Book Review: Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

Nothing has been more significantly visual and inspiring than some of the literature there is today: Freedomland by Richard Price, this particular book by Michael Cunningham and his novel The Hours. My guess is that a good book must be particularly visual for readers to enjoy it, but also unique and emotional. Let's go back to some past books. Have you read Another Country by James Baldwin? Sonny's Blues? Fountainhead by Ayn Rand? These are books I've either read or am about to, and my guess is that the ones I haven't read stand out for readers because of the imagery that impacts them.

 Let's turn to Specimen Days. It opens with Lucas and Catherine. Lucas's brother, Simon, has just died at a job and was buried. There is the moment here with Lucas and Catherine from Lucas's POV of Catherine, a humble, hardworking woman in the early twentieth century of New York City. They both are silently passing the time away in the parlor at Lucas's parent's house as Catherine is watching out the window, "worrying" a locket with Simon's picture in it. Lucas has been given a job at the ironworks, the same position his brother worked before Simon died there.

 So far, we have some true imagery and perspective from a young boy of Catherine, the girl who he wants secretly to know at some deeper level since she was soon to be a sister-in-law, and Lucas doesn't want to see her go. His parents are having trouble. They barely talk to him, as if already in their last days, and it would be only Lucas left in a house with no family or food.

 There are walks through parts of New York City that are beautiful and significant with all its people. There is Luca's childlike perspective of everything. He quotes Walt Whitman, a famous poet of the time, to Catherine particularly. So far this is the setting and plot of one of three stories in Specimen Days that stands to be the most intimate I've seen in literature today. It becomes a sort of ghost story.

 After In the Machine, Specimen Days continues to the story The Children's Crusade, another impactful read of suspense in modern day New York City, with a young black woman working for the police, taking phone calls from people who are leaving tips about when they will set off a bomb somewhere else in the city. It opens with her taking a call and missing some vital information, so another bomb sets off downtown this time. The scenes switch from place to place, even Cat's apartment, the home of the bombers, the streets where the bombs are set off, everything. There is a certain pace to this story that really switches gears from In The Machine, or not so much depending on how fast you move through the stories and pick up on it, but this one in particular has a real pace to it, and an urgency for the bombs to stop.

 The theme of love flows through all of these stories, the imagery is untamed love while its people are the deepest in their natures, all significantly different and believable. I highly recommend this novel for anyone who enjoys reading, or for those who wish to write and make their writing better.