Day by Michael Cunningham: lively, then tired, then sluggish

Like Mrs Dalloway, Michael Cunningham’s most famous novel, The Hours, is set across a single day. His new book triples this timeline, spread between April 5th of three consecutive years: morning in 2019, afternoon in 2020, and evening in 2021.

The opening section is a masterclass in how to begin a novel, introducing a group of family members, each of whom boasts a rich inner life and a troubled outer one. Dan, Isabel and their two children live together in a New York brownstone with Isabel’s younger brother Robbie, the beating heart of the story. A gay man in his late 30s whose romantic experiences have not proved as fulfilling as he hoped, he’s adored by all. The interactions between the group as they prepare for their day are undramatic, quotidian and yet thoroughly engaging.

The latter sections, however, prove less so. The year 2020 means Covid, Covid means lockdown, and lockdown means nothing much happens. Letters and emails fly back and forth between New York and Iceland, where Robbie has sequestered himself, but they lack the immediacy of the earlier part. And while the brief finale, set in 2021, opens with a moment of undoubted poignancy, Cunningham inexplicably chooses not to draw out the heightened emotions of characters affected by trauma.

After so many years in each other’s orbit, the relationship between brothers-in-law Dan and Robbie has proved more resilient than the one between husband and wife. Entirely platonic, but filled with expressions of authentic emotion, it’s unusual to encounter a love so profound between a straight and gay man in fiction, one that is not overshadowed by secret crushes, so I was left feeling frustrated when this intriguing strand of the story slipped away.

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Trios recur time and again in Cunningham’s work. An early novel, A Home at the End of the World, is a disarming account of a sexually adventurous threesome. By Nightfall explores another husband, wife and younger brother dynamic, while, most famously, The Hours examines the lives of three women in separate decades.

Day might have been the equal of these books but, like many of us, it’s full of energy in the morning, a little tired in the afternoon, and becomes sluggish at night.