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Sep 28, 2008

Lavinia rated it:

I never really liked Whitman, but since Cunningham makes him his book’s hero [remember Woolf and The Hours?] he becomes more accessible. Directly or not, he is present in all three parts of the book, being hidden by Cunningham behind the characters that populate a New York from different periods of time [same pattern as The Hours], thus speaking and existing through them. I really liked the first two parts, the third one is S.F. and I’m not quite a fan. In the end, Walt doesn’t seem so impossib More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 05, 2011

Schmacko rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2008

Dale rated it:

I haven't done this in a while, but today seems like a good day to bring it back to the fore: I started my current job exactly one year ago, June 18, 2007. I've been doing the Metro commute for a whole year. And today, as the Blue Line train pulled into Crystal City, I finished my sixty-fourth book. (Don't worry, I have number sixty-five with me as well, to start on the commute home. I've gotten pretty good at knowing when I'll finish a book and having backup available.)

I wanted More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 10, 2008

George rated it:

Specimen Days is divided into three sections -- each set in a different time period in New York. A man named Simon, a woman named some variation of Catherine, and a boy named Lucas/Luke appear in each section (rotating who takes the lead in each), and a couple of settings, as well as a minor character or two, also repeat. The poetry of Walt Whitman also threads through the whole book, with Whitman himself actually making a cameo at one point, in the kind of gratuitous appearance that you expect More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 06, 2007

Doogyjim rated it:

As an admirer of the films of Michael Cunningham's novels (A Home at the End of the World & The Hours) I thought I better get round to actually reading one of his books. Specimen Days sat on my shelf since September of last year when I bought it with an Amazon voucher but for months was ignored as I'd run my finger over the spines looking for my next read. I'd notice it in passing and feel a little sheepish as it sat there, so unassuming with its stark black and white jacket design. Judging book More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 24, 2007

Jae rated it:

I put off reading this for a while, even though I'd liked The Hours, because the reviews kept dwelling on the science-fiction-y third part and as I'm not a big fan of sci-fi, I thought I wouldn't like it. But I was wrong! This was really beautiful -- the writing was incredible, dizzying at points, dense and lyrical and intense. The book is structured in three thematically linked sections, each set in NYC and inspired in different ways by Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The first section, In the Machi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 19, 2007

Peter rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 16, 2007

stephanie rated it:

i was SO looking forward to this book, it's kind of ridiculous. i mean, i own the first edition copy, because i BOUGHT it right then.

and then. it was so disappointing. part of it may be personal, but i don't think all of it.

he does (or tries to do) what he did with The Hours, but i think he fails spectacularly. there are three stories, in three separate time periods, and there are things interwoven between each of the stories that links them together. instead of virigi More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2007

Nick rated it:

3 stories. Walt Whitman's word bubbling up on the lips of all three protagonists, in all three stories. The same character names rearranged.

1. A kid with an awful life and effectively dead parents in industrial revolution-era NYC laments his dead brother, is eaten by machines, falls in love with a prostitute. Things are so desperate he starts hallucinating.

2. Present day cop realizes her rich white stock broker boyfriend likes her because she's exotic. There's a child ter More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Brandon rated it:

i went to a reception for this book, had never read anything by him, had never seen the movies. sounded like a terrible novel. wanted to shoot myself.

i ran into him in the bathroom and somehow i started telling him about some personal problems, he listened and gave me advice. on that alone, i decided to read the book.

the first story. done, couldn't do it.
the second story. no way.
the third story... the lizard in the future love story with a robot? i thought it More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 27, 2009

Djrmel rated it:

audiobook read by Alan Cumming - What a magical thing it would be to spend a day inside Michael Cunningham's head as he observes the world around him. It is through his power of noticing details and then being able to describe those details that makes his writing so damn good. Specimen Days is no exception to his string of stories that are not only very readable, but will come back to haunt you for days and weeks and who knows how long. In this book, we have three short stories that share a lot More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

When an author follows up a PEN/Faulkner and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with one that shares a similar structure, critics swarm. Call him audacious, but Cunningham, author of The Hours (1998) and At Home at the End of the World (1990), has again written three interrelated stories and incorporated a major literary figure, swapping The Hours��s Virginia Woolf for Whitman). The similarities end there. Where The Hours was a tightly composed work, the ambition of Specimen Days provokes a mess of qu

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Mar 22, 2011

victoria rated it:

Wonderful, wonderful Michael Cunningham, who, better than anyone else, can tell a story across time and place and space, reminding the reader that the stories of those in the past are similar to the stories we experience now and that others will in the future.

This particular book uses Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as the thread across three tales: one in turn-of-the-century New York when machines were becoming a part of daily and work life; then in early twenty-first century New York More...

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Jan 31, 2011

Tancredi rated it:

"Siamo questo adesso. Eravamo stanchi e sfruttati, vivevamo in stanze minuscole, mangiavamo dolci di nascosto, ma adesso siamo raggianti e pieni di gloria. Non siamo più qualcuno. Siamo parte di qualcosa di più grande e meraviglioso di quanto i vivi possano immaginare."

Grande, grandissima letteratura. L'ultima fatica letteraria di M. Cunningham lo conferma come un brillante genio letterario. Ha una struttura che riprende quella di "Le ore": tre racconti, tre epoche More...

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Jul 19, 2010

Holly rated it:

Part Victorian ghost story, part urban thriller, part science fiction, Cunningham's "Specimen Days" (like "The Hours") is both an ode to Walt Whitman (vs Woolf in "The Hours") told in three parts spanning 300 years in New York City as well as the search for soul, meaning, stroth.

The parallels (reincarnations?) of the characters (in a nod to Whitman and his stars and grass and energy continuium) makes for a fascinating read; I love the tangled web of conn More...

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May 31, 2010

Glenda rated it:

I recently flew coast to coast, and time dissolved thanks to the book in my hand. It isn't often that a novel is filled with language that makes you pause and marvel... both evocative and liquid, a sharp, alien experience in the mind, one of delight and curiosity. Michael Cunningham's SPECIMEN DAYS is a trio of linked novellas ranging from Victorian England to an imagined future. All three with clues, objects, and characters that echo an anchor note of Walt Whitman, the last Great American Visio More...

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Nov 05, 2009

Cameron rated it:

They say Walt Whitman's beard drew butterflies. This book, I think, would probably draw something far stranger if left out in a field.

A triptych of tightly-wound exercises in genre--a Machine Age ghost story, a whodunnit set in the Patriot Act hysteria of the mid 00s, and a scifi roadtrip through a blighted America featuring lizard people--Specimen Days baffled the hell out of me. Is it an extended meditation on the machinations and strangeness of our bodies? A sly, Marx-friendly com More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2009

Serena rated it:

Specimen Days is a collection of three short stories which are interwoven with references to Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The first is set in the past, the second is contemporary, and the third is set in the future. These short stories are in a shared universe - events in one are referenced in another. All three stories are dystopic. By far my favorite is the middle story, The Children's Crusade, which resonates in me even now, followed by the futuristic Like Beauty. I enjoyed In The Machine the l More...

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Jan 28, 2012

Roger rated it:

Similar to the strategy he employed in his award-winning novel The Hours, the three distinct narratives in Specimen Days take place in different eras and they each have a lose association to one another. Drawing upon ideas from the immortal Walt Whitman, whose poetry is noted throughout the novel, the theme of self-sacrifice to save others plays prominently in all three novella-length sections of this multilayered fiction. The characters have similar names in each section, which relates them acr More...

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Apr 24, 2010

Mariam rated it:

I remembered with a smile a fellow teacher's revulsion after telling her that Michael Cunningham was (is) homosexual. It has delighted me to see the outrageous abhorrence on my co-worker's face.

Regardless of his sexual orientation, and my nonchalant approach towards contemporary literature; Cunningham is one of few contemporary writers that are able to write dexterously manipulative, terribly magnetic, and mind stimulating pieces of literature.
Instead of Virginia Woolf in The H More...

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Sep 19, 2011

Nikola rated it:

Well this was a quick read! Still not sure whether to give it 3 or 4 stars, but since I dared give Rushdie 3 stars for one book, Cunningham can live with it. Especially if you try to measure up this book with The Hours, with which it shares the nearly identical narrative structure (including three stories running at/in different times) and the overall tone. Also, now it's all about Walt Whitman, and not Virginia Wolf.

There is a constant feeling of depression and despair emanating from More...

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Sep 20, 2011

Tina rated it:

I love a book that successfully merges thought-provoking concepts with entertainment. The only thing better is if said book is written in a lyrical prose that draws you in. *Specimen Days* does this. The three chapters are essentially novellas, but each one is a similar story told in a different way, with subtle and not-so-subtle connections to the other two. The bowl, a strange-looking child, technology, Whitman's poetry ... these physical elements show up in all three stories, but so to do the More...

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Nov 20, 2009

Margaret rated it:

I feel as though many of the books I have read lately are clocking in at a four (out of five) star experience. I'm not sure why, entirely. I've enjoyed all the books, and found things to admire about each, but none of been home runs. Is this because I'm reading books for my MFA courses? They have to be good, right? Even if I don't completely adore them? They can't be only three star books, because otherwise I'm paying too much to read them.

Who knows.

But here, again, More...

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May 20, 2009

Cheryl rated it:

While Michael Cunningham is such a linguistic genius that he can and has made baking a cake seem like the most exquisite and meaningful experience in the world, in this book he takes crazy-ass risks and writes about ghosts and aliens. And I love him even more for it. This is a book about the triumph of the human spirit, except he sort of explodes the idea of “human.” Specimen Days is concerned with what happens after we die, and how thoughts about such affect the way we live—as I imagine many Ne More...

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Jan 02, 2011

K.D. rated it:

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 th More...

7 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2010

Michael rated it:

This is one of the most enigmatic books I have ever read. Not to say that it wasn't enjoyable, or challenging or even interesting but the multiple styles and character threading was really unusual. On the one hand I really liked the idea of the main characters showing up in the three separate sections of the book, and I really like the three distinct styles Mr. Cunningham used in the novel but my need for a sense of completion to each story was left wanting. I really wanted to see that other p More...

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Feb 07, 2009

Beverly rated it:

Michael Cunningham may be the best prose stylist writing fiction today. Yet the shimmering beauty of his prose is wasted on a world view that borders on nihilistic. Specimen Days, named for a work by Walt Whitman, traces the decline and extinction of humanity from the industrial age, where men and their lives are eaten by machines, through the present where children are turned into monsterous killing machines, to the future where humananity is gone and all that is left on earth is a humanoid cyb More...

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Jan 10, 2010

James rated it:

I think this is a beautiful novel. Because for me imagination in fiction counts for a lot, I admire this novel very much. In some ways it's a stronger work than I originally thought when I 1st read it a few years ago. This reading, however, I thought the 3d section, "Like Beauty," is weaker than I remembered, making it somewhat less novel, though still very impressive. Specimen Days is 3 novellas built around the model of Dante's Divine Comedy. Each novella uses some of the same e More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 20, 2008

Coral rated it:

I knew nothing about this book when I started it. (A friend loaned me a copy with no helpful description on the back--just a large author photo.) I almost quit reading after the first 75 pages because it was so grim, and I also wasn't sure how much of that narrative voice I could take. But then the section ended and we got a new voice and a new (but clearly related) story. This middle part was my favorite, but it also made me appreciate the first section more. I was skeptical when the third sect More...

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Jun 29, 2010

Osho rated it:

Reading as an unabridged audiobook. Cunningham is an author who makes me wish I were taking a class on the novel so I'd have reason to engage with his work more critically. I hardly know what to say about this, except that although the structural play was sometimes a hammer when a feather was called for, this is one of the most engaging and pleasing novels I've read recently. The novel is composed of three related stories (a quick perusal of Cunningham's oeuvre shows that he likes to work in thr More...

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