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Loading... Specimen Daysby Michael Cunningham
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Interesting premise - a triptych of recurring characters in different time periods, anchored around "Leaves of Grass". But disappointing in its execution. (  ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 |  Interesting premise - a triptych of recurring characters in different time periods, anchored around "Leaves of Grass". But disappointing in its execution. ( ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 | Interesting premise - a triptych of recurring characters in different time periods, anchored around "Leaves of Grass". But disappointing in its execution. ( ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 | I checked this out after hearing him speak at a luncheon and I just couldn't get into it. I appreciate what he was going for, and I'd like to try it again at some point. (  ) jentifer | Aug 15, 2009 | A book in sections. I have loved several of Cunningham's earlier works but this one feels like a failed experiment. I enjoyed some of the segments, but the final one that addresses the world's unsure, post-apocalyptic future felt disjointed and difficult to relate to. I suppose in part that was the point, but it made for a difficult read nevertheless. ( ) ntempest | Apr 1, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0374299625, Hardcover)Book Description: In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that 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 time or place ... I am with you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.
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Whitman Sampler
Whitman Sampler (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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