Specimen Days: A Novel,Used

Product Description A highly anticipated, bold new novel from the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Hoursthree linked visionary narratives set in the evermysterious, turbulent city of New YorkIn each section of Michael Cunninghams new book, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. In the Machine is a ghost story which takes place at the height of the Industrial Revolution, as human beings confront the alienated realities of the new machine age. The Childrens Crusade, set in the early twentyfirst century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band which is detonating bombs seemingly at random around the city. The third part, Like Beauty, evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth. Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his future readers, It avails not, neither distance nor place...I am with you, and know how it is. SPECIMEN DAYS is a genrebending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest citya work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today. Review Praise for A Home at the End of the World:[A] superb audio adaptation of Cunninghams vivid comingofage tale....Actors Farrell and Robertswho play Bobby and Jonathan respectively in the Warner Bros. motion picturefill the same roles here, and both deliver moving, understated performances.Publishers Weekly (starred review)Cunningham, who received the Pulitzer Prize for The Hours, is a matchless stylist whose eye for character and scene is rendered in immaculate images and metaphors....Succulent prose.AudioFilePraise for The Hours:The pace and rhythm of Cunninghams novel echo Woolfs elliptical writing style. Its a conceit that works. Cunningham is a thoughtful writer.... Hearing a book the way an author hears it is an interesting experience, particularly when it is such an interesting book. AudioFileA smashing literary tour de force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse. USA Today[Cunningham] has fashioned a fictional instrument of intricacy and remarkable beauty. It is a kaleidoscope whose four shining and utterly unlike piecesthe lives of two fictional characters, of a real writer, and her novelcombine, separate and tumble in continually shifting and startlingly suggestive patterns. Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times About the Author MICHAEL CUNNINGHAMs most recent, bestselling novel, The Hours, won both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner award, and became an Academy Awardwinning film starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep. An earlier novel, A Home at the End of the World, was recently made into a film starring Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek, and Robin Wright Penn. He lives in New York. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Specimen DaysBy Michael CunninghamAudio RenaissanceCopyright 2005Michael CunninghamAll right reserved.ISBN: 9781593976880Chapter OneWalt said that the dead turned into grass, but there was no grass where theyd buried Simon. He was with the other Irish on the far side of the river, where it was only dirt and gravel and names on stones.Catherine believed Simon had gone to heaven. She had a locket with his picture and a bit of his hair inside.Heavens the place for him, she said. He was too good for this world. She looked uncertainly out the parlor window and into the street, as if she expected a glittering carriage to wheel along with Simon on board, serene in his heedless milkwhite beauty, waving and grinning, going gladly to the pla