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Overview
A New York Times Bestseller
Peter and Rebecca Harris, midforties, are prosperous denizens of Manhattan. He’s an art dealer, she’s an editor. They live well. They have their troubles—their ebbing passions, their wayward daughter, and certain doubts about their careers—but they feel as though they’re happy. Happy enough. Until Rebecca’s much younger, look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, short for the Mistake), comes to visit. And after he arrives, nothing will ever be the same again.
This poetic and compelling masterpiece is a heartbreaking look at a marriage and the way we now live. Full of shocks and aftershocks, By Nightfall is a novel about the uses and meaning of beauty, and the place of love in our lives.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“The novel is less a snapshot of the way we live now than a consideration of the timeless consolations of love and art in the shadow of death, and its resolution—inevitable yet startling, like the slap of a wave—is a triumph.” —The New Yorker “Rather witty and a little outrageous . . . for pure, elegant, efficient beauty, Cunningham is astounding. He’s developed this captivating narrative voice that mingles his own sharp commentary with Peter’s mock-heroic despair. Half Henry James, half James Joyce, but all Cunningham, it’s an irresistible performance, cerebral and campy, marked by stabbing moments of self-doubt immediately undercut by theatrical asides and humorous quips. . . a cerebral, quirky reflection on the allure of phantom ideals and even, ultimately, on what a traditional marriage needs to survive.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “[Cunningham] makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much a story. You aren’t deadened by detail; you’re eager to know what happens next.” —Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review “Where art and humanity converge and where they part form a double helix in By Nightfall and account for the novel’s most considered and lovely prose. Cunningham’s observations of our desperate search for the real fill and break the heart.” —Ellen Kanner, Miami Herald “So many of Cunningham’s physical descriptions read like confident prose poems, where you imagine what’s left between the lines . . . As a testament to the richness of the literary imagination, ‘By Nightfall’ is a success. You can’t read this novel without the sense of how worlds can be found in a drop of water, or in an offhand comment, or in the curve of a vase. . . ‘By Nightfall’ is a meditation on beauty, and it has its own indelible qualities of beauty.” —Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe “Beauty, in its infinite variety and its power to transfix and seduce and delude, is a central theme of ‘By Nightfall,’ the latest from the author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel ‘The Hours.’ Add the mysteries and fears of aging and mortality to the agenda, and you have echoes here of Oscar Wilde and Thomas Mann . . . the attentive reader is rewarded with a wise and exhilarating epiphany at the end.” —Misha Berson, The Seattle Times “Cunningham can really write. And so he transforms a set of predictable elements into an unpredictable and engrossing read. ‘By Nightfall’ is an exemplar of the crossover megahit that authors of all genders and genres dream of: an entertaining page-turner that’s bound for, and deserving of, literary eternity . . . There’s nothing minor about Cunningham’s heart, or his talent. ‘By Nightfall’ deserves every superlative it has summoned.” —Meredith Maran, San Francisco Chronicle “[Cunningham’s] vigorous explorations of art and its meaning—along with a thick veil of eroticism—keep the pages turning.” —Eric Liebetrau, People “Cunningham has again pulled off his trick of combining the novel of ideas with the juicy read. The characters in ‘By Nightfall’ deceive, spy on and gossip about one another; but while all that is going on, ‘Nightfall’ also studies the concepts of beauty and genius as they are expressed in the contemporary art world . . . The verdict: ‘By Nightfall’ is a delicious book and will make a fine movie, as did ‘The Hours’ and ‘A Home at the End of the World.’ A straight man who suddenly falls for his wife's brother may seem like a stretch for mass appeal—but then didn’t Mrs. Dalloway?” —Marion Winik, Newsday “In this rueful, daring and expansive novel, Cunningham gives us deep and thrilling access to the mind and heart of a searching, cynical, self-deprecating-except-when-he’s-self-aggrandizing modern male.” —Pam Houston, More “There are sentences here so powerfully precise and beautiful that they almost hover above the page.” —Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly “Beautifully written. . . Cunningham manages to perfectly capture post-9/11 New York City, with keen observations about anxiety, fidelity, aging, the art world and the somewhat impossible pursuit of what we think of as happiness.” —Very Short List “A ravishing and witty tale of yearning and hubris.” —Donna Seaman, The Kansas City Star “The result is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, and urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty and desire, art and delusion, age and love.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) “Michael Cunningham’s newest novel, ‘By Nightfall,’ is a slim book that takes on some big issues: the evolving relationship of long-married couples, the often-fraught bond between parents and their adult children, the duty siblings have to one another. But it also enlarges to consider the role that beauty plays in our lives and the necessarily one-sided nature of our relationship with it. ‘By Nightfall’ is philosophy masquerading as a story.. . . Instead of a novel overflowing with flesh and sweat, rage and craziness, Cunningham has given us a well-considered treatise.” —Nancy Connors, The Plain Dealer
Jeanette Winterson
Cunningham has taken on the classic plot of the uninvited or unexpected stranger or guest whose arrival brings chaos, self-knowledge, tragedy, the ruin of one kind of life that may or may not lead to something better…Cunningham is drawn to simple, potent plots…saving his energy for the hearts and minds, the groins and guts, of his characters. Yet he makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much of a story. You aren't deadened by detail; you're eager to know what happens next. Cunningham writes so well, and with such an economy of language, that he can call up the poet's exact match. His dialogue is deft and fast. The pace of the writing is skilled—stretched or contracted at just the right time.—The New York Times
Ron Charles
There are flashier, more pyrotechnic stylists, but for pure, elegant, efficient beauty, Cunningham is astounding. He's developed this captivating narrative voice that mingles his own sharp commentary with Peter's mock-heroic despair. Half Henry James, half James Joyce, but all Cunningham, it's an irresistible performance, cerebral and campy, marked by stabbing moments of self-doubt immediately undercut by theatrical asides and humorous quips.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Contemplating an affair that never was, SoHo art dealer Peter Harris laments that he "could see it all too clearly." The same holds true for Cunningham's emotionally static and drearily conventional latest (after Specimen Days). Peter and his wife, Rebecca--who edits a mid-level art magazine--have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan--known as Mizzy, short for "The Mistake." Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in "the arts." Watching Mizzy--whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter--coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets. Cunningham's sentences are, individually, something to behold, but they're unfortunately pressed into the service of a dud story about a well-off New Yorker's existential crisis. (Oct.)Library Journal
Cunningham, whose Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner award-winning novel, The Hours, is also available from Macmillan Audio (read by the author), here follows world-weary art dealer Peter Harris as he toys with breaking free from his middle-aged slump. Seeing the world through the eyes of his 20-year-old, drug-addicted brother-in-law causes Peter to reconsider his career, his relationship with his daughter, and his marriage. Unfortunately, Peter and his cohorts read more like New York art-world stereotypes than fully developed characters. Emmy Award nominee Hugh Dancy well captures Peter's melancholy, though it is occasionally difficult to distinguish between his reading of the dialog and Peter's thoughts. Cunningham's (www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com) popularity generally and his exploration of universal middle-class dreams and fears make this a good choice for book clubs. [The New York Times best-selling Farrar hc is a 2010 LJ Best Book.—Ed.]—Johannah Genett, Hennepin P.L., MNKirkus Reviews
A surfeit of literary and cultural references can't disguise a lightweight soap opera.
Literary subject matter is familiar territory for Cunningham (whose 1998 novel,The Hours,won a Pulitzer), but this novel's incessant evocations of James, Eliot, Joyce, Mann, Fitzgerald, Melville (and Carver and Barthelme and others) makes the narrative feel slight by comparison. Peter is a successful Manhattan art dealer; Rebecca, his wife of 21 years, edits a literary journal that is threatening to fold. "In a long marriage, you learn to identify a multitude of different atmospheres and weathers," thinks Peter early on, though it may well be that they neither know each other as well nor are as satisfied with their marriage as both initially seem to believe. Complication arrives in the form of Rebecca's much younger brother—the possibly brilliant, impossibly beautiful Ethan (generally known as "Mizzy," his unplanned birth was a mistake). He's a recovering drug addict, or perhaps not so recovering, and he has come to stay with them with the vague idea of doing "Something in the Arts." Ponders Peter of their guest, "It's hardly beyond understanding, neither the straight A's that led to Yale nor the drugs that led elsewhere." Peter and Rebecca have a daughter near Mizzy's age, who feels inexplicable (to Peter) bitterness toward her father. Peter also had a homosexual older brother, long dead, whose memory continues to haunt him. Mizzy might serve as a stand-in for Peter's brother, for his daughter, even for Peter's wife (whom he resembles in her younger, prettier days). He might also arouse incestuous feelings in Rebecca. Possibilities resolve themselves amid aesthetic pronouncements on how "a real work of art can be owned but should not be subject to capture" and that it is "something that will tell the world (poor forgetful world) that evanescence is not all."
"Does America get the art it deserves?" wonders Peter. Or the novel?