Day is written with sections including Morning, Afternoon and Evening. Each one is on the date April 5th. It is the same day, but not the same year. Morning is in 2019, Afternoon is in 2020 and Evening is 2021.

Each segment of the book has the characters evolving in their lives. Morning introduces the characters, blatantly showing all of their flaws. The pains and sorrows of lost chances as well as fleeting time seems first and foremost during the afternoon. Evening brings hope that even though life was nothing like the characters thought it would be, things are seemingly going to work out to each of their satisfactions. The growth of the characters, both children and adults, are much happier than they have been in the past. Throughout the book they are evolving to feel comfortable in where their life choices are taking them, instead of questioning what others may think.

This literary fiction was not a cheerful romp. Dealing with life choices, the characters often seem uncomfortable in their own skin. It makes the reader contemplate the outcome well before Evening arrives. Perhaps that is the intention of the author, whose writing will captivate the readers, wondering how the lives of the characters will turn out.

Day is an interesting book, but in no means a happy go lucky read. That isn’t a bad thing, but part way though the story, I would have liked to have a glimmer of hope for the characters, especially the children. Most likely it is closer to real life than most works of fiction, but as a reader, it made me sad to see how unhappy the characters were in their lives.

This is the first book I’ve read by the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham. His accolades include the author of many novels, both fiction and nonfiction. His work has been published in The New Yorker and The Best American Stories. His accolades include wining the PEN/
Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Currently living in New York City, he is a senior lecturer at Yale University

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from Netgalley and the author in exchange for a fair and honest review. Copyright © 2024 Laura Hartman

DAY is a beautifully written book that takes place on one day over the course of three years. It's focus is a family, their loves and loses, how they weather the pandemic, and mostly, their relationships with each other. The difficulty I had was a disconnect with the characters. The adults were so self-absorbed that I felt their story was missing. I never understood what it was they were trying to achieve with their long analysis of themselves and each other. Despite the steller prose, I felt disconnected and unplugged while reading.

This is an expertly written book with an interesting concept of looking at a family over three days before the pandemic, at the start of the pandemic, and a year later from multiple points of view at each time period. For me, the novel didn't keep my attention though. There was definitely more here than just a "pandemic story", but for some reason I couldn't get past this idea. However, I think others may definitely appreciate the nuance and tenderness here.

Beautifully written, as are all of Cunningham's books. Always eloquent. But the pandemic is still a raw subject for me as I live with it everyday and still follow pandemic protocols so having to read about it and experience it through literature is not something I want to do.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Random House for accepting my request to read and review of Day on NetGalley.

Stars: 2.5

I have reached a pinnacle point in my life -- I read for pleasure.

I saw Pulitzer Prize on the cover, general adult literary fiction genre and should have moved on. However, I requested and thought I can handle it.

Day is a thinker and requires focus and attention -- more than I have. When I was younger and doing my University studies I wouldn't have enjoyed this. This reading requires dissections.

Day is for smart people -- set the stage: a drink, soft music, and a leather (comfy) chair. If you are surprised at every little free library you find James Patterson and Nora Roberts you won't like this.

I wanted a story, not a puzzle. For me it's a bad choice with glowing evidence and I didn't like the dynamics -- for both reasons I'm going 2 stars.


Published: 11/14/23

Somehow, I have missed reading any other book by Michael Cunningham. I heard a lot of buzz about his latest novel and requested it on NetGalley. I was NOT disappointed. It is a microscopic look at the lives of several people, adults AND children, in one family before, during, and moving out of the pandemic. The best part about it is that the book takes place over three days, each on April 5, each one year apart: 2019, 2020, and 2021, and author somehow manages to tell the stories of the individuals in this family to perfection, despite the vastly differences in characters. I'll definitely be picking up more books by this author.

Snapshots of three days, straddling the pandemic: 2019, 2020, 2021. An extended family of individually struggling members. Their outcomes seem both randomly determined and also a product of their inaction towards each other - in spite of seemingly recognizing their problems and also unable or unwilling to reverse them.
I'm not entirely sure this is a pandemic novel; Covid is a fairly minor plot device to explain the characters' doings, but ultimately this story could have happened across any three years. In the end, nothing much feels resolved - but maybe that's the pandemic, or just life.
I appreciate the ARC - I was excited to read this and while it wasn't my thing in the end, it was an interesting version of the first wave of pandemic novels.

Day is a novel that takes place on the same day of each subsequent year and follows the lives of one family. This book was really hit and miss for me. There was much I could relate to about the feelings of the family members, especially the mother and the children. At the same time, I found some of the characters to be whiny and annoying and some of their viewpoints totally dumb and dense. It was an interesting premise that could have used a bit of sprucing up to make it better

Michael Cunningham is a national treasure and his latest book , "Day" is a five star read. Day is a Covid book that never actually acknowledges Covid and the story takes place on the same Day (April 5th) over three years (2019, 2020 and 2021). The main characters are struggling spouses Dan and Isobel who live in Brooklyn with their two children and Isobel's brother Robbie. The character development is very strong and the attention to detail is exquisite. Cunningham's novels read like on long poem, where every word is thoughtful and meaningful. I found myself underlining so many passages and this is definitely a book I will read again. Thanks to #netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

One of the year's stronger character-based novels, Cunningham's latest uses the tightness of its one-day conceit to superb dramatic effect.

Cunningham's lyrical writing style and nuanced storytelling create a profound reading experience, making "Day" a compelling and thought-provoking literary achievement. While his older novels impacted me harder, he still has his same incredible tune and rhythm.

"Day" is the first Michael Cunningham book I've read and it really makes me wonder what took me so long--this novel, which checks in on the lives of one extended Brooklyn family on one specific day, April 5, over the course of the three years from 2019-2021, is brilliant. Because the reader is well aware of what happens in Brooklyn in 2020, the novel's tripartite structure both heightens the sense of suspense as well as lends an air of elegy to the story. We are aware, while reading the unremarkable events of the morning of April 5, 2019, of the upheaval that lies ahead for the already unsettled main characters: Isabel, a magazine editor dissatisfied with her marriage; Dan, her ex-rocker house husband who fantasizes about a musical comeback; and Robbie, Isabel's gay younger brother and the couple's closest friend, who they are reluctantly evicting from a floor of their townhouse where he's lived for years because their children, 10-year-old Nathan and 5-year-old Violet, need more space. (College professor Chess and Dan's wayward brother Garth, the sperm donor for Chess's baby, Odin, round out the main characters.) When we check in with them all on the afternoon of April 5 a year later, they are navigating the suddenness and isolation of lockdown, which has introduced new stressors to their already complicated relationships; by the end of that afternoon, we have gleaned enough clues to guess what might happen before the narrative picks up again on the evening of April 5, 2021, when life has irrevocably changed for everyone. I don't want to reveal more here lest I give away too much. Suffice it to say that "Day" left me feeling much like I did in April 2021--wishing that I could turn the clock back t0 2019 but resigned to the evanescence of that time. In the Acknowledgments, Cunningham thanks his students who "provide a critical link between life as lived and the attempt to do justice to it using only language, ink, and paper." In "Day," Cunningham's attempt to do justice to our lived lives in COVID times succeeds beautifully.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Random House for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

A literary fiction novel about a family on April 5 before Covid-19, the spring during the Covid-19 lockdown, and right after the world starts opening back up.

I struggled with caring for the family on this one. The only one I really cared about was the little girl, and even she didn’t seem like she would be real to me.

This is the first book of Michael Cunningham’s that I’ve read and I’m not saying he can’t write. In fact, he wrote these days in such detail, I felt like I was really watching the family while I read them. But, it was just something that was missing for me to actually care about the characters.

Maybe it’s still weird for me to read books about the pandemic quite yet.

This book wasn’t 100% for me, but it’s still good. And I feel like those who like reading about family dynamics and such will greatly enjoy this.

*Thank you Random House and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This book was just “meh” for me. I felt like I was reading it because I had to finish it instead of reading it because I wanted to finish it. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was.

Thanks to NetGalley for an honest review.

MC writes beautifully. An example from the beginning:
This early, the East River takes on a thin layer of translucence, a bright steely skin that appears to float over the river itself as the water turns from its nocturnal black to the opaque deep green of the approaching day. The lights on the Brooklyn Bridge go pale against the sky. A man pulls up the metal shutter of his shoe repair shop. A young woman, ponytailed, jogs past a middle-aged man who, wearing a little black dress and combat boots, is finally returning home. The occasional lit-up window is exactly as bright as the quarter moon.

He also writes beautifully about grief:

They could pay closer attention and perform daily mercies and live, merely live, through whatever time it would take…

This is a story of a family: parents, two kids, brothers and their relationships with each other and themselves. Full of angst, recriminations, inconceivable and unbelievable internal dialogues this novel presents a point of view of what it means to be alive today. But do people really have this kind of internal introspections? Tiring to listen to, it somehow fails to enlighten the reader to the source of such angst and ennui and longing.(for what exactly)?

The most admired character is a fabricated avatar. I guess this tells us something about the vacuousness of these people. What a shame. They are not there for each other, searching to be understood they miss the opportunity to understand each other and then themselves.

In trying to get beyond the characters unrelenting internal thoughts, it becomes apparent that MC is raising questions about what are our responsibilities to the development of our children, our relationships with our spouses with our siblings? Does self absorption prevent ourselves from seeing that what is outside ourselves that can lead to spiritual and emotional growth?

Cunningham focuses on a single day each year. It enables him to show the myriad changes that occur in their lives without having to detail each and every one. He takes a microscope to the intimate lives of each of these five adults and two children, capturing their nuances. The adults are all dissatisfied with their lives, even before the pandemic. While an interesting concept for the book, I didn't connect with the characters.

DAY is the highly anticipated new novel from Michael Cunningham, chronicling a day in the lives of a family living in New York City in 2019-2021, chronicling the pandemic and its aftermath.

I was thrilled to receive the ARC for this novel after hearing rave reviews - thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House, Random House for the ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

DAY tells the story of Isabel and Dan, a married couple who live with Isabel's brother Robbie and their children Nathan and Violet. The story rotates between all of their POVs, along with Garth, Dan's brother. I thought Cunningham's writing was superb, beautifully conveying some of the loss, listlessness, and confusion of the pandemic days of Spring 2020, and the tentative hopefulness a year later. This didn't fully live up to its rave reviews for me, but I suspect Cunningham fans will adore it.

I've waited too long to do this book the justice it deserves, I'm sorry to say. I'm so very far behind on writing reviews so I'm afraid this is going to be short, as well as late in coming.

Day is not the kind of book that's going to rock the world - it's meditative, intimate, focuses on issues many would rather not think about, often sad and frequently melancholy. It's a slow read, the kind where, even though we are moving forward in time, even though there is action and the pandemic to deal with, it feels much more character than action driven. Which, of course, makes it a novel for a smaller audience.

It's that intimacy that allows us to really get to know each of the characters in this book, to explore their inner thoughts and emotions. To see them in ways they wouldn't necessarily be able to express for themselves, in ways most of us aren't able to articulate for ourselves. It's that intimacy that pulls us so far in that we have to remind ourselves that Day is touching on universal subjects - love, marriage, parenthood, family, obligations, dreams.

I'm but one reader, a reader who often feels she's not up to the author's level of story telling, so my opinion won't matter all that much. But for what it's worth, here it is: I liked the writing, I grew attached to the characters, I was a little heartbroken in that last "chapter." But it wasn't a book I couldn't wait to get back to and it's a book that, in sitting down to write this review, I had to remind myself what the story was about; it hasn't stuck with me that way I expected it to stick. I think it has as much to do with the Dan's brother Garth's story taking up more space than I would have liked; Garth and the mother of his son were the two characters in the book that I struggled to care about. That's me, of course. Look at other reviews - anyone who writes them for a living seems to be more impressed overall.

Day by Michael Cunningham

This is the most absolutely perfect book, that, along with Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake I will be insufferably be insisting people read until they give in and pick them up.

Day takes place in the morning of April 5 2019, the afternoon of April 5 2020 and the evening of April 5 2021, and so wholly brings to life its cast of characters with lyrical poetic and heartbreaking writing.

The Hours was Cunningham’s Mrs Dalloway, and my experience of reading Day made me feel like it was his To The Lighthouse.