Specimen Days: A Novel

Michael Cunningham

Apr 2007 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

Discover the Boundless Transformation of Life and Time

Welcome to the curated universe of Michael Cunningham's compelling novel, Specimen Days. Crafted with the elegance and power synonymous with this Pulitzer prize-winning author, this intricate work harmoniously blends literary fiction, historical narratives, and riveting science fiction. It's a bold exploration of New York City and the ultimate direction of America's destiny.

The novel masterfully weaves three riveting stories, each one echoing with the presence of characters familiar but uniquely adapted to their own era.

The first tale, "In the Machine," throws us back to the height of the industrial revolution, a chilling ghost story of humanity wrestling with the alien concepts of the new machine age.

Our journey continues with "The Children's Crusade," a thrilling narrative set in the 21st century, where a terrifying chain of seemingly random bombings plague a metropolis forcing us to examine the shadows of crisis and terror.

"Like Beauty" envisions New York 150 years into the future, a city teetering on the edge of collapse under the weight of refugees from Earth's first extraterrestrial contact.

Promising an immersive, transformative, and genre-blending literary experience, this imaginative narrative illuminates the transcendent interconnectedness of time, humanity, and destiny.

Ratings and reviews

Oh, my. My friend Susan (who has a sterling record of book referrals) lent me this and The Hours; I passed on the latter because I am really woefully ignorant about Virginia Woolf and picked up this one somewhat in desperation for bedtime reading -- then had to stay up till 1:30 in the morning to finish it. I didn't read any back-cover content so I had no idea that I would be taken on a journey from 19th century NYC to a grim post-9/11 present through to an imagined future with aliens, all imbued with the poetry of Walt Whitman. I googled up some very negative reviews of this book but I loved it and was amazed. What a craftsman Cunningham is. No question but that I'll also take up The Hours.

A second masterpiece (after The Hours) of Michael Cunningham. In The hours the lives of three people were intertwined together. In here we follow three characters in three historical periods, in three apparently unrelated separate novels. The historical background of each story is a different New York: the horrors of the industrial revolution, the fears of the Post September 2001, and a post apocalyptic feature. In each story the same characters come back over and over again, struggling over and over to understand the truth, to see what is hidden behind the reality, and to discover it in awe.

Must read at least twice!!

About the author

Michael Cunningham was raised in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels The Hours, A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and By Nightfall. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories, and he is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Hours, which was a New York Times bestseller, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1998 by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly. He is a Professor at Brooklyn College for the M.F.A program.