Specimen Days

By: Michael Cunningham
The author of The Hours brings us another threesome of characters with lives centered around a piece of literature. In this case it is Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I enjoyed the book and I love Michael Cunningham's language, it's so lyrical. The three stories are always about a man named Simon, a woman named Catherine, and a boy named Luke. The POV changes with each story, as do the ages, races, and deaths of each character. One story is set in 19th century industrial New York, one is New York today, and one is New York of the future. Writing the future is tricky business and despite my initial skepticism, Cunningham does an excellent job of telling the story without jumping to much into the sci-fi realm. The thing with a future world (or a fantasy one) is that you often have to spend a lot of time explining the world to the audience. Cunningham does this very succintly and boy do I appreciate that. The only thing I didn't care for was in the future story the planet is also now inhabited by refugee aliens that look like lizards. Which unfortunately for me initially brought up images of the GEICO Gecko. (Who want's free pie and chips?) Fortunately I got over it.