day by michael cunningham
★★★★☆
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day by michael cunningham is an intimate exploration of family life, offering unique perspective from each member, as their experiences unfold over the course of the same day for three consecutive years. this novel navigates through normal life, the impact of covid, and life after the pandemic.
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“there’s a song inside the song. it isn’t beautiful, it isn’t only beautiful, though it contains beauty like a plum contains its stone.”
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while this novel didn’t fully meet my expectations, i appreciate cunningham’s skillful ability to depict the subtle yet profound changes in the characters' day-to-day lives as time progresses. initially, i struggled to connect with these characters and felt the pacing was slow. however, the novel's impact became clear to me by the conclusion and the full scope of the narrative revealed itself, leading me to a deeper appreciation of the mundanity of everyday life.

I have such mixed feelings about this book. Some pieces of the story are beautiful and well thought out and other pieces feel clunky and lumped in for good measure. Also, I don't think I'm ready to read books about the seclusion of covid times. Too soon for me. personally.

Thank you Netgalley for my copy of this book. This review is my own and unbiased.

Day has a fascinating structure in that the story takes place on the same day over three years. But these aren’t any years - pre-pandemic in the morning, pandemic in the afternoon and post-pandemic in the evening. There is no doubt that Michael Cunningham is a gifted writer and that is on full display in Day. The sparseness of the book lends itself to conveying the anxiety that many felt during these years.

The story is totally character-driven — there is little in the way of plot or action. While we get a sense of the characters, it is not an intricate portrayal. Furthermore, these people are not particularly likable or believable.

This was my first Michel Cunningham novel so perhaps my expectations were set too high but it was a tedious read for me. However the beautiful writing is what kept me turning the pages.

Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in xchange for my honest opinion.

A group of sad people whining endlessly about their lives. I gave up mid-way through and fast forwarded towards the end to see how it turned out . Then I felt guilty, reversed course, and muddled through. The run-on paragraphs drove me nuts. I didn't care about any of the characters (except maybe baby Odin's thankfully silent stuffed rabbit.) My ongoing thought as I read was that either this author is a pseudo-intellect full of pretentious prose, or I'm just not smart enough to appreciate his writing.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

Beautiful prose, compelling characters, and an interesting method of storytelling using three singular days in three consecutive years, one on the precipice of the pandemic and two within it, leading to nice tension and a sense of foreboding in each of the first two sections.

Michael Cunningham’s Day is a beautiful novel that I instantly knew would be one I will turn back to for re-read(s) again in my life.

As a voracious reader who was a NYC full-time resident through the worst of Covid-19, I often found myself dreading the day that plot lines would necessarily reckon with those difficult times. These years marked a time that were at once so deeply personal yet entirely communal in our collective struggles. How would (how dare?) an author take my most intimate experiences from this chapter and extrapolate them out to something meaningful to a mass audience? How would someone capture on pages the mutual sense of isolation in our uncertainty with how to responsibly proceed with life each day in Spring 2020 while illustrating the intense power of community support and foster non-superficial relatability for readers?

I was clearly skeptical and apprehensive in my anticipation of a “great Covid novel”but Michael Cunningham masterfully captured all that complexity in a deeply impactful and absolute beauty of a book. Day was the novel I didn’t know I needed in my life, and one I am so grateful to have discovered.

Published by Random House on November 14, 2023

Day is a novel of family drama and personal failures. Characters behave selfishly, a common trait that commonly destroys relationships. The story takes place at the height of the pandemic. Ambulances race down Brooklyn streets as sirens interrupt conversations. The children of two key characters live in fear of opening a window. The virus will have a significant impact on their family before the novel ends, for which the kids will blame themselves.

Robbie Byrne can’t find an affordable apartment in New York City on the salary he earns as a sixth-grade teacher. His sister Isabel owns a Brooklyn brownstone and he’s been renting the attic rooms from her. Isabel’s son and daughter are growing too old to share a bedroom, so Robbie needs to find a new place to live. Isabel’s husband Dan will miss his daily presence. Robbie and Dan are attracted to each other, although only Robbie is openly gay.

Robbie and Isabel have invented a fellow named Wolfe who chronicles his life on Instagram, adding life-affirming captions to pictures of nature or cabins that Wolfe might want to buy, to the delight of followers who presumably believe in his corporeal existence. Wolfe sometimes posts pictures that were clearly taken in a different season, but his followers don’t seem to notice or care. Such is Instagram. This is one of the novel’s more interesting inventions, although I think it might have been plumbed in greater depth.

As Robbie packs and discards his belongings, he is reminded of his past. Michael Cunningham uses that device to acquaint the reader with Robbie’s backstory: a photo of a college lover who was going through a “gay phase”; a scarf gifted by an older lover; acceptance letters into medical schools that Robbie decided not to attend. A boarding pass reminds him of a death. Everything reminds him of Adam.

Dan is a musician who had the usual rock star problems without the success of being a rock star. He played in bars but never had much of a following. By going to rehab and becoming a househusband, Dan transformed himself into “an affable, harmless man.” Isabel appreciates the change but no longer finds him interesting. That seems ridiculously unfair to Dan but relationships are often characterized by unfair judgments. When does it become too late to save a marriage that has never been terrible? Isobel isn’t sure of the answer even as she comes to suspect the marriage has already failed.

To his credit, Dan does not allow Isabel’s negativity to prevent him from writing songs again. He posts them online while dreaming of a comeback. Robbie is the only person in the household who listens to his music with approval.

Dan and Isabel have two children. Violet believes she sees ghosts (or shadows representing spirits). Perhaps she does. Perhaps she confuses imagination with reality. Violet acts as a reminder that the deaths of relatives are experienced as a family, not just as individual losses. Ultimately, the presence of a little girl who sees dead people detracts from the story more than it adds insight. And honestly, I’m just annoyed by child characters who say things, even unwittingly, that demonstrate wisdom beyond their years. Still, I appreciated Violet's insistence on wearing a yellow dress that no longer fits, despite her mother's belief that yellow just isn't her color, because it was a gift from a character who is no longer living.

Dan’s brother Garth is a sculptor who can’t get his work into a gallery. Garth has a baby with Chess Mullins. Chess teaches literature to snobby students who argue that classics written by white people aren’t worth reading. Chess doesn’t want a man in her life and regards herself as the baby’s only parent. Chess wants Garth to be “mildly fatherly” two days a week but otherwise to mind his own business. Whether they love each other is a question to which neither can supply a satisfying answer.

Garth is a bit needy and Chess is a bit cruel to him. She believes cruelty is necessary because “Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet” and ask what she’s going to do about them. Ouch! She believes Garth means well but isn’t up to the task of being a father. Her judgment seems unfair since she’s given him no chance to be a father. In the novel’s late stages, however, Garth’s greatest need is to be a father. He feels “a low howl of loss,” a sense of being diminished, as Chess’ actions make it increasingly difficult for him to be more meaningful than a visiting uncle in his son’s life.

All of this adds up to a typical domestic drama, albeit one that benefits from unusually strong prose. The story makes abrupt transitions, moving to a different place and time as if Cunningham decided “that’s all you need to know about this chapter in the characters’ lives, now it’s time to move on.” I suppose most novels do that, but the transitions seem unusually jarring in Day. By the middle of the novel, Robbie is suddenly in Iceland while everyone in New York is sheltering in their homes. How or why he ended up there is a bit of a mystery. In the next chapter, off-scene pandemic events have made permanent changes to the Byrne family. The transition has caused an attitudinal change in Isabel’s children and in adult characters who “can’t embrace the world the way we once did.”

As is the custom with family dramas, the novel ends with the characters pondering their futures. Most of them have survived the pandemic and their relationship turmoil. The point seems to be that life goes on for everyone who doesn’t die.

I appreciated the fullness of the characters’ creation. I can’t say that I was all that interested in how their lives might progress or that I was sad to reach the book’s end. Still, the characters and their attempts to cope with failure are interesting and their stories are told in confident prose. That’s enough to earn a mild recommendation, or perhaps a stronger one for devoted fans of domestic drama.

RECOMMENDED

DAY is a lovely story told over the course of three April 5ths: 2019, 2020, and 2021. What a fascinating structure! I can't say enough about how smart the structure is -- and it REALLY works for this book.

The novels explores the ups and downs of a married couple, their children, a brother/uncle, and a few others. It's easy to keep track of everyone, I promise. The family is falling apart at first, and I was invested in their futures. I especially loved the relationship between the uncle and niece.

While the pandemic features heavily and this may not be suitable or appealing for every reader, I highly recommend it for fans of literary fiction and character-driven stories. Cunningham obviously knows how to craft characters who seem like real people.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance e-galley; all opinions in this review are 100% my own.

I hope to reread this someday, to give it another chance. In an effort to speed things up, I did a combination of reading the ARC and listening to the Audible release. The audiobook was narrated by the wonderful Julianne Moore… but I was not drawn in by her reading at all. She is an extremely talented actress whom I have enjoyed in a number of film performances, but I found it hard to stay connected to her storytelling. When switching back to the book I could only hear her voice and her pacing.

As I said, I want to give this another chance someday, as very little actually happens and it may be easier to concentrate on these characters with only the voice in my head.

Michael Cunningham spins a tale of love, fidelity, childhood and change as one family navigates the same date over three different years.

The married couple, their two children, and the wife’s gay brother - come together and fall apart before, during and after the COVID pandemic.

They are well formed characters, but it’s Cunningham’s writing that is the star of this novel.

He makes the reader think and feel like the characters as he reaches into each heart and mind. We become a young girl; a stressed out wife and mother; a lonely gay uncle; a frustrated husband; a hormonal teen boy.

You could read ‘Day’ in a day, but it will stay with you much longer.

This quick little novel takes place in three days...April 2019, April 2020, and April 2021. The cast of characters is small - it focuses on a NYC family navigating marriage, parenting, and a pandemic. The pandemic is a big part of this one, so be wary if you have difficulty reading about those particularly dark days. Cunningham occasionally relies too heavily on cliche, but overall it's well written and thoughtful.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the complimentary review copy.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

The premise of the story is that it takes place on the same day for 3 years. In the first year, you meet the characters and learn their stories. The 2nd year is during the height of the pandemic and everyone is locked down. the 3rd year is when people are slowly starting to return to normal life after the worse of the pandemic.

This book started off really slow for me and I had a hard time keeping track of everyone and how they fit together. It wasn't until the last year That I became more invested in the people. I did like the end and how I felt like it closed some circles.

The writing style was ok. At points, I was just thinking to myself, he could have said the same thing with half the words.

3/5 stars

Demographically and experientially, I have virtually nothing in common with any of these characters. Yet I found myself highlighting so many excerpts where I found the author had described something I had felt perfectly. This is one of Cunningham's many gifts and it's on full display in this novel.

Much like The Hours, you get a vastly deep sense of the lives and hearts of the characters in an incredible sliver of a breadth of time. Economic and fast-paced, this is a fantastic addition to Cunningham's ouevre.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free advance reader copy of Day by Michael Cunningham in exchange for an honest review.

This is a gorgeously written short novel with an engaging concept behind it: three sections that take place on the same day on three consecutive years. April 5, 2019 creates the setting: daytime in the Brooklyn home of siblings Isabel and Robbie, Isabel's husband Dan and their children Nathan and Violet. Cunningham's brilliant writing gets to the heart of the relationships and inner thoughts of each character (including the children) as well as Wolfe, the imaginary older brother conjured by Isabel and Robbie in childhood who now has his own curated Instagram account. April 5, 2020 takes place in the early weeks of the pandemic, and April 5, 2021 wraps up the story lines of each character, as each one's life has changed in the two years since the novel's start.

I'll be thinking about these characters for a long time, and I'm heading out to get Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning earlier novel, The Hours. Four stars.

Thanks, NetGalley and Random House, for the digital review copy. Thanks also to my friends at @PRHAudio for the #gifted audiobook. #PRHAudioPartner #sponsored

I’m bringing you this review from my laundry room to demonstrate that some audiobooks are so great you will happily sort, fold, iron, rinse, repeat, clean UNDER the dryer, and decide to dust the baseboards just to keep listening. DAY is one of those books.

Now, let me caveat this. If I sent this book to my father, he would ask, “Why did you send me this book? Nothing happens” (As he did when I sent him NEWS OF THE WORLD) Because it was a book about nothing and everything, told perfectly.

GoodReads: 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.

Oh! This book. What is it about this book? How did I fall in love with these characters from their stamp-sized vignettes spaced over three single days in 2019, 2020, and 2021? This. This is impeccable writing. Delicious characterization. Lovely storytelling. This is mastery. (No surprise the author won a Pulitzer with his previous work, THE HOURS.)

The audiobook, narrated by actress Julianne Moore, was so delightful I wanted to soak in it like a hot bath. I especially loved her strident, self-assured delivery of 5-6-7-year-old Violet.

There are books you give five stars. Then there are books so good they make you want to keep cleaning. Those books receive five sponges. 🧽🧽🧽🧽🧽

This story is told on April 5 of 2019, 2020, and 2021. Morning, Afternoon, and evening respectively. It covers the same family of brother, sister, her husband, and their children, his brother and his baby mamma. We start out just before the pandemic, in the heart of the pandemic, and then the year after. This was an understanding of a family crumbling before covid, and then stick together during covid, A brother who is across the world during covid. I was touched by the relationship between the uncle and niece. While all the characters weren't likeable I was still very interested in their story and wanted to see how it would all end. This is a well told story about relationships with Covid as a background.

I received a copy from NetGalley and Random House and all opinions are my own.

I just finished this book and loved it all. It was written so amazingly beautifully. A meditation on everyday life and people with such real emotions and feelings that is so heartbreakingly sad. I felt so many ch for this family and their inner workings and thoughts. This was a NetGalley copy of this boook. I will be recommending it to all.

2 descriptive, but dull stars
“As it turns out, stories can’t be trusted any more than anyone or anything else.”

If you like books where nothing happens, set during the pandemic, full of negativity and selfish characters without a sense of purpose, then Day by Michael Cunningham will be perfect for you. If you want characters who show some growth and are occasionally kind and generous, look elsewhere. “She isn’t sure when she ceased to be the central figure in her own story and became, instead, the greedy ad embittered sister, her own shadowy twin, the one who’s been given everything and yet keeps on grumbling, Not enough.”

I’ve now read several books that utilize the Covid pandemic as the backdrop. None has captured the essence of that time, in that everyone’s experiences were unique and vastly different. Cunningham treads in the virus soup, but since there weren’t any likeable characters, I became as apathetic as the characters and just wanted to finish the book and move on to this profound review. “Garth, Dan’s second self, the irresponsible brother…Garth is running out of luck. Garth is loved, truly loved, by only one person. Garth is Dan’s to suffer and censure, to blame, to defend. To helplessly and angrily adore.”

Cunningham succeeds at writing descriptions. Very little happens on any of the three days he expounds upon, but his language is full, even if the tone is bleak. “If the other houses were sentimental reinventions of country life, their histories scrubbed away, the place on Skinner Road stubbornly retains its own history of desolation and long, drunken nights, of whatever sequence of unfortunate choices and bad luck had landed others here. When Isabel first agreed to the house, she underestimated its lingering air of dank disappointment, as well as her own inability to do much of anything about it.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Loved the structure of this book which takes place in a morning in 2019, an afternoon in 2020, and an evening in 2021 so we get a snapshot of the characters for each of those times. Really beautiful writing that made me laugh out loud at times - and I truly loved one of the characters in particular named Robbie.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I know Cunningham is a great author, but I really struggled with this one. The concept of catching up with the same characters on the same day for 3 years in a row is an interesting one. I think I had a hard time with how unlikeable the characters were and was having a hard time suspending disbelief about their relationships with one another. To be honest, I have a hard time with "covid" books as well. This one was just definitely not for me.