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PRAISE for AND EVERY DAY WAS OVERCAST
  • "This illustrated novel about growing up poor near the swamps of South Florida has a lurid vibrancy. Its prose is lit from below, like a vaguely scummy in-ground swimming pool, and the author’s photographs — of ranch houses, randy adolescents, alligators, drug paraphernalia, fishing tackle, convenience stores — are what you might get if you combined William Eggleston’s talents with Terry Richardson’s."
    —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
  • "We finish And Every Day Was Overcast in a delirious state of disassociation, not unlike the kids whose lives it seeks to evoke. This, of course, is why we turn to books — or one reason, anyway — to see the world as we have not before. The shabby suburbs of And Every Day Was Overcast may not be unknown to us, but "Kwiatkowski’s ruthless excavation give us a new language by which we hear stories that might otherwise go unheard."
    —David L. Ulin, The Los Angeles Times
  • "Kwiatkowski's language is harsh and direct, and his stories are compelling in their sadness and brutality. . . the photographs serve to confirm the reality of these stories. We look at them and can see the people and landscape Kwiatkowski describes. Whether this means these stories are largely autobiographical, or are simply of a piece with the author's experience, matters little, and is part of what grips us. Kwiatkowski has produced an illustrated novel that shows what the form can do." —Photo District News
  • "Disposable-shot photos and alluringly honest prose narrate a romanticized version of the “lost youth,” filled with vignettes of sex, hallucinogenics, surface encounters, and overall debauchery and delinquency. With aesthetic conviction comparable to that of Harmony Korine, this alternative novel is sure to have you nostalgic and reaching for the cheapest brand of beer you ever got your teenage hands on."
    —Nylon Guys October Issue
  • "That is the strange, unsettling success of this book. Kwiatkowski is such a good writer and editor that we allow him to charm us, despite the possibility that the author may be as unreliable a narrator as the protagonist, because words and pictures are both in the service of such a seductive hallucination. The work presents an affecting and introspective narrative experience…If you want to know where photography is headed these days, this book provides one interesting answer: Paul Kwiatkowski has made a place inside his head for you and this book will take you there."
    —Fraction Magazine
  • "The form of Kwiatkowski’s terrific coming-of-age novel, set in the 1990s, is offbeat and provocative. Short chapters, long on imagery and adolescent attitude, nestle between pages of color photographs. What’s exciting is how well these components complement one another... Vibrant and original."
    —Publishers Weekly
  • "And Every Day Was Overcast [is] unlike any book I've ever read. [It's] a mix of this clean, spare, unaffected prose about growing up near the swamps of South Florida – plus these incredible photos [Paul has] taken of the area. …A completely original and clearheaded voice."
    —Ira Glass
  • “I can count on my fingers the number of great books that seamlessly mix photographs and literary text in a compelling way. Paul Kwiatkowski’s And Every Day Was Overcast not only achieves this rare feat, he does so with an artistry that makes the achievement nearly invisible. As compelling as the best movies or graphic novels, And Every Day Was Overcast is a landmark in visual storytelling."
    —Alec Soth
  • "Paul Kwiatkowski stitches together an ugly-beautiful fabric of volatile America, threaded with gators and bad acid trips, swampy living and early sexual encounters. There's hardly anything more American than this ode to coming of age in South Florida. A tour de force in the form of battered scrapbook memories."
    —Doug Rickard, A New American Picture
  • "Kwiatkowski could have published these photos as an art book – they’re astoundingly fresh, almost electrifying – but chose instead to pair them with this short coming-of-age tale. . . It’s an overt rejection of the already-blurry lines between the real and the artificial, between reality and fantasyland. . . And Kwiatkowski doesn’t disappoint as a Baudelaire of the swamps"
    —Jessica Bryce Young, Orlando Weekly
  • Excerpted in the October 2013 issue of Vice magazine
  • "Paul Kwiatkowski’s new gritty and dark coming-of-age novel evokes a rave gone wrong in the '90s. And Every Day was Overcast succeeds in portraying teenage toxicity in South Florida in the wors[t] yet most vibrant way. The volatile narrative is carefully nestled between ugly-beautiful scrapbook photos that seamlessly construct a unique type of visual storytelling…this delinquent memoir has it all."
    —Creative Loafing Tampa
  • "Beautiful photographs which seem inspired by Larry Clark, and blends visual fact and visual fiction with the story of a young man growing up…a graphic novel in photographs…physically a beautiful book"
    —Carolyn Kellogg, KCRW's "Which Way, LA?" Los Angeles Public Radio
  • "Paul Kwiatkowski [is] a narrative-driven photographer whose first book, And Every Day was Overcast, conveys the eerie upbringing south Florida imparts on its residents…his prose weaves a fictionalized tale of boyhood in a strange land."
    —Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
  • "And Every Day was Overcast is a novel about teenhood in South Florida, where Kwiatkowski grew up. His photos, which make up the bulk of the book, drive singular, clear prose"
    —Minnesota Today
  • "This is a work of fiction that just happens to challenge the relationship we have to text, images, and the truth... This is "a book for contemporary art lovers and those unafraid to travel back in time and see the ’90s — and high school — without the gloss of memory."
    —Eastern Iowa Gazette
PRAISE for the AND EVERY DAY WAS OVERCAST LP
  • "It’s worth exploring the iPad deluxe edition... Despite their genesis as Polaroids, ancient Kodak snaps, or tired prints from crappy disposables, the images seem more at home there, almost alive; the glow-flicker of a pixel display suits not only the photos, but also the TV-drenched narrative. Along with the text and photos, the iPad edition boasts a soundtrack (a mix of field recordings and ambient noise that is utterly familiar to any Southern suburbia-dweller, yet unsettlingly affecting) and a trove of anonymous interviews that are pure gold: funny, honest reminiscences of growing up in South Florida." Jessica Bryce Young, Orlando Weekly
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