the bus.

The only thing worse than concealing how adrift I was: when people I loved believed the lie.

I didn’t know how to explain it. It— the feeling— was like eating chicken and realizing halfway through it was raw. I felt that way all the time.

It was less embarrassing to pretend I didn’t care than to out myself as a failure.

“The only way to really see a person is to lose everything you have in common”

The difference was mutually assured destruction feels a lot better among relative strangers than family. Speaking our fears aloud wouldn’t save us.

How could I articulate my desires to such a difficult person when I couldn’t articulate them to myself?

women who brought each other to orgasm with a kind of graveness, a shared understanding that every throb of pleasure was a needle in the eye of someone who didn’t want you to have it.

Every shift, someone within a hundred feet of me was having the worst day of their life. I tried to harden my heart against them, but there was always someone whose suffering I metabolized.

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