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In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, "Like Beauty," evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth.
Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his future readers, "It avails not, neither time or place . . . I am with you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Robert Schaefer
reviewed Specimen Days on June 16, 2020 Specimen Days
I would guess David Mitchell provided a hefty dose of inspiration for this novel in three parts and different historical settings. All three narratives are set in an alternate New York. In the Hours Cunningham used Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway as the linking common dominator; here he uses Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. All three stories have a young disenfranchised and lost boy at their heart who quotes Whitman.
The first story takes us back to the beginnings of the mechanised age. Lucas' brother has just been killed at work by a machine. Lucas is to take his place at the factory. He falls hopelessly in love with his brother's fiancé. Soon he begins to believe it is the aim of all machines to kill their operators and sets out to save his brother's fiancé.
The second story, for me the least successful, is about a woman who handles emergency police calls and her relationship with a boy who is part of a cult, known as the children's crusade, brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers.
The third story is set in the future and features an android as its hero and an alien as its heroine. Sounds a bit daft but it was actually my favourite narrative of the three. Because it deals so brilliantly with what it means to be human with all our emotional equipment. This isn't as accomplished as The Hours but again there's lots of fabulous writing and I really enjoyed reading it. 4.5 stars.
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Add Specimen Days, In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. In the Machine is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the indu, Specimen Days to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Specimen Days, In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. In the Machine is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the indu, Specimen Days to your collection on WonderClub |