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Review
‘Cunningham encourages his reader to wrestle with things that interest him by sketching his plots delicately over classic lines. In this case, the arrival of the guest who will change everything is reworked into a discussion about art and decay by a writer who can write a page-turning novel that lingers eloquently in the mind’ The Times
‘This is a book about art, love, marriage and mortality… One of the intriguing and peculiar qualities of By Nightfall is that it makes you live with a character who seems never quite at ease with his own identity… One of Cunningham's gifts is to be able to shift gears when he wants, out of banal everydayness into an intense rhapsodic meditation on the meaning and purpose of life.’ Hermione Lee, Guardian
‘Michael Cunningham is embarked on one of the more satisfying career trajectories of contemporary American novelists…By Nightfall offers the reader an abundance of exquisite, enriching thumbnail sketches’ TLS
Praise for Michael Cunningham:
‘A genius’ Tim Lott
‘One of our very best writers.’ Los Angeles Times
Praise for ‘The Hours’:
‘“The Hours” is a book which heightens the perception of the reader. Cunningham’s craftmanship is overwhelming.’ Robert Farren, Independent on Sunday
‘An extremely moving, original and memorable novel.’ Hermione Lee, TLS
‘Engrossing, imaginative and humane.’ Richard Francis, Observer
‘…one of Cunningham’s gifts is to shift gears out of banal everydayness into an intense rhapsodic meditation on the meaning of life’ Hermione Lee, The Guardian
Product Description
The whole course of one’s life really can change in an instant.
Peter is forty-four, prosperous, the owner of a big New York apartment, a player in the NY contemporary art dealing scene. He has been married to Rebecca for close on twenty years. Their marriage is sound, in the way marriages are. Peter might even describe himself to be happy.
But when Mizzy, Rebecca’s much younger brother, comes to stay, his world is turned upside down. Returning to their New York flat after work one day, Peter sees the outline of Rebecca in the shower. But when he opens the shower door, it is Mizzy he comes face to face with. From that moment on, Mizzy occupies all of Peter’s thoughts. His fascination with him is erotic but not exactly sexual. Without ever really falling out of love with his wife, he tumbles into love with her brother, and is encouraged that way by the young man.
With traces of the tensions that ripple through Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’, this new novel from Michael Cunningham brilliantly examines the quest for unattainable, and temporal, beauty.
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Customer Reviews
But as read on my Kindle iPad app, I didn't find it very beautiful to read at all.
The electronic book is riddled with typographical and formatting errors, which would surely cause great dismay to Michael Cunningham, having clearly taken such care over his prose. For example every usage of "coffee" (which in a book set in Manhattan is about every page)the word is broken up into two non-existent words: "coff" and "ee". In fact every word with a double "ff" is split into two (off end, diff use) - which when you have a character called Groff, starts to get really problematic and way beyond the odd forgivable typo.
There are also:
Chunks of dialogue assigned to the wrong character through lack of a carriage return, so it looks like they are replying to their own question
Odd gaps and justification spaces throughout
I love Kindles and I like reading electronic books, but the lack of quality control in many of them is poor, and in this one particularly shocking.
DO NOT BUY THE ELECTRONIC VERSION IF YOU CARE ABOUT SMALL THINGS LIKE SPELLING AND LEGIBILITY.
It's a book about art, relationships, beauty and middle age angst. It's thought-provoking, tender and very readable. However, without giving any plot details away, I never bought into the central dilemma in which Peter finds himself. I believed in everything else about him, but this one, critical central part. However, that aside, it's excellent, intelligent read. It's also one of the most unpretentious books set in the world of modern art.
It's also quite a "slow burner" so if you are not gripped in the first few pages, keep going because it will draw you in.
But it does, like a car with the hand-break off, creaking and then rolling almost imperceptibly, and then picking up speed as it careers distinctly out of control.
This isn't a Big novel, or a crazily ambitious one. It does not have the epic nature of A Home At The End Of The World, or Flesh And Blood, or the failed megalomania of Specimen Days. Instead it reveals a subtle Woody Allen-like insight into the strangeness of our modern lives, and again, as in The Hours, the beautiful prose of a Virginia Wolf novel. The result is gentle, unpretentious and surprisingly profound.
For a while at the beginning, I didn't think I was going to like this novel. I couldn't have been more wrong. Welcome back Michael Cunningham.
"The Hours" which I avoided because of the really dull movie. Read more
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