Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    By Nightfall
    Unavailable
    By Nightfall
    Unavailable
    By Nightfall
    Audiobook7 hours

    By Nightfall

    Written by Michael Cunningham

    Narrated by Hugh Dancy

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    From the Pultizer Prize-winning author of ‘The Hours’, comes the story of a marriage thrown off course by a moment of mistaken identity.

    Peter Harris is forty-four, prosperous, the owner of a big New York apartment and a player in the contemporary art scene. He has been married to Rebecca for close to twenty years. Their marriage is sound, in the way marriages are. Peter might even describe himself as happy. But then Rebecca’s much younger brother Mizzy shows up for a visit. Beautiful, twenty-three years old, with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his marriage, his desires, his career – the entire world he has so carefully constructed for himself.

    Making us think deeply about the uses of beauty and the place of love in our lives, By Nightfall is heartbreaking look at the way we live now.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJan 20, 2011
    ISBN9780007416561
    Unavailable
    By Nightfall
    Author

    Michael Cunningham

    Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels including A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours, Specimen Days, and non-fiction book, Land’s End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The Hours was awarded both the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award and made into an internationally acclaimed, Oscar-winning film. His new novel, The Snow Queen, will be published in May of 2014. He lives in New York.

    More audiobooks from Michael Cunningham

    Related to By Nightfall

    Contemporary Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon

      Apr 11, 2022

      I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      For Snow Queens Who Have Considered Suicide Because Paul Newman in the First Twenty Minutes of Paris Blues Is Too Much

      Jun 14, 2022

      But I start with the great Sidney Poitier because his stardom was an established part of the Freedom movement in 1964, and he was to be the chaperone of my inner awakening that dramatic year. Indianapolis, my hometown, had some brave marches and two

      10 min read

    • Article

      Case Study By Graeme Macrae Burnet Review – Unstable Identities

      Oct 14, 2021

      The Booker-shortlisted 2015 novel His Bloody Project employed a range of narrative techniques to prod at the truth surrounding a murder in a 19th-century Scottish crofting community. Graeme Macrae Burnet’s concern was not so much with who committed t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Me, Myself, and You: Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

      Apr 15, 2019

      In her latest novel, Rooney suggests that individual identity is actually a microcosmic social structure, made up of webbed relationships and collective agreements. The post Me, Myself, and You: Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ appeared first on The Mi

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Memory Police

      Aug 14, 2019

      The Memory Police
      1 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Say

      Oct 7, 2022

      I magine a sticky, early August morning, around three o’clock. It is dark, the moon blocked by clouds, no streetlights, a siren in the distance, medics running to a heart attack. Imagine a man out on a bike or walking a sick dog, or maybe a woman who

      10 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Restless Souls

      Mar 6, 2018

      Restless Souls
      8 min read

    • Article

      Anthony Veasna So

      Mar 9, 2021

      Always they find us inappropriate, but today especially so. Here we are with nowhere to go and nothing to do, sitting in a rusty pickup truck, the one leaking oil, the one with the busted transmission that sounds like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Her

      22 min read

    • Article

      A summons FROM AUNTIE

      Jan 25, 2023

      ‘I know a fat old policeman, he’s always on our street,’ sang Mr Dear at the top of what I suppose we must call his voice. ‘A large and jolly red-faced man, he really is a treat.’ Then, suddenly, the only sounds were the gentle hum of the engine, th

      3 min read

    • Article

      This Family Saga Finds Grace And Beauty In Ordinary Lives, Fully Lived

      Jun 10, 2021

      Simon Van Booy's new novel Night Came With Many Stars follows several generations of a Kentucky family, their crossroads and choices, their curses and hard memories, their luck and their chances.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Kinkies”

      Mar 15, 2022

      There’s a lesson to be taken from “Kinkies”—as writers, we hew to professionalized tastefulness at our creative peril. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Kinkies” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Conversation

      Nov 1, 2023

      The Art Of Conversation
      4 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2023

      There was a boy even stranger than I waswho’d call me in the eveningto see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in mehesitated. Then one morning during eighth grade English we got hall passesand did it in a stall in the bathroomtaking turns over the john

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crime Wave

      May 10, 2019

      Crime Wave
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    • Article

      The Glove

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Glove
      8 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Anthem Of Our Crazy Age

      Nov 2, 2022

      MY old friend Ena planned every detail of her funeral. When she told me that she had written the eulogy to be delivered by her daughter, I said: ‘Don’t you think that’s cheating?’ ‘No!’ She snapped. ‘I want to set the record straight. I was a very go

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for By Nightfall

    3.5/5

    335 ratings40 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Middle aged married couple come to terms with their individual lives and their life together; and, in spite of their distant daughter and broken brother and their other failures, decide to try to continue to make a life together.
    • 4/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)This is my first novel by the much-loved Michael Cunningham, although I'm already familiar with the plot of his Pulitzer-winning The Hours (which will be getting reviewed itself later this year, as part of the "CCLaP 100" essay series), and I also once had a chance when younger to read the first 50 pages of a friend's copy of A Home at the End of the World; and so that's why my first reaction when starting his latest was to turn this review into a snotty one-line joke, to express my dissatisfaction with him repeating so many of the same tropes found in his other work. ("Dear Michael Cunningham: Seriously, enough with the 'Gay Freudian Incest Fantasy As Sexual Awakening,' 'Obsessed With The Angelically Golden Downy Body Hair Of My Male Relatives' crap. You're really starting to creep me out. Sincerely, Jason Pettus.") But still, I found myself fascinated with the milieu Cunningham chose to tell this story, the main reason I kept reading; that is, the world of upper-class bohemian-bourgeoise Manhattanites in an age when their professional worlds are crumbling around them, in this case a gallery-owning husband and magazine-editor wife who both are unsure if their industries are even going to exist five years from now, and the evermore desperate acts and moral compromises they lower themselves to in order to hold onto their million-dollar SoHo loft and all the other accoutrements they've gotten so glibly used to, a riveting subplot of its own even as the main storyline is a character-based one that could technically take place anywhere.And of course all the stories about Cunningham's breathtakingly beautiful prose are true, which also helped carry me along, a kind of attention to detail and a wild sense of extrapolation usually only seen in certain breeds of ridiculously overanalytical art-school girlfriends (oh, you know who I mean -- the ones who are great in bed but who so completely overthink every single detail of your relationship, you're exhausted after just six weeks of dating them); and while I was disappointed at first with that main character-based storyline I mentioned (basically, yet another look at a chiseled twentysomething frequently shirtless bisexual trainwreck who upends the formerly staid life of some middle-classers), let me confess that the surprise-filled plot gets better and better as it continues, precisely for being more and more unexpected, with a gangbusters ending that's much more satisfying than its lackluster beginning. (Also, I was intrigued with the way it examines the same fundamental question at the heart of the infamous 1970s play Equus as well, of whether spiritually deflated middle-agers should in fact be jealous of the mentally ill for at least being passionate about something, and should therefore be allowed to live with that illness instead of trying to be "cured.") So when all is said and done, I guess I was actually pretty pleased with this novel after all, even while coming across lots of details that made me roll my eyes; and for sure it comes highly recommended to those who enjoy dark-tinged character-based stories about aging, sexuality and mental health. If nothing else, it definitely has me excited now about reading The Hours later this year.Out of 10: 9.2
    • 3/5
      I liked this book but didn't love it. There's a certain style that some writers have when they write about New York City. It is, perhaps, their style even when they're not writing about New York. I wouldn't know since I only read one thing in that style then avoid the author afterwards. The word "sardonic" comes to mind, but that's not quite it. It's kind of an undercurrent of, "I know the different neighborhoods, I know the art, I know the fashion, so you know I'm cooler and more clever than you." I got the same thing from Don DeLillo and the one Norman Mailer book I attempted to read (although that one wasn't set in New York, it had a similar style).

      I agree with my friend Lauren that Cunningham's descriptions of people are largely satisfying, but he relies a lot on dropping the name of the designer of the person's boots or scarf or whatever to illustrate something about the person's character. On the one hand, I think this says something about the shallowness and appearance-consciousness of the main character. On the other, as someone who recognized only Prada and Tony Lama among the dozens of designer/brand names in the book, I think I missed some of what he was trying to say about his characters. He does a similar thing with references to artists and works of art. I don't even know if the artists he mentions are real or fictional. I'm guessing it's a combination of the two, but I couldn't tell you which were which.

      Reading a book like this is kind of like sitting at a dinner party filled with people who know each other who, rather than inviting me into the conversation, persist in speaking only in private jokes that are meant to impress me but merely confuse and exclude me. I get it, I want to say. You're clever. Now can I just eat my dessert and go home?

      By Nightfall wasn't as bad as that for me. I enjoyed the gradual unraveling of the main character and his view of the world. I grew to admire the Carole Potter character, and felt I got a good sense of her and her home, despite the fact that I had to gloss over the drawn-out description of every piece of art in her foyer and living room.
    • 4/5
      The thoughts and, hence, life of Peter Harris, art-dealer in a 20-yearish marriage which drags on. His wife's strange and formerly drug-addicted brother, Mizzy - short for The Mistake - comes to live with them for a while in order to find out what he wants from life.

      That's the base. What follows is an inert portrait of a man's thoughts and feelings as sifted through a 40-year-old male living in New York City, affluent working for the often wealthy.

      I loved how Cunningham has made the book very easy to read and at the same times makes it feel effortlessly written, how he evokes many thoughts in me by using just a few words at describing something, how he makes the characters in the book believable and...while I think Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" was a failure as far as endless research goes, this is interesting and captivating, if only for the writing about art, which is good.

      All in all, I shan't write a good book down by writing for too long about it. This is a very good book. Peter Harris' thoughts will make excellent for re-reads and this could be seen as an excellent partner to Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom", as two of the most evocative modern tales of life I've read in a long while.
    • 1/5
      The three or four novels of Michael Cunningham that I have read were all very disappointing, including this one.
    • 3/5
      A small, elegant novella about the pangs of the middle-aged upper-middle class. Neither the force nor breadth of the novels, but well-made and readable. Worth it for brevity.
    • 1/5
      Lots of verbage that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Too many books.................
    • 4/5
      Stream-of-consciousnees novel from the pov of a contemporary art dealer in New York whose marriage is threatened when he develops an attraction to his wife's brilliant ne'er-do-well younger brother. This wasn't as good as The Hours, but none-the-less, perceptive, with an ambiguous, satisfying finish. I like the polish with which Cunningham describes the events of ordinary lives on ordinary days.
    • 2/5
      From the beginning to the end I had a feeling that I have read too many books like this. It is a typical story of aging couple and their fading love. The problem is that the story thinks it reveals something deeply humane, but no, to me it revealed nothing. The story is set in New York art world, perhaps to demonstrate the shallowness of life? It also describes all its characters by how they look, not revealing (much) of their inner life and true character. The main character, art gallerist, is looking for the ultimate art and beauty that probably doesn't exist. There is an incident where an accident destroys a painting, revealing a poor picture underneath. I think this incident is the theme of the book in a nutshell. And just how I felt: this book didn't reveal anything important, beautiful or meaningful - but maybe that was its aim all along?
    • 4/5
      I neither loved, not hated this book. It fell squarely in the middle for me.What I enjoyed was how beautifully it was written. Cunningham has an effortless way of capturing you with his prose, despite what he's writing about!What I disliked was pretty much everything else, starting with and mostly pertaining to the main character. I found him unlikable, boring, and self-indulgent among other things.Not once did I connect with him or root for him. I understand that not all protagonists have to be 100% likeable, but I still need to be able to care for them in some way, and in this book I just really didn't.The story fell short for me. There seemed to be very little depth.Still, there was enough character development and interesting twists and turns to keep me going.All in all, it was an ok book. Nowhere near as good as some of his others like Home at the End of the World, but still alright.
    • 3/5
      I would love to have been there at the genesis of the idea for this book.I can picture Michael Cunningham having an after dinner aperitif with a bunch of his intellectual friends, perhaps at his summer home on the Cape, discussing, perhaps a bit condescendingly, the boom in gay romance novels written by [and, largely, for] women. Perhaps they chortled over the various tropes – hurt/comfort, master/slave and of course the silliest and, arguably most offensive, “gay for you.” For the uninformed, it’s pretty self-explanatory – an otherwise straight (and presumably, “straight acting”) male character falls hard for another man. The caveat being, he still identifies as straight. He’s not someone who was heretofore latent or closeted. Nope. He only feels sexual desire for one man and naturally it’s a by-product of romantic feelings. Thus, “gay for you.”I’m imagining maybe a wager was made…could Cunningham take that premise and turn it into art? By my estimation, the answer is yes. This isn’t a great book, but it’s a very good one.The plot itself is pretty lean. Peter, a relatively successful, middle-aged art dealer is happily married to Rebecca, the editor of a respected art journal. They live an affluent life in New York’s Soho district. His only real heartbreak – a strained relationship with his twenty-two year old daughter who lives in Boston. Around the same time Peter finds out that a fellow gallery owner and friend is dying of breast cancer and in the midst of mounting yet another show of au courant yet disposable art, Rebecca’s beautiful 24 year old brother Ethan (or Mizzy, as he is known), a former drug addict, free-spirit and master manipulator, comes to stay with them.Basically, Peter becomes obsessed with Mizzy. He mistakenly believes his infatuation is love, but it’s really because the young man reminds him of so many things he believes he’s lost. Mizzy uncannily resembles a young Rebecca. He’s close in age to Peter’s estranged daughter. His physique reminds Peter of the sort of timeless art that he truly esteems, forcing him examine his unrealized ambitions for his gallery. And the boy’s youth itself makes Peter yearn to be young and unburdened. It’s a mid-life crisis writ large through the lens of the exclusive NYC art community. I enjoyed the story, such as it is. I’m embarrassed to admit this is my first Cunningham novel and so I was surprised at how formal and mannered his writing style is. There’s definitely a rococo “more is more” aesthetic at play here and sometimes the narrative gets bogged down in the overwrought descriptions, similes and metaphors, no matter how clever or beautifully done.Oh and yes, at different points in the story both Peter and Mizzy actually use the phrase, “gay for you.” So even though it hardly qualifies as a romance, it’s safe to say this is Mr. Cunningham’s official entry into the “gay for you” sweeps. Fancy that.
    • 3/5
      There were about an equal amount of things I liked about this book as I disliked. He writes so well that I can’t help but smile and enjoy it for what it is. On the other hand the story is almost a satire, knowingly or not. It’s one of those "so in love with it’s own New York-ness" books that I was laughing at parts that I don’t think were supposed to be comedy. It’s an odd mix; sometimes the writing is so down to Earth and natural that I don’t know that I’ve read it’s equal, other times it was so pretentious and fey that my eyes rolled back in my head.I think I’m all full up on stories about people who work at art galleries in New York. Surely at this point there have been more fictional people with this job than real ones.
    • 4/5
      Cunningham is maybe the only author I can think of where his prose is so stunningly beautiful that the plot and character development do not have much of an impact on my enjoyment of the book.
    • 4/5
      I've read a few reviews of By Nightfall, and I must admit its critics are not altogether wrong. Some say it is pretentious, and yes, Michael Cunningham is inclined to deploy words like 'infelicitous' or 'corpuscular' at regular intervals. Others say it lacks dramatic tension, and yes, protagonist Peter Harris' stable, upper-middle class life as a Manhattan art dealer is never really threatened by the arrival of his wayward brother-in-law. It is hard to sympathise with such privileged neuroticism. Yet Cunningham's writing remains compelling. Jeanette Winterson's admiring review in the New York Times was unsurprising, given that Cunningham's economy with words and ability to construct beautiful, writerly sentences recall Winterson at her best. Cunningham chooses his words with same meticulous care that Peter Harris selects artworks for his gallery. When a friend tells Peter, "You've always been in love with beauty itself. You're funny that way", she might have been speaking of the author. By Nightfall is indeed a celebration of beauty itself.
    • 2/5
      Michael Cunningham is an excellent writer. Unfortunately, just didn't meet this book at the right time. I enjoyed what I read, but realized I had moved on when I went to dust it off.
    • 4/5
      This was an effortless read including art-world elements, erotic undertones, & the ludicrous and seductive appeal of a burgeoning infatuation with an addict - his wife's brother. For anyone who has desired someone so entirely 'off-limits', this story will grab you and pull you in.

      The main character's primary relationships were not with his wife or estranged daughter - but were of his love for beauty, art and his never-ending search for the potential presence of genius. Using Starbucks to keep him on track during the work-day and 'blue pills' washed down with vodka to help him sleep at night, this metro-sexual insomniac's internal chatter was amusingly familiar.

      I never expected this novel to end with the possibility of redemption, but I appreciated greatly how the author inter-wove the New York scene-scape into the story, transporting the reader effortlessly into a middle-aged man's life that was desperate to find something meaningful in his life.

      A sentimentalist's book, this one plucks at the ordinary heart-strings of our modern lives. I recommend for a contemplative type who can appreciate the range of an infatuated, middle-aged, man drowning inside himself one privileged moment after the next.
    • 4/5
      Cunningham is such a talented writer, and willing to tackle the hidden rot in our society, the middle-of-the-night, can't-sleep questions. Five stars for prose, but I had a hard time caring deeply about the main character. I kept thinking about SPECIMEN DAYS, and missing those leaps of fiction.
    • 4/5
      Wow! I just finished this book & had to write a review for any reader who, like me, may think of quitting before the end. Stick with this book! The plot and the protagonist may seem tired and even cliche at some points (another male mid-life crisis). Cunningham's prose is so lovely, though, that he makes even those lead weights float. Beyond the linguistic beauty, the novel's allusions to so many works of art, literature, music, surround the narrative with conceptual beauty. By the middle I started to realize that, more than a novel, this was a meditation on beauty itself, what it is, what it means, what we'd sacrifice to achieve it, or just be in its presence. In the last twenty pages the book becomes something powerful, something gorgeous and devastating and true. Just read this.
    • 5/5
      "It's your life, quite possibly your only one. Still you find yourself having a vodka at three a.m., waiting for your pill to kick in, with time ticking through you and your own ghost already wandering among your rooms." (pg. 21)

      See that, there? Nobody writes like Michael Cunningham. Nobody. Which is what makes Michael Cunningham one of my favorite authors. (I loved The Hours, couldn't finish Specimen Days, and am breathless after By Nightfall which is going to linger with me for a long, long time.)

      Let's get the fangirl shenanigans out of the way first and then I'll try to put some semblance of coherant thought into this review. This book? Is freaking amazing, people. Yeah, I'm going to be heaping praise of the most effusive kind on this one, which has earned a place on my best books of the year list. It is SO. DAMN. GOOD. (I was having a Facebook conversation of sorts with Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Day the Falls Stood Still and no slacker herself in the writing department, mind you - where we said that Cunningham makes this writing thing look so damn easy and the rest of us shouldn't even bother trying.)

      Honestly, I don't even know where to start with this. First, there's the gorgeously flowing writing. Had this been my own copy, it would have been underlined up the wazoo because there are simply passages of beauty throughout this novel. And By Nightfall is, in fact, a novel about internal and external beauty and what happens to us when we feel that the beauty has gone out of our lives.

      Peter Harris knows a little something about beauty. He's a 44 year old art dealer in New York City with a respectable client list and a slight case of insomnia, living in SoHo with his 41 year old wife Rebecca. Like many professional couples who have been married and have been parents for a number of years (21 of them), theirs has become a marriage (a life) of complacency, of routine and familiarity, of going through the everyday motions of jobs, of sex, of social obligations.

      "He feels, as he sometimes does, as most people must, a presence in the room, what he can only think of as his and Rebecca's living ghosts, the amalgamation of their dreams and their breathing, their smells. He does not believe in ghosts, but he believes in ... something. Something viable, something living, that's surprised when he wakes at this hour, that's neither glad nor sorry to see him awake but that recognizes the fact, because it has been interrupted in its nocturnal, inchoate musings.") (pg. 122-123)

      As the novel opens, Peter and Rebecca are anticipating a visit from Rebecca's much younger brother Ethan (known as Mizzy, because at 23 he is affectionately referred to as "the Mistake"). He's had some issues with drugs and is somewhat flighty, but there's something endearing about him. He resembles a younger Rebecca in some ways - and for Peter, who obviously senses that his best days are behind him (or perhaps numbered), Mizzy represents a youthfulness (and yes, a beauty) that he no longer has, if it was even his to begin with. He also serves as a poignant reminder to Peter of his brother Matthew, who died in his early 20s from what we understand to be AIDS but isn't mentioned by name in the novel.

      This sounds all very superficial - and By Nightfall is nowhere near that. Trust me on this. There is so much packed into these 238 pages, and I am not doing justice to the plot, which takes place only over a few days. It is a plot that turns on a dime by shocking the reader with just five words toward the end of the novel. (The last 40 pages of this one had me on the edge of my seat.)

      Through these exceptional characters (particularly Peter), By Nightfall is much more of a in-depth look at who we are as a person, and how we relate to each other, and the questions we ask ourselves in the middle of the night as we sense our life becoming not what we anticipated. The symbolism - my God, there's so much - and everything means something. I love when a book is chock full of symbolism, and this doesn't disappoint in that regard.

      For example, one of Peter's wealthy clients isn't happy with a recent piece she purchased and Peter arranges for a replacement, which she loves - an urn adorned with "hieroglyphic" phrases, some foul and nasty (we can only speculate what they are for Cunningham doesn't say and ... well, he doesn't have to). The urn represents the unexpected - you wouldn't expect to see such a thing in a proper English garden - and also the theme that beauty is fleeting, that everything dies. Another of Peter's artists has an upcoming show in his gallery which features five regular people going about their everyday lives, one on the streets of Philadelphia. (A reference to the movie, I wondered?)

      The setting and timeframe of the novel - post 9/11 New York City - is incredibly well done, as Cunningham lets his reader into the still present sense of mortality that lingers a decade after the terrorist attacks. I'm not a New Yorker, but Cunningham is and he captures the effect that this changed place has on its people.

      "...it's almost impossible to maintain a sense of hubris when you live here, you're too constantly confronted by the rampant otherness of others; hubris is surely much more attainable when you've got a house and lawn and an Audi, when you understand that at the end of the world you'll get a second's more existence because the bomb won't be aimed at you, the shock wave will take you out but you're not anybody's main target, you've removed yourself from the kill zone, no one gets shot where you live, no one get stabbed by a random psychopath, the biggest threat to your personal, ongoing security is the possibility that the neighbor's son will break in and steal a few prescription bottles from your medicine cabinet." (pg. 131)

      See what I mean with that writing there?

      And then there's this:

      "Maybe its not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, too - some sort of virtues - but we don't care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because they're good. We care about them because they're not admirable, because they're us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it." (pg. 119).

      Peter Harris is us, because we have all been fools for love at one point in our lives, haven't we? We've all been in a relationship where someone gives us a reason for living, who makes us feel new and alive again when our souls have been dead or dying, who we would give up everything we have just to be with them. Michael Cunningham knows that feeling, captures it in this novel, and delivers it to his reader with extraordinary passion.
    • 5/5
      Great literary fiction. I loved the characters, the deep looks into their lives and motivations, and the plot was enough to keep the book moving along. The audio version was excellent, the narrator's delivery style perfect for the subject matter.
    • 4/5
      I thought I would be put off by the setting of this novel in the world of the New York art scene, but it turned out that Cunningham handled that pretty well. He gave us all of the relevant information - he was really writing for the outsider. I am personally an outsider as far as same sex attraction goes, but I live more in those circles. The tension the main (heterosexually married) character feels due to his feelings of same sex attraction seem to be represented quite well. I liked Cunningham's parenthetic but explicit statements of what his protagonist is thinking as a way of giving the reader an insight into the complexity of the people and their relationships. In contradistinction, the thoughts of the other characters are not revealed directly to the reader and we're left to come to our own conclusions; like in reality.
    • 5/5
      Michael Cunningham has written a series of novels about relationships – how they form, how they grow, and how they die. He manages this without being too dark, but rather he handles them in a thoughtful and sensitive manner. He is probably best known for The Hours, a multi-layered reworking of the Virginia Woolf novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Specimen Days tells the story of three people in three different time periods – similar to the structure of The Hours – however, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass provides a backdrop. By Nightfall parallels the story of Aschenbach and Tadzio from Thomas Mann’s erotic classic, Death in Venice.Peter and Rebecca married in their early 20s, had a daughter Bea, and live in the Soho section of Lower Manhattan. Peter owns an art gallery struggling to reach the upper tier of galleries in a crowded NY market. Rebecca is a writer, and she publishes a literary magazine just barely surviving.The families of the couple cast a shadow over their lives. Peter’s brother, Michael, died as a young man, and Rebecca’s younger brother is a drug addict. One day, Ethan “Mizzy,” shows up in Soho, and adds further complications to the plot. Peter and Rebecca have a tender and loving relationship, which Peter frets over and second guesses at every turn. Cunningham does this in a structurally peculiar way. As Peter muses on his marriage, his life, and work, he frequently inserts parenthetical asides, as if a second narrator stood over his shoulder adding details or making corrections.Here is an example from a passage about the home of Rebecca’s parents. She felt a slight embarrassment, but, as Cunningham writes: “Some – many – would have found this room disheartening, would have in fact been unnerved by the Taylor’s whole house and the Taylors’ entire lives. Peter was enchanted. Here he was among people too busy (with students, with patients, with books) to keep it all in perfect running order; people who’d rather have lawn parties and game nights than clean the tile grout with a tooth brush (although the Taylor’s grout could, undeniably, have used at least minor attention). Here was the living opposite of his own childhood, all those frozen nights, dinner finished by six thirty and at least another four hours before anyone could reasonably go to bed” (49).I also enjoyed another aspect of this novel -- the generous sprinkling of literary references throughout the story. Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust, Jane Austen, Anna Karenina, Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Dante, Hamlet, Homer, Cheever, and many others. Fitting these selections into the fabric of the story would make an interesting research project.But the most telling of all, occurred on a train trip to visit a client of Peter’s. Mizzy is searching for an occupation to save himself from drugs. He thinks “something in the Arts, perhaps a curator” would be a good choice. Peter sits opposite Mizzy and notices a copy of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, which “sits open but unread on his lap” (169). They discuss Mann and Peter asks him about Death in Venice.Cunningham’s By Nightfall is altogether a clever, absorbing psychological voyage into the lives and loves of Peter and Rebecca with an unusual twist on the last pages. If you have never read Cunningham, this novel is a good starting place. 5 stars--Jim, 6/30/12
    • 5/5
      Living in Manhattan Peter and Rebecca are both involved in the art world, he a dealer and gallery owner, she an editor. In their forties, they have a daughter who lives away, a daughter they feel they have failed. Their own lives seem to be settled but routine, that is until Rebecca's much younger brother turns up. Ethan, in his twenties, know as Mizzy - the mistake, the wonder child of the family, the one they all doted on, but the one who has gone astray, into drugs and unsure what he wants to do, he has descended upon Peter and Rebecca with claims that he thinks he might want to do something in art.His arrival, initially resented by Peter, engenders strange feelings in him; Peter is attracted to Mizzy's unnerving likeness to a younger Rebecca; and could it be the Mizzy is attracted to him too, and if so will they do anything about it?I loved this novel, it is beautifully written, prose that one wants to linger over and savour, rich in description and brimming with atmosphere; looking deeply at the characters and their motivations. The conversations are exquisitely handled, thoroughly convincing. I am sure this is a book that I will be reading again.
    • 1/5
      It is very rare for me to not finish a book but, I couldn't get halfway through this book before I put it down. I even tried to put it aside for days on end, thinking it might be my mood. In the end, I found the writing pretentious, the author over-thinking his characters, while at the same time not giving you enough to feel a connection to any of them; all a shock coming from a Pulitzer Prize winning author.
    • 4/5
      I haven’t read all that much of Michael Cunningham’s work. I liked The Hours well enough, but it hinged on a gimmick, and I might have appreciated it more if I’d ever read Mrs. Dalloway (I still haven’t, and it’s not on the horizon. Judge me if you must). Cunningham’s most recent novel, By Nightfall, stands on its own...and is one of the finest books I’ve read this year.Peter and Rebecca Harris are in that early-midlife phase that can call a lot into question for people; the kids are leaving home, the career may be comfortable but stalled, and you’ve done well enough that there doesn’t seem much to want from life beyond what you already have. They are, as the plot synopsis says, “happy enough,” particularly when they don’t dwell on it too much. However, there are bumps in their road, and Rebecca’s little brother Ethan becomes a big one.By Nightfall hinges on aimless, beautiful Ethan, known as “Mizzy,” or “The Mistake,” within his family because he was born late and unexpectedly as his sisters were entering adulthood (he’s only a few years older than Peter and Rebecca’s daughter, Bea). His visit with Peter and Rebecca is prompted by his recent decision that he wants to “do something in art;” it’s his latest whim in a life seemingly propelled by whims, and Rebecca hopes that her art-dealer husband can be of some help to her brother in determining what that actually might be.I don’t want to discuss much more of the plot of By Nightfall; it’s not strongly plot-driven, but the storyline took some turns that I didn’t expect, and I don’t want spoil the discovery for other readers. However, what made this novel compulsively readable for me was Cunningham’s writing - beautifully flowing, evocative and emotionally affecting. Particularly effective was his choice to narrate in third person limited. The only perspective the reader gets is Peter’s, and first-person narration might have made him come across as self-involved and self-indulgent; and while the third-person viewpoint doesn’t entirely avoid that at times, I felt it rendered him much more sympathetically, and certain events in the story would have had a different impact on me if I hadn’t viewed him with that degree of sympathy.I did not expect By Nightfall to engage and move me as much as it did, and I always appreciate surprises like that - therefore, it’s not surprising that this novel will likely have a spot on my 2011 “Books of the Year” list.
    • 4/5
      Peter and Rebecca Harris live in Manhattan’s SoHo district. Peter, an art dealer, and Rebecca, an editor, have one child, Bea, who has dropped out of college to sling drinks at a bar in Boston. Both in their mid-40s, they live a contemporary urban life filled with high end parties, end of the day Martinis, and busy days rubbing elbows with the rich and obnoxious. They have worked their entire lives for this type of lifestyle…and yet, the cracks in their marriage are beginning to widen, fueled by a wayward daughter and middle-age.What marriage doesn’t involve uncountable accretions, a language of gestures, a sense of recognition sharp as a toothache? Unhappy, sure. What couple isn’t unhappy, at least part of the time? But how can the divorce rate be, as they say, skyrocketing? How miserable would you have to get to be able to bear the actual separation, to go off and live your life so utterly unrecognized? – from By Nightfall, page 8 -So when Rebecca’s much younger brother, Ethan (referred to as “Mizzy” or The Mistake) arrives to spend time with Rebecca and Peter, the precarious balance between them shifts. Ethan is a drug addict with no real sense of direction. He is charming, beautiful (almost like one of the bronze statues which Peter sells), and a liar…and yet, there is something about Mizzy which Peter cannot deny.The mystery of Mizzy: Where did the boy genius go? He had been, as a child, expected to be a neurosurgeon or a great novelist. And now he’s considering (or, okay, refusing to consider) law school. Was the burden of his potential too much for him? – from By Nightfall, page 58 -Narrated from Peter’s limited point of view, Michael Cunningham’s novel takes a hard look at urban professional life, modern marriage, and sexual identity. Peter is clearly struggling with a mid-life crisis. He reflects on the death of his older brother, Matthew, who was gay and begins to question his own identity as a husband, father, and man. Peter’s memories of his brother are complicated by his fantasies for a girl named Joanna who dated his brother in high school – especially since he now knows that the adult Joanna – “hale and handsome, cheerfully pushing forty with a wallet full of photos, a pretty and sturdy woman with no hint of sex about her” – veers sharply away from the high school Joanna unfastening the top of her bikini on a trip to the lake. All of Peter’s memories, feelings and insecurities are a jumbled mess infiltrating his present life.A virus ate Matthew. Time ate Joanna. What’s eating Peter? – from By Nightfall, page 117 -It is not hard to predict where the novel is heading as Peter finds himself questioning the predictable course of his life and yearning for a little danger and excitement, something to “upend his own life.”Michael Cunningham’s prose is ironic, observant and sharply rendered. Which is why I found myself dismayed that I did not love this novel. None of the characters are terribly likable. They are self-absorbed, and a little too carefully constructed. Peter’s actions and choices seemed improbable to me. Rebecca was like a ghost of a person – sketched out, but not fully realized. And yet, I kept reading because I was curious. I wanted to know the ultimate resolution. And I thought I did know exactly what was going to happen. But, it was here where Cunningham surprised me with an ending I did not anticipate.So how do I rate this book? On the one hand, there is no denying Cunningham’s power as a writer. He can spin a sentence like almost no other contemporary author out there. And he manages to take the reader in a direction, only to change it up at the end in a surprising way. On the other hand, I disliked the characters and found the plot a bit unbelievable. The book started out strong to me, but I got tired of Peter’s self-serving voice. Fortunately, the end of the book left me feeling more satisfied. Sensitive readers (which I am not), may find some of the content in this novel off putting. Cunningham’s dialogue is realistic and he dips into sexual fantasy which is a bit uncomfortable at times. However, readers who are interested in exploring themes of modern marriage, identity and love will find themselves drawn to By Nightfall. Additionally, this book would make for excellent discussion in a book club.
    • 2/5
      I find the book irritating, after turning a few chapters on it. I do not know if this Cunningham's style, but it is like there is no good issues to Peter's dilemma. So, we are dragged through unnecessary characters' conversation just to prolong a book which is supposed to be about a man and his brother-in-law. I don't even know the deal with Bea, Peter's daughter and why she is even in the book. There were so many if's in the book that I just wish Cunningham made up his mind on where he would want his characters to go.His first book I have read. Most likely the last.
    • 3/5
      I have read all of Michael Cunningham's novels, even Specimen Days. (I deserve some credit for reading Specimen Days.) He didn't come on the radar of most non-gay readers until his mega-hit The Hours, but there were two books before that: A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood. Count me as a fan of both. So, I was excited to receive notice from my library that it was may turn to read his new novel, By Nightfall. I read the entire novel in a single sitting one rainy Saturday evening. (I confess, I did a bit of skimming.)By Nightfall is about a fortyish straight man who lives with his wife in a loft apartment in New York City's SoHo District. Both have what most of us would consider glamorous jobs: she works for a culture magazine and he owns a successful art gallery. He is slightly estranged from his grown daughter and worried about the future of his gallery.By chapter two I was dreading the thought of spending another 180 pages with a novel about elite New York society written by a member of it. Do these people have nothing better to do than write novels about themselves? But, because I am a big fan of Mr. Cunningham, and because I kept hoping I'd fall in love with the characters like I did with A Home at the End of the World or with the novel's execution like so many of us did with The Hours, I kept reading. After a while, I was glad that I did. But then in the end, I kind of wished I hadn't.By Nightfall can be read as an inside look at the New York art world. If you read it this way, you'll find it's quite good. So much time is spent following the main character through his workday that By Nightfall almost becomes a novel about work. Mr. Cunningham's portrayal of the art world, the artists, the patrons, the deal-making, the marketing and the back-biting, all have the ring of truth and all make for interesting reading. Mr. Cunningham invents several artists and their work. My favorite is a woman who films random people on the street and creates installation pieces around them. A man in a raincoat entering a building becomes a celebrity when displayed on a monitor surrounded by memorabilia:--action figures, lunchboxes, posters, Halloween costumes for children-- all featuring his likeness. That's an art installation I'd love to see. I might even buy one of the action figures.Meantime, the much younger, drug addicted, brother-in-law comes to stay. The main character finds himself attracted to this beautiful young man who spends most of his time lounging around the loft apartment sans clothing. Slowly, the main character is overcome by a physical desire he has never felt before, leaving him more than willing to excuse the brother-in-law's drug use. This is all portrayed so believably that I've no doubt it happens to straight men all the time. Not to any straight men I know, but then I don't move in an elite New York social scene. Towards the end of the novel there is a twist worthy of a Henry James story when a brief dialogue reveals that all we thought we knew is wrong. This is followed by a second twist that struck me as a cheap shot, unworthy of a novel as good as By Nightfall.So I didn't like it. Then I liked it. Then I loved it. Then I didn't like anymore. I think you're just on your own this time.
    • 3/5
      I was looking forward to reading this book, even though I hadn't read any others by Cunningham. I think I was probably intrigued by the cover, the blurb and the knowledge that he had written the Hours. It wasn't so much that I was disappointed with this book, just that I think it lacks a little bit of substance.The plot centres around the self-absorbed Peter, an art dealer in New York City. Ostensibly he has everything he needs but he is dissatisfied with his lot. It's sort of a midlife crisis, it seems, an ennui with life. He cannot seem to empathise with anyone - his daughter, his wife (without spoiling the plot, he is clearly unaware of her feelings), and others in his life. He notes that he has no friends and on reflection, it's unsurprising. It's hard to feel any real connection with the characters, they are spoiled and bored, but I did think it as a well written book and the twists at the end did catch me by surprise. Worth a read but not something I would go back to.
    • 3/5
      This character driven novel disappointed me. The only character the reader gets to know is Peter - a very self centered, egotistical, conflicted, middle-aged man. He never really captivated me. The best word to describe him is pathetic. There were also a few parts to the book that seemed completely unrealistic. A random naked run-in between Peter and his wife's younger brother in the kitchen of their home seemed forced. In addition, there were too many homosexual references and themes in the book. I understood where the book was going without the author completely bashing me over the head with it. Finally, the wife's younger brother's nickname of Mizzy (short for The Mistake). His real name is Ethan. Who in their right mind would allow a member of their family (even if he was a mistake) to be nicknamed Mizzy in reference to that? No one. This is exactly what I mean. The book is supposed to be a character driven novel that gets into the inner turmoil and conflicts of every day middle aged life. However, there were way too many parts of this book that seemed completely unrealistic (at least with my knowledge of people and the world).Cunningham's writing is very good. He does come off a little uppity about his knowledge of the arts. All in all, it kept me reading until the end primarily because the book wasn't very long. The limited plot was relatively predictable and the characters were pretty opaque except for Peter, who was just pathetic. This is definitely not a book I would recommend to someone looking for a strong character driven novel with some semblance of a plot.