Specimen Days
I was surprised and delighted by every element of Specimen Days: the precision and freshness of the language, the startling imagery and metaphors, and the utterly novel way of looking at the world. Because of the beauty of the prose I was expecting a story about nothing but the plot quickly became intensely dramatic and entirely unpredictable. Every detail is meaningful, not just decorative, and the motifs that link the three stories are subtle and clever. The changes in register - from
He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance. He needed to tell her it was impossible, it was unbearable, to be so continually mistaken for a
A preface: It has been a good long while since I read this book, and whether or not my glowing review is one-hundred percent genuine or I've simply romanticized my enjoyment of it based on my preconceived notions that it was going to be a work of genius and my subsequent recommendations to anyone and everyone I know who likes to read (you know, when the book comes to mind, at any rate), remains to be seen. And that's not even true, because how could I ever recapture how I felt after reading the
The first story was one of the most intense pieces of literature Ive ever read. Tragic, desperate and odd. The other two were good but didnt have that same sanguine quality.
This was a very intriguing work; I am not totally certain how I felt about all the disparate elements. This novel is built of three novellas/long short stories titled "In the Machine", "The Children's Crusade", and "Like Beauty" each of which had a distinct tone and "genre" and featured a cast of three main characters: a man named Simon, a woman with a name that is a variant of Catherine, and a boy with a variant of Luke. The characters are not really the same individuals, but are clearly meant
American writer who is more known for 1988's Pulitzer awardee for Fiction The Hours, Michael Cummingham (born 1952) first published this book, The Specimen Days in 2005. If The Hours is based on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, The Specimen Days is based on the Walt Whitman's complete collection of poetry and collected prose bearing the same title.If there is an award for the most organized and ambitious structure for a trilogy, it has to be this Cunningham work. The reason is that this book is
Michael Cunningham
Paperback | Pages: 336 pages Rating: 3.58 | 5443 Users | 572 Reviews
Mention Containing Books Specimen Days
Title | : | Specimen Days |
Author | : | Michael Cunningham |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 336 pages |
Published | : | April 18th 2006 by Picador USA (first published 2005) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Science Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Short Stories |
Interpretation Toward Books Specimen Days
Lucas, Catherine, Simon: three characters meet time and again in the three linked narratives that form ‘Specimen Days’. The first, a science fiction of the past, tells of a boy whose brother was ‘devoured’ by the machine he operated. The second is a noirish thriller set in our century, as a police psychologist attempts to track down a group of terrorists. And the third and final strand accompanies two strange beings into the future. A novel of connecting and reconnecting, inspired by the writings of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman, 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 todayDetails Books Concering Specimen Days
Original Title: | Specimen Days |
ISBN: | 0312425023 (ISBN13: 9780312425029) |
Edition Language: | English |
Literary Awards: | Ohioana Book Award for Fiction (2006) |
Rating Containing Books Specimen Days
Ratings: 3.58 From 5443 Users | 572 ReviewsCommentary Containing Books Specimen Days
I generally LOVE Michael Cunningham, but I felt he was copying his "literature borrowing" idea from The Hours. He was experimenting with form, but it didn't work for me. Three stories linked to one work - the author shows up in the earliest story - that's what he borrowed from The Hours. In Specimen Days, Cunningham offers three novels based on Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. In the first novella, set in Victorian NYC, a mentally-challenged factory worker has taken his dead brother's job evenI was surprised and delighted by every element of Specimen Days: the precision and freshness of the language, the startling imagery and metaphors, and the utterly novel way of looking at the world. Because of the beauty of the prose I was expecting a story about nothing but the plot quickly became intensely dramatic and entirely unpredictable. Every detail is meaningful, not just decorative, and the motifs that link the three stories are subtle and clever. The changes in register - from
He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance. He needed to tell her it was impossible, it was unbearable, to be so continually mistaken for a
A preface: It has been a good long while since I read this book, and whether or not my glowing review is one-hundred percent genuine or I've simply romanticized my enjoyment of it based on my preconceived notions that it was going to be a work of genius and my subsequent recommendations to anyone and everyone I know who likes to read (you know, when the book comes to mind, at any rate), remains to be seen. And that's not even true, because how could I ever recapture how I felt after reading the
The first story was one of the most intense pieces of literature Ive ever read. Tragic, desperate and odd. The other two were good but didnt have that same sanguine quality.
This was a very intriguing work; I am not totally certain how I felt about all the disparate elements. This novel is built of three novellas/long short stories titled "In the Machine", "The Children's Crusade", and "Like Beauty" each of which had a distinct tone and "genre" and featured a cast of three main characters: a man named Simon, a woman with a name that is a variant of Catherine, and a boy with a variant of Luke. The characters are not really the same individuals, but are clearly meant
American writer who is more known for 1988's Pulitzer awardee for Fiction The Hours, Michael Cummingham (born 1952) first published this book, The Specimen Days in 2005. If The Hours is based on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, The Specimen Days is based on the Walt Whitman's complete collection of poetry and collected prose bearing the same title.If there is an award for the most organized and ambitious structure for a trilogy, it has to be this Cunningham work. The reason is that this book is
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