Product Description

One of the most anticipated novels of 2005 from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours. Specimen Days is three linked visionary narratives about the relationship between man and machine. The first narrative, a ghost story set at the height of the Industrial Revolution, tells the story of man-eating machines. An ecstatic boy, barely embodied in the physical world, speaks in the voice of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman. He works at an oppressive factory connected to the making of a mysterious substance with some universal function and on which the world's economy somehow depends. The slight boy can barely operate the massive machine which speaks to him in the voice of his devoured brother. A woman who was to have married the brother is now the object of obsessive interest by the boy. In a city in which all are mastered by the machine, the boy is convinced that the woman must be saved before she too is devoured. This grisly but ultimately transformative story establishes three main characters who will appear, re-incarnated, in the other two sections of this startling modern novel. The boy, the man and the woman are each in search of some sort of transcendence as is made manifest by the recurrence of the words of Whitman ('It avails not, neither distance nor place...I am with you, and know how it is'). In part two, a noir thriller set in the early years of our current century, the city is at threat from maniacal bombers, while the third and last part plays with the sci-fi genre, taking our characters centuries into the future. The man who was devoured by a machine in part one is now literally a machine - a robot who becomes fully human before our eyes. The woman is a refugee from another part of the universe, a warrior in her native land but a servant on this planet. The boy leaves the earth at the novel's close in search of a new-found land. Specimen Days is a genre bending, haunting ode to life itself - a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #290566 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's hard to overestimate the impression made by Michael Cunningham's The Hours; this was literary fiction of a rare order, detailing the inner lives of its female protagonists with sympathy and understanding. Now we have Specimen Days, and this has to be counted among the most eagerly anticipated novels in recent years, such is the reputation of the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist has acquired in a relatively short time. And if Specimen Days does not immediately exert the grip of its predecessor, this is due to no failure of technique. Cunningham knows exactly what he is doing, and his slow, penetrating accretion of detail ultimately pays off in ways that are richly satisfying.

The various sections of the novel describe the same group of protagonists: a young boy, a young woman and an older man. But the treatment of these characters is strikingly varied from section to section, and the ambitions of the novel are jaw dropping. In the Machine is set during the industrial revolution, and balances the carefully examined pathology of its characters against supernatural elements. We are then taken to the early 21st century in The Children's Crusade which has a far grittier tone, with a terrorist group setting off bombs at random throughout the city. Finally, we are plunged 150 years into the future, when the city of New York is struggling to deal with the host of refugees from a planet that astronauts have reached.

All of these widely disparate narratives are united by the telling presence of the poet Walt Whitman, who acts as an anchor for the reader in a narrative that disorients as much as it stimulates. Not everyone will be able to accept the massive reach of Cunningham's novel, and the wrench between different time periods is certainly more shocking than that in The Hours. But for those willing to accept the new and challenging, Specimen Days is a masterful and visceral read. --Barry Forshaw

Review
Praise for The Hours: 'The Hours is a book which heightens the perception of the reader. Cunningham's craftmanship is overwhelming.' Robert Farren, Sunday Independent 'An extremely moving, original and memorable novel.' Hermione Lee, TLS 'Engrossing, imaginative and humane.' Richard Francis, Observer 'This chamber piece rhapsodies on creativity and madness, love and loss.' Esquire

Peter Parker, Sunday Times
‘Intricately conceived, stylishly written and admirably ambitious, this absorbing novel lingers in the mind.’

Customer Reviews

Surprising and disconcerting
I am a massive fan of Michael Cunningham's work. I thought his first two novels were very accomplished and skillfully constructed, and I absolutely adored The Hours which ranks of one of the best books I have ever read.

As for Specimen Days, well it certainly surprised me. I would have never dreamed of reading about a love story between a cyborg and a extraterrestrial lizard-female in one of his books - and there was something refreshing and exciting in such a bold departure. Unfortunately I am not sure that the book as a whole was successful. Like in The Hours, Cunningham tells three stories which have a common thread of characters, themes and literary/poetic background. But where in the Hours, the stories were beautifully interwoven and magnified each other depth and meaning, here they seemed to be running separately and sequentially and I often felt like reading three novellas rather than one coherent piece of work.

I thought the first story was especially hard work and I would have definitely given up if it wasn't for some kind of loyalty and respect that i felt towards Cunnigham's work. In sum, this book is a bold and ambitious attempt and should be celebrated as such but i felt that the effort of going through it was greater than the reward.

Worth reading!
Michael Cunningham is a very talented writer. Focusing on themes of love and death, regeneration and survival, 'Specimen Days' is a cleverly structured, well-written triptych. The three sections are linked by three recurring characters, while Walt Whitman's poetry provides a continuity throughout that supports the regeneration theme. In many ways, the book reminded me of David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas'; structurally, thematically, and in the writer's skillful narration from different perspectives.
Although the first section is set amid the grinding poverty of mid-nineteenth century immigrant New York, the second in contemporary fear-stricken New York, and the third in a dystopic future-New York, this book is - ironically - profoundly optimistic. The settings are interesting and believable, and the lives of the characters compelling.
A good read.

Intense, captivating, ambitious
I did not expect to be as captivated by this book as I came to be in sheer minutes since turning the first page.

As a narrative, it takes you on a journey through time, through the eyes of three different characters - a boy, a young woman and a man - all experiencing different things.

Walt Whitman and a china bowl are the strings binding them together.

Heartlessness is a word that perfectly describes the world around them, whether it is past, present or future. Their voices are intricately united however, and there is no dissonance in the text.

For those looking for a theme, why could the beauty of life not be the answer? It is what Walt Whitman celebrated; it is what poor little Lucas with his heart condition speaks of in his fits; it is what the children's crusade sets Cat onto finding about; it is what a man's implant makes him churn out of the blue.

An immensly enjoyable read, deserving its every penny and then some.