What do readers think of Day by Michael Cunningham? Write your own review.

Day, by Michael Cunningham is another novel which is set in the time period of COVID and its aftermath. Cunningham uses an intriguing device of following an extended family through the same day in 2019, 2020, and 2021. This is a very effective way of showing the the thoughts and interactions that families went through during this time.

However, I found some of his characters thoughts and actions slightly disjointed, leaving the reader with many unanswered questions. In particular, the 5 year old daughter seems too self-aware for her age. Also the interaction of Dan and Robbie seems to be left hanging in the air.

On the whole, an intriguing premise to a story that perhaps could have been better fleshed out.

Michael Cunningham is a beautiful, thoughtful writer. I've read all his books and loved most of them. I was so excited to read this new book after his long absence. Unfortunately I didn't love it. It's a story of a dysfunctional family; Isabel and Dan, their two children, Isabel's younger brother Robbie and several other characters. It takes place before, during and after the pandemic on the same day of the year. It examines the impact of the lockdown and the characters inner turmoil and choices moving forward. Robbie was the character I cared most about. He was pivotal in this story and Cunningham did a masterful job of portraying him with all his achingly beautiful humanity. The book which was relatively short felt overwrought to me. The characters seem so embroiled with their inner dialogs which often felt unimportant. Overall while the book touched on thought provoking topics, like the falsehoods on social media, I found the story and the characters to be rather tedious.

The story came across to me as a dysfunctional family. They did not appear to be happy with themselves or each other. The introduction of Wolfe got me confused at first. The other characters I really didn't get why they were involved. I only managed to read the first day before I lost total interest and didn't pick it up again.

I found this book disjointed and hard to force myself to read. I quit after 3 attempts and 3 chapters. I will pick it up later and try again, but, for now, I wouldn't recommend it!

The format of this book is interesting. It takes place on the same day in three consecutive years the middle of which was the pandemic year of lockdown. I initially thought that the pandemic lockdown would take a more prominent place in the story. Wrong! It was the shortest part of the book. The characters were all so neurotic and self absorbed that I couldn't sympathize with any of them. They all seemed disconnected from each other, even the children characters were strange. I'm not sure what the author was trying to say but I totally missed it.