Specimen Days

Starred review from May 9, 2005
Engaging Walt Whitman as his muse (and borrowing the name of Whitman's 1882 autobiography for his title), Cunningham weaves a captivating, strange and extravagant novel of human progress and social decline. Like his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours
, the novel tells three stories separated in time. But here, the stage is the same (the "glittering, blighted" city of Manhattan), the actors mirror each other (a deformed, Whitman-quoting boy, Luke, is a terrorist in one story and a teenage prophet in another; a world-weary woman, Catherine, is a would-be bride and an alien; and a handsome young man, Simon, is a ghost, a business man and an artificial human) and weighty themes (of love and fear, loss and connection, violence and poetry) reverberate with increasing power. "In the Machine," set during the Industrial Revolution, tells the story of 12-year-old Luke as he falls in love with his dead brother's girlfriend, Catherine, and becomes convinced that the ghost of his brother, Simon, lives inside the iron works machine that killed him. The suspenseful "The Children's Crusade" explores love and maternal instinct via a thrilleresque plot, as Cat, a black forensic psychologist, draws away from her rich, white and younger lover, Simon, and toward a spooky, deformed boy who's also a member of a global network committed to random acts of terror. And in "Like Beauty," Simon, a "simulo"; Catareen, a lizard-like alien; and Luke, an adolescent prophet, strike out for a new life in a postapocalyptic world. With its narrative leaps and self-conscious flights into the transcendent, Cunningham's fourth novel sometimes seems ready to collapse under the weight of its lavishness and ambition—but thrillingly, it never does. This is daring, memorable fiction. Agent, Gail Hochman.

Starred review from May 15, 2005
In this follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize - winning "The Hours", Cunningham offers another dazzling tour de force that examines the intimate ways in which the past is woven into the present and future. Where in "The Hours" Virginia Woolf was the guiding spirit, here Walt Whitman acts as the characters' Virgil, steering them through the vicissitudes of their lives. In "In the Machine," the first of three interrelated tales set in New York City, 13-year-old Lucas, who almost involuntarily spouts lines of Whitman's verse, confronts grief and the ambiguity of love as he tries to take his dead brother Simon's place. The setting, the Industrial 1920s, melds into the early 21st century in the second tale, "The Children's Crusade," in which African American police detective Cat investigates a band of Whitman-quoting children terrorizing the city. In the futuristic final story, "Like Beauty," an android with Whitman's poetry implanted in his circuits embarks on a journey with a young boy named Luke to meet his manufacturer. In addition to the Whitman thread, a mysterious china bowl also shows up in each tale. Though "Like Beauty" feels more contrived than the other tales, Cunningham's vivid prose captures the intricate weave of love and expectation that propels the hopes of one generation as it fades into another. The author's many fans have been eagerly anticipating this novel, so all libraries should own it. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/15/05.] -Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2005
Adult/High School -Billed as a novel, this Walt Whitman-inspired genre bender works more as three novellas, each one tackling a different form. -In the Machine - is a ghost story of sorts set in mid-1800s New York City. Young Luke takes a job at the factory where his older brother was killed. He falls in love with Simon's girlfriend and begins to hear his dead brother's voice speaking to him through the violent poundings, whirrings, and clankings. While the 19th-century style of writing evokes a dark, spooky atmosphere, some readers may be put off a little by the slow pace. -The Children's Crusade - carries readers to post-9/11 New York. Cat, a forensic psychologist, investigates a network of terrorists who use children to commit attacks. Suspenseful and exciting, the tale moves beyond the norms of the typical thriller by dredging up deep issues from Cat's past. -Like Beauty - takes place 150 years into the future. There, the simulo, or android, Simon and the lizardlike alien Catareen join in a bizarre and terrifying road trip from New York City to Denver. Cunnigham does a wonderful job of creating a postapocalyptic society that's frightening and surreal, but also surprisingly believable. The three stories don't connect so much as reflect off one another by way of reusing characters' names and descriptions and revisiting locales. Cunningham's fans might be a little disconcerted by the content at first, but they will find the same flair for language, skillfully developed characters, and themes of identity and longing that make the author's other works so successful." -Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2005
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel " The Hours "(1998), Cunningham boldly improvised on " Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. Here Walt Whitman is his literary muse as the poet's cosmic sensibility inspires unexpected revelations and courses of action. Once again, Cunningham has constructed an elegant triptych of tales about a trio of characters in different times and guises, but he has taken a quantum leap imaginatively, stylistically, and thematically in this bewitching novel of a metamorphosing New York City. In the exquisitely eerie "In the Machine," Walt Whitman strolls down Broadway as Lucas, 13, an oddly misshapen, Whitman-quoting mystic, tries to take his older brother Simon's place as servant to a machine in a hellish factory after Simon's gruesome death, but is overwhelmed by the brutality of his existence. "The Children's Crusade," a stinging post-9/11 thriller, features Cat, an African American New York police psychologist undone by a case involving young, Whitman-quoting suicide bombers. In " Like Beauty," Cunningham turns to science fiction, imagining a futuristic New York as a theme park, a "simulo" named Simon who longs to become more fully human, and Catareen, an intrepid four-and-a-half-foot tall green lizard from another planet. Brilliantly conceived, empathic, darkly humorous, and gorgeously rendered, Cunningham's galvanizing novel about the quest for justice and freedom, the parameters of the soul, the hunger for beauty, and the fluid interface between the natural and the engineered is a genuine literary event.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)