Day
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
‘Unsparing and tender’ Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
‘A brilliant novel from our most brilliant of writers’ Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon
‘A quietly stunning achievement’ Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, falling in and out of love, losing the things that are most precious – and learning to go on.
April 5th, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house – and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.
April 5th, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan circle each other warily, communicating mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts – and his secret Instagram life – for company.
April 5th, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family comes together to reckon with a new, very different reality – with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.
From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss, and the struggles and limitations of family life – how to live together and apart, and maybe even escape the marriage plot entirely.
‘Cunningham is one of our great American writers, and here is another masterpiece … Read it and be changed’ Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less
About the author
Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels: A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen, as well as a story collection, A Wild Swan and Other Tales, and a book of non-fiction, Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. The Hours won the PEN Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize in1999. It was made into a film starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, who won an Academy Award for her performance as Virginia Woolf. Cunningham’s essays and short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the Paris Review, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, New York Magazine, and other publications. He is a Professor in the Practice at Yale University. He lives in New York City.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer winner Cunningham (The Hours) meditates on love and loss in this intimate portrait of a New York City family impacted by Covid-19. The story begins in April 2019, with Isabel Walker, a magazine photo editor, falling out of love with her partner Dan Byrne, a former rock musician turned "househusband." A year later, Isabel and Dan's 10-year-old daughter, Violet, already affected by her parents' acrimony, is intensely anxious over the virus. Isabel's beloved brother, Robbie, provides a stabilizing influence from afar via Instagram, where he posts as Wolfe, the "adult incarnation" of the imaginary older brother he and Isabel made up as children. Although Cunningham evokes the pandemic only indirectly, such as with references to Violet's remote learning, its impact on everyone is palpably conveyed, especially in a poignant, grief-filled final section set in April 2021. Cunningham's characters drive the story's slender plot, and all of them are magnificently developed, with even the basest episodes, like Dan succumbing to the temptation of a hit of cocaine, revealing depths of thought and feeling. What could have been a somber mood piece tinged with tragedy is buoyed by the author's focus on "the promise that resides under the forlorn surfaces." This stands out from the growing shelf of pandemic novels by managing to feel timeless.
