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Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan's SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts―he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca's much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in thefamily as Mizzy, "the mistake"), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career―the entire world he has so carefully constructed.
Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham's masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.
- Sales Rank: #542481 in Books
- Published on: 2010-09-28
- Released on: 2010-09-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.49" h x .97" w x 5.80" l, .82 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
- Fiction Drama
From 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Peter Harris, a dispirited Soho gallery owner in his midforties, arrives home to find his wife in the shower and marvels at how lithe she looks through the steam, then realizes that he’s admiring her much younger brother. Called the Mistake, or Mizzy, he’s a lost soul, a junkie and moocher as sexy as he is manipulative. Mizzy appears just as Peter, brooding, romantic, and self-deprecating, is grappling with his failings as a father and an art dealer. Ceaselessly observant, Peter senses, or hopes for, “some terrible, blinding beauty” that will topple his carefully calibrated life, and why shouldn’t it be his alluring, feckless brother-in-law? Even if this mad infatuation stems from Peter’s deep grief for his brilliant and fearless gay brother, who died of AIDS. In his most concentrated novel, a bittersweet paean to human creativity and its particularly showy flourishing in hothouse Manhattan, virtuoso and Pulitzer winner Cunningham entwines eroticism with aesthetics to orchestrate a resonant crisis of the soul, drawing inspiration from Henry James and Thomas Mann as well as meditative painter Agnes Martin and provocateur artist Damien Hirst. 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
Review
“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
Most helpful customer reviews
122 of 131 people found the following review helpful.
"You've always been in love with beauty itself. You're funny that way."
By Michael J. Ettner
The play of emotions and themes with which Michael Cunningham is most adroit -- love, loss, desire, despair, mortality -- are again engaged in his new novel set in present-day Manhattan. But take note: the epigraph Cunningham has chosen for "By Nightfall" is a line from Rilke's "Duino Elegies": "Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror." That, Cunningham signals, will be the novel's all-encompassing theme: the pursuit, use, and misuse of beauty.
The principal characters in "By Nightfall" are Peter Harris, a 44-year-old contemporary art dealer, and his wife Rebecca, an editor of an arts and culture magazine. As a gallery owner, Peter's occupation is that of a "servant of beauty." He has begun to suffer existential dread: "[a] conviction, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that some terrible, blinding beauty is about to descend and, like the wrath of God, suck [the world] all away, orphan us, deliver us, leave us wondering how exactly we're going to start it all over again."
The plot, modestly scaled, is set in motion by the appearance of Rebecca's much younger brother Ethan (age 23), a beautiful but flawed and directionless young man who's interested in doing "something in the arts." Ethan's brief stay with the couple in their spacious SoHo loft will upend all three lives.
"By Nightfall" is written in a combination of voices: at times there is a third person omniscient narrator, sometimes a second person interlocutor, but principally we are caught within Peter's own ruminations. The lasting effect is a story told through Peter's eyes. While this brings a unity to the novel, it also can be a handicap. When events, ideas and emotions come to us filtered through his fears and sensibilities, the narrative sometimes falls into a rut, trapped by the insular sound of Peter conducting a hothouse conversation with himself. The reader yearns for more self-sufficiency on the part of other characters -- persons we are meant to, and want to, care about. Happily, Cunningham is terrific with dialog, and the frequent conversational segments -- animated, stylish, and verbally agile (these are New Yorkers, after all) -- oxygenate the narrative.
Cunningham's most popular novel, "The Hours," gained strength from the interconnectedness, across time and space, of three extraordinary women. The new novel, less ambitious and focused on one man, does not achieve similar standing. This is not surprising when you consider the following thought that comes into Peter's mind -- a view, I suspect, shared by the author:
"We--we men--are the frightened ones, the blundering and nervous ones; if we act the skeptic or the bully sometimes it's because we suspect we're wrong in some deep incalculable way that women are not. Our impersonations are failing us and our vices and habits are ludicrous and . . . we have no idea about anything that actually matters."
Some are likely to dismiss "By Nightfall" as privileged and claustrophobic, but I think enough others will have a different take. Yes, the setting and tone are highly literary, with frequent allusions to high culture sources ("Ulysses" and "The Dead"; "The Great Gatsby"; "Death in Venice"; the real-life doomed affair of Rimbaud and Verlaine). That's what you expect from Michael Cunningham. But at the same time, in what is one of his shortest novels, Cunningham manages to cover a broad range of topics of interest to many readers, not the least of which is relationships. When tracing Peter and Rebecca's histories, Cunningham uses his extraordinary skill at conveying the enduring connections within families. He is best with younger characters, especially sibling relationships. He traces the pangs of growth beyond adolescence as surely as he captures our fears of growing old and dying.
You cannot gainsay the beauty of Cunningham's writing, his knack for filling in the perfect detail, his intelligence and empathy. As for magic, Cunningham convincingly creates a bevy of working artists who are part of Peter's world, devising for each a unique aesthetic and then conjuring up rooms full of their artworks, all minutely described. Other reviewers will doubtless cite their own favorite passages, but for me the one that stands out is a terrific set piece in which we follow the footsteps of the insomniac Peter in the wee hours of the night as he meanders through the irregular streets of lower Manhattan. It is an unexpected, charmed sequence.
Cunningham once introduced the author Joan Didion at a public ceremony with this observation: "Our most significant writers record us for future generations." With that in mind, I think we would do right to add "By Nightfall" to the record.
45 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
Forced writing makes for disappointing read
By Kristin
I thought The Hours, A Home at the End of the World, and Specimen Days were all wonderful. By Nightfall has the same beautiful prose, but it lacks many elements that make the others great.
For one, the characters just aren't that likable. In every other one of his novels, I could find something to relate to or sympathize with in every man, woman, gay, straight, young, old, contemporary, historic person. In By Nightfall, I found Peter to be pathetic, his wife flat, and his brother-in-law a whiny child.
I also like Cunningham for the deep ideas he can effortlessly mix into his stories. In this case, it was more like he was trying to mix a story into his deep idea, and it was unsuccessful. There was too much thinking about life and beauty and not enough life and beauty actually happening. On top of that, the constant musing nature let to redundant vocabulary--evanescent, crepuscular, ineffably. I like a perfect word as much as (if not more than) the next person, but when I start noticing the same words being repeated, that tells me you're trying to stretch a 30-page idea into a 230-page novel. Kind of jarring.
Perhaps I shouldn't fault Cunningham for trying to move on and do something new (based on this novel, perhaps HE is having an existential crisis over the nature of his own art), but at the same time, I really miss the triangular, interweaving stories that spoke more to me than this forceful presentation of a theme.
52 of 59 people found the following review helpful.
Not so Cunning(ham)
By Charles L. Ross
I did not find any of the characters, including the often naked young man with the nice ass (God help me) appealing; nor interesting. After endless paragraphs describing in detail the colors of every (or so it seems) neighborhood in New York City, including some of the outer boroughs, the story picks up; although before reaching the end, there is still interrupting, interfering stream of consciousness from not only the protagonist but from the narrator, sounding exactly alike. Without all of this--without the Tom Ford suits and the Prada skirt and the name of every taxi driver--it would have made a good short story. Instead, the endless parade of marching phrases, separated from one another by commas and semicolons--so that the punctuation becomes another character? or perhaps a Greek chorus?--and yet connected through the listing of everything that might make them the same; or different, if you fear death. (And isn't it human to be afraid? Especially of death.) The pseudo-philosophical ramblings on art are tepid and grow tedious (and I majored in art). The openings of parentheses are to lead us into Peter's mind, but when there are (sometimes) five to a sentence, all insipid, they do not close fast enough for me. No thought can be said once but must be doubled, perhaps tripled, with another way of saying exactly the same thing. Still. Each sentence, every word is carefully selected, almost religiously (maybe), as though it were measured by a metronome. The book is WRITTEN. And it is a chore to read.
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