The Left and the Lucky, by Willy Vlautin: "Faithful friends are hard to find."

Willy Vlautin is now officially a must-read writer for me.

I’m a relative newcomer to Willy Vlautin’s novels. My first time reading him was his sixth novel, 2021’sThe Night Always Comes. But that was one of myfavorite books of that year.And his new novel,The Left and the Luckywill undoubtedly wind up on this year’s favorites-of-the-year list.

I LOVED this book.

Vlautin, like his fellow Pacific Northwest writers Jonathan Evison and Jess Walter, writes stories about plucky everyday people just trying to get by. In The Left and the Lucky, our everyday person is a divorced Portland house-painter named Eddie.

Eddie’s next-door neighbor is a family with problems. Their mother, who is a stripper, and not a bad person but seems totally overmatched, has two kids, one an out-of-control teenager named Curtis and a mild-mannered second grader named Russell. Curtis absolutely terrorizes Russell -- he’s cruel to him to the point Russell doesn’t feel safe and hides out in his grandmother’s bedroom or just wanders around rainy, dreary Portland.

When Eddie finds Russell hiding out in a grocery store, he starts to understand the scope of the problem next door. Eddie and Russell become fast, if unlikely, friends. A highlight of this story is how not just Eddie, but also Eddie’s sidekick Houston, an alcoholic who Eddie also tries to help by keeping him employed and managing his money for him, relate to Russell. They treat him -- and talk to him -- as their equal. And the conversations are so heartwarming, often really funny, but so real.

Eddie is almost preternaturally patient with Russell, with Houston, and with another painter named Cordarelle who Vlautin captures with hilarious accuracy. If you’ve ever worked in the building trades (and I have!), you know a Cordarelle -- a guy always bragging and talking about his glory days.

Ultimately, The Left and the Lucky is the story of the everyday struggle just to make ends meet, to make life meaningful, to get out of your own way, and to be a good person in a shitty world full of shitty people. It’s the story of how friendship can quite literally save you.