Dias cruciales (Specimen Days) Book

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.